That’s One Bald Woman!

There sure were a lot of bald ladies running around the ‘90s! Sigourney Weaver went bald in ALIEN³ (1992) and Demi Moore did the same in G.I. JANE (1997).* Sometime in-between – 1993, to be precise – Eve Salvail and her dragon-tattooed skull took the fashion world by storm; ultra-short-haired model Jenny Shimizu debuted one year later; and chrome-domed Alek Wek arrived in 1995—the same year Robin Tunney’s EMPIRE RECORDS character shore all.

You get the point: The bald woman proliferated in the 20th century’s final decade. So, why? And so what?

The women mentioned above weren’t the first bald female stars. Grace Jones paved the way in the 1970s, Persis Khambatta went lockless in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE in 1979, and Sinead O’Connor became a bald icon circa 1987.

Nor did these women lose their locks for the same reasons. Wek trimmed her tresses to embrace her natural beauty, while O’Connor sought protection from predatory men; it was too “dangerous” being pretty. Sadly, Ripley’s decision was strikingly similar in the year 2179: she’s trapped in a penal colony with misogynists and other louses. Shoring was a matter of personal safety. O’Connor and Ripley existed centuries and realities apart, yet male violence remained the same throughout.

But unique rationales here are less important than these individuals’ collective acceptance in popular culture. Something clicked in the 1990s. Things were coming to a head - no pun intended. The real question therefore is, “Why did ‘90s-era pop culture accommodate so many bald women?”

The Cut traces the bald woman’s prevalence to the grunge movement, part of the broader rejection of the late-'80s’ glitz and glamour that divided women into two main camps: business women with warrior-like shoulder pads – a style that downplayed traditional femininity but emphasized a dominatrix-esque allure; and the spunky Madonna who’d wielded her sexuality as she deemed fit, yet nonetheless remained an object of desire. The bald woman inverted those styles, and gender itself, to fuck the male gaze.

In that light, yes, the bald woman could be seen as emblematic of the larger grunge scene. Like its predecessor, punk, grunge could be more inclusive than other genres. See, for example, Kurt Cobain dolled up in a dress and wearing nail polish - which gets to factors larger than just grunge.

The bald woman didn’t exist in a vacuum. There was a broad spectrum of gender-play in ‘90s pop culture. Yes, Super Models Cindy and Naomi ruled the world, but not without stiff competition from the flat-chested waif and androgynous heroin chic type embodied by Kate Moss.

The ‘90s were also the decade of unisex CK One, and of Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, designers whose fashions embodied the stripped-down, gender-neutral aesthetic of the era. And I’d be remiss not to mention pixie cuts were all the rage, as seen on Alyssa Milano in DOUBLE DRAGON (1994), Demi Moore (again) in GHOST (1990), and Josie Bissett on Melrose Place (1992-1999).

Meanwhile, sexual norms were also being expanded: Norman Korpi and Pedro Zamora represented gay men on The Real World in 1992 and 1994, respectively; we all heard about Jill Sobule kissing a girl, we saw Mariel Hemingway kiss Roseanne (1994), and we’ll always remember Ellen Degeneres and Laura Dern locking lips (1997). THE BIRDCAGE (1996) also comes to mind. Oh, so does IN & OUT (1997). Sheesh - so much gayness in the 1990s!

Then there’s the added element of RuPaul and Eddie Izzard’s respective ascents, two careers impossible if society as a whole weren’t more open-minded. Also, while not comparable to those gals in terms of identity, Mrs. Doubtfire’s notable for her dominance in ‘90s pop culture.

Looking at all that, the 1990s were a continuation of the 1970s sexual and gender revolution—a resumption after the comparatively conservative ‘80s. This was the time of Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990; Bodies That Matter, 1993) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Epistemology of the Closet, 1990), deconstructionist philosophers who explained how gender and sexuality were prescribed from the top-down.

While average folk weren’t reading Judith Butler, even esoteric ideas still have a way of filtering through the zeitgeist, spawning new conversations and iterations. The bald woman could therefore be seen as part of larger, ‘90s-era navigation around gender and sexuality.

There’s yet another aspect to consider when considering the bald woman: the Y2K factor.

The then-forthcoming new millennium loomed large in the global imagination. There was a wary optimism with a hint of bleakness as we prepared for a Brave New World, whatever that may be: a land of tomorrow or one plunged into darkness by a computer glitch? We had no idea.

The optimistic side shines bright in reflective fabrics like Missy Elliot’s in the “Supa Dupa Fly” video, but the shaved headed woman, the waif, the heroin chic idol and the utilitarian, minimalistic fashions all evoke paranoid gloom. They seemed to embrace that dystopian go-to, uniformity, as an equalizer.

At the time it seemed revolutionary. Looking at it now, in today’s more progressive context, the 90s’ gender-bending is far too rigid to be truly forward-thinking.

It was definite, rather than fluid. And that’s where it went wrong.

The unisex and gender-neutral styles circa the ‘90s weren’t so much a rejection of gender as an erasure of it. They didn’t engage gender as a topic; they ignored it. They denied binarism by blowing it up. They undercut what we call gendered expressions by removing them from the equation; blue and pink and almost any other color are dimmed in favor of monochromatic homogeny. It squashed gender into a singularity – a futuristic monogender made for an efficient tomorrow. It was an attempt at hurdling over gendered codes and modes by disregarding them. The consensus there could be read as: “We’re all basic in the future.”

Today’s gender-related conversations and expressions are different - and, dare I say, better.

We’re pushing against gender normativity like never before, including in the 1990s: A-List men such as Jared Leto and Harry Styles wear silken blouses once reserved for women; Billy Porter dons ball gowns on the regular and no one blinks an eye; RuPaul’s still on top as the doyenne of an international franchise; Laverne Cox and Elliot Page are legitimate stars; and an entire generation of youth are identifying as non-binary. They have seen through the restrictive mirages of yesteryear and have chosen freedom. They’ve seen that men can wear pink and women can wear suits and the world keeps turning.

Clearly our collective understanding of gender has expanded. More Americans than ever comprehend and support a person’s right to transition genders, and 42% believe there should be more than two genders. More and more people understand that gender is not defined by sex and that for decades we’ve all been living in a construct – a Matrix, if you will. Still, let’s not celebrate the end of restrictive gender identities quite yet. Just because we’re at this progressive moment now doesn’t mean it will hold.

Culture’s a slingshot: just as ‘60s-era men grew out their hair to reject the cookie cutter GI look of the ‘50s, the unisex trend of the ‘90s ended with boy bands and bubblegum babes reinforcing traditional performativity. Ellen was over (her sitcom cancelled in 1998) and Britney was in (her first album debuted in 1999). And today’s no different: as trans and non-binary visibility rise, so too do reactionaries trends like over-the-top gender reveal parties and draconian laws used to scapegoat and persecute any that fall out of perceived societal norms.

The only way to keep society from backsliding into archaic gender norms is to keep supporting those who challenge them, keep pushing our own boundaries, and to be like the bald women of the ‘90s: unapologetically ourselves, protocol be damned.  

*Trivia for Ya: One of G.I. JANE’s creators, Danielle Alexandra, has only three other writing credits, one of which is My Two Dads, a gender-tweaking sitcom that ran from 1987-1990, presaging the impending gender bending.