Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 21, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba C2 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COMTUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2025 Women redefining baldness as beautiful N EW YORK — “Being bald is sexy. It’s an attitude. It’s a lux- ury. It’s a lifestyle.” That’s how Brennan Nevada John- son, who shaved her head voluntarily 14 years ago, opens the video podcast she launched in November 2024 to celebrate the advantages of choosing a bald look. Sensuous, self-assured and glam- orous are not the adjectives typically assigned to women with shorn hair. For centuries, many cultures have viewed long hair as a symbol of femininity, health and fertility, but more women are defying that traditional beauty standard and finding empowerment by baring their heads. “Once you do it, it brings all this confidence into your life. Whenever you see someone who’s bald and not wearing a wig, just know that they have fully embraced themselves, and I think that’s something that’s really challenging to do,” Johnson, 34, said. Her initial decision to go baldheaded was practical. Johnson played competi- tive volleyball in college and found the sweating she did on the court affected the expensive hair relaxing treatments she often had done. Once she started shaving off her hair, though, she was hooked. She was relieved to save money on salon trips. Johnson now owns a New York public relations firm. Bald and Buzzed with Brennan, the video podcast she posts on YouTube, was an attempt to fill a void in social media content that af- firmed bald people, especially women. She says she always thought baldness was sexy. “It’s such a fashion statement, and it’s a really powerful look,” Johnson said. Other women without hair, whether voluntarily or due to medical condi- tions, also have sought ways to support each other, attending conferences, joining “baldie” groups and swapping grooming and scalp care tips. “There’s a whole community of us out there. We need to talk about it because we do find comfort and empowerment and beauty in what some people think is weird,” said Dash Lopez, a content creator who posts a weekly video series of her shaving routine called Fresh Cut Friday. Redefining beauty Lopez said members of her family praised the long curly hair she had growing up. Some of her friends played with different hair colours and styles, but Lopez said she didn’t have the same freedom. And she didn’t enjoy detangling her hair or spending long afternoons at the salon. As soon as she turned 18 and could get a haircut without permission, she chopped her locks into a pixie cut. Then she shaved it all off during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It makes me feel powerful in the sense that I’m able to detach from the things that people place so much emphasis on,” Lopez, 29, said. “I’m not sitting here planning, ‘Oh my gosh, when am I going to get my next colour appointment done? That’s gonna cost me $300. Oh my gosh. I’ve got to get my hair done before I go to this event.’” Lopez signed a contract with a modelling agency in 2020, a time when brands wanted to showcase diversity, she said. Back then, being bald worked for her professionally. “There was an appreciation for quirks and if you had a gap in your tooth, if you had a bald head, if you had a face full of freckles, that’s what casting directors were looking for,” Lopez said. She noticed the tide shifting last year, when her bookings for modelling jobs decreased. “Let’s be honest, the odds were stacked against me in the modelling world. I was five-foot-four, five-five on paper, no hair,” Lopez said. A client suggested she wear wigs to land more work. Lopez did not want to do that or grow out her hair. Her modelling contract ended. Since then, she has shared glimpses of her life as a bald woman on Instagram and TikTok, where some of her videos have been watched millions of times. Creating community Many women are confronted with how they define beauty when they lose hair due to health conditions such as alopecia or during chemotherapy treat- ment for cancer. Felicia Flores, a flight attendant who lives in Atlanta, was diagnosed in 2001 with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair to fall out. Six years later, all her hair was gone. Initially, she wore wigs. Then she came across a group called the Baldie Movement on Facebook. “The ladies just really inspired me. They really did help to encourage me and give me strength, and they were just so confident,” Flores, 47, said. She eventually decided to stop wearing wigs and embrace being bald in 2015, after a romantic breakup. “I was tired of lying. I felt like I was hiding something. I felt like I wasn’t myself,” she said. To help uplift and inspire other women, Flores founded an annual con- ference called Baldie Con. The fourth one drew more than 200 attendees to Atlanta last month for a fashion show, guest speakers, a jazz brunch and a black tie gala, she said. Managing reactions Aicha Soumaoro, who works in Phil- adelphia as a nurse on weekdays and as a mechanic on weekends, said some of her patients call her “sir” instead of “ma’am,” but she doesn’t let it bother her. “It’s new to them, girls that are bald,” she said. Soumaoro, 27, said that after she shaved her head, her mother told her that most men wouldn’t want to marry a woman with no hair. She focuses instead on the compliments she’s received while out in public, including “You wear it with confidence” and “Your face is gorgeous.” “Being bald, it’s like a boost of confi- dence out of nowhere,” said Soumaoro, who cuts her hair every Sunday. She also hikes on Sundays, savour- ing the feeling of cold breezes on her scalp. “Having that connection with Earth, it feels amazing. I feel like I can hear everything more clearly. It’s like I have a clear mindset when my head is bald,” Soumaoro said. Tiffany Michael Thomas, an Atlan- ta-based performer who goes by the stage name Amor Lauren, shaved her head in a show of support when her mother was undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. After her mother died, Thomas continued receiving compliments from other women. She decided to keep the bald look. “Once I began to really embrace it, it just made me feel like I was unstoppa- ble,” Thomas, 37, said. “There’s nothing that I have to hide behind anymore. It forced me to deal with all of my insecurities.” — The Associated Press CATHY BUSSEWITZ JUSTIN ESSAH / UNSPLASH Some women are feeling a new kind of freedom after choosing to shave their heads. “My poetry had always looked at small objects, or things that are considered ordinary. I make such an ordinary object feel like you’ve never seen it before, or you’re seeing it for the first time. The novel is built of these small, ordinary moments of work, like touching someone’s hands, painting their nails, washing their feet, plucking hairs from their eyebrows or chin. It asks you to value these small, ordinary moments,” she says. For Thammavongsa, getting Ning’s perspective just right proved one of the most important aspects of writing Pick a Colour. “When an author is in control of their tools, the reader doesn’t have to think about it, but for an author, on the other side, we think about it, obsess about it,” she says. “The novel takes a look at point of view and perspective. Point of view is something you choose — it’s very easy. But perspective is how you build the world through the eyes of the person who tells the story, and I feel like that’s where the magic really comes through.” Thammavongsa felt the world of customer service was the ideal setting for exploration of perspective, taking a different tack than litera- ture that uses professors, writers or artists to tell the story and steer the narrative. “But this is just an ordinary person who wants to work, and we see her observe, think and opine with such precision. She’s also an artist, a thinker, but she works in the world of a nail salon.” Exploring the depth of complexity of a retail worker stemmed in part from Thammavongsa’s musings on her parents, who moved from a Lao refugee camp to Toronto when the author was an infant. “When we think about knowl- edge, we think about reading books about people who’ve been educated, formally educated. My parents are Lao refugees — they’ve never been educated because there was a war in that country. The minute I walked into a kindergarten class, I had more education than my parents. I was thinking about their intelligence, and how it allows them to get through the day, the month, the year, the way in which they carry themselves to survive, that’s an act of intelligence,” she says. The levity in Pick a Colour is also thanks to Thammavongsa’s parents, who she says have an “incredible sense of humour” and the ability to find joy in any situation. “My mom worked in a cake-making factory, and it’s long hours,” she says. “Most people would not want to do that work and if they did, they would complain about that work, but when I asked my mom about that work, she said she’s grateful that she gets to make this thing that will go out into the world on a day when someone is celebrating something special. “She feels like she gets to par- ticipate in their joy in that way. That kind of thinking, that kind of intelligence, to me, it’s just something I value so much.” ben.sigurdson@freepress.mb.ca @bensigurdson THAMMAVONGSA ● FROM C1 ‘My poetry had always looked at small objects, or things that are considered ordinary’ — Souvankham Thammavongsa ARTS ● LIFE I LIFESTYLES Blue Rodeo guitarist has bike stolen at The Forks IN back-to-back social media posts, Blue Rodeo frontman Jim Cuddy posted a video praising Winnipeg as “a special city” — and a photo of a band member’s bike that was stolen at The Forks. Guitarist Jimmy Bowskill’s bicycle — a red compact Dahon folding bike — was stolen sometime on Friday, Oct. 17. The veteran Toronto roots band performed at the Burton Cummings Theatre on Oct. 16 and 17. “If you see it around or come across anyone selling a Dahon bike that seems suspicious, please reach out to us. It’s very distinctive and holds a lot of personal value. Please share — any help getting it back would mean a lot,” the band posted to Facebook and Instagram. If the theft soured the band on Win- nipeg, it didn’t show. On the same day as the stolen bike post, Cuddy posted a video of himself walking through the Exchange, admiring the city’s stock of heritage buildings. “I think a lot of cities could learn from the preservation of fine old things in Winnipeg,” he said. He also posted another video compli- menting the roti at Famena’s Famous Roti & Curry on Garry Street. Blue Rodeo is celebrating its 40th anniversary with its Lost Together cross-Canada tour. The group played Brandon’s Keystone Centre on Satur- day night and the Burt a third time on Monday. FACEBOOK Jimmy Bowskill’s distinctive red Dahon folding bike was stolen Friday. Rush expands concert tour TORONTO — Rush is putting more Canadian dates on the calendar for the band’s anticipated reunion. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson say they’ve added another 17 cities to next year’s concert tour, which is set to begin in June and stretch until the end of the year. The new stops include Montreal on Sept. 2, 2026, as well as Edmonton on Dec. 10 and Vancouver on Dec. 15. Other cities joining the Fifty Some- thing tour schedule include Phila- delphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Seattle and Tampa, Fla. The Toronto band says it sold out all of the previously announced dates, which included four nights in Toronto. General public tickets for the new shows begin selling on Oct. 31 after var- ious presales that start on Thursday. This is the first time Rush has hit the road since the R40 tour in 2015 and the death of their drummer Neil Peart from an aggressive form of brain can- cer in 2020. German drummer Anika Nilles will replace Peart on the tour. Lee and Lifeson posted a YouTube video on Monday about the new shows, with Lee saying he was “blown away by the response” for the initial round of dates. He also warned fans about the online scalpers who have been snapping up tickets hoping to capitalize on the demand, and urged them to buy their seats through Ticketmaster or the Rush website. “The resellers have been having a field day out there, jacking up the pric- es, so just be aware of that,” he said. — The Canadian Press DAVID FRIEND RICH FURY / INVISION Geddy Lee says he was blown away by the response for Rush tickets. ;