{"id":23380,"date":"2015-11-19T00:01:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T08:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=23380"},"modified":"2015-11-19T00:01:29","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T08:01:29","slug":"shes-shaved-her-head-bald-is-our-daughter-headed-for-the-dark-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/shes-shaved-her-head-bald-is-our-daughter-headed-for-the-dark-side\/","title":{"rendered":"She’s Shaved Her Head Bald — Is Our Daughter Headed for the Dark Side?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Christina, smiling at us from cyberspace. I haven’t seen that widow’s peak in her hairline since her newborn babe days. Tim Beedle photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Barbara. Come look. Christina\u2019s bald.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBald?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, bald. Her\u00a0picture’s on Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n

I dashed upstairs. I usually do a slow trudge up the stairs when Jon invites me to look at something he\u2019s found on the Internet. Dutifully, I coo at the baby elephant\u00a0or hiss at the mouthy politico, then I trot back downstairs to my writing room or the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Not this time. This was an emergency. I sped up the stairs. Our 32-year-old daughter, who lives down in Southern California, had gone bald. Bald! Had she\u00a0come down with a terrible disease? Or — worse — had she\u00a0gone all goth and dark and edgy?<\/p>\n

Sure enough, there she was on Jon\u2019s monitor, smiling at Mom and Dad from cyberspace, as bald as the day she was born.<\/p>\n

Obviously,\u00a0this was not an accident or a case of sudden onset alopecia. My daughter had shaved her head bald. On purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m calling her up,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the rush? She\u2019s at work right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the rush? Our daughter has shaved off all her beautiful, dark hair. Where will this lead? Multiple nose rings? Twelve-inch fingernails? Scarification? Crack cocaine?<\/p>\n

One-Way Trip\u00a0to the Dark Side?<\/h5>\n

Clearly, Christina\u00a0was headed for a life on the dark side, and it was all my fault. I\u2019d been too tough on Christina as a kid. Or had I been too easy? Doesn\u2019t matter. Somewhere along the way I had messed up. My daughter\u2019s self-esteem had tanked, and this head-shaving thing was a cry for help.<\/p>\n

I dialed. Christina picked up. \u201cHi, Mom.\u201d\u00a0Voice normal, cheerful even. No gothy edge.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re bald. What happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s for Halloween. I\u2019m going as Furiosa?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, Furiosa in \u2018Mad Max.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

No Worries, Mom<\/h5>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s OK, Mom. I\u2019m letting my hair grow back. I\u2019m not going to stay bald. You don\u2019t have to worry.\u201d<\/p>\n

My daughter was worried that I might be worried. How sweet. I\u2019d raised a good, solid kid<\/p>\n

\"For<\/a>
For Halloween this year, Christina dressed as the\u00a0 Charlize Theron character, Imperator Furiosa,<\/a> in George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Photo by Luke Schlink<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

after all. Not only that, she’d paid\u00a0a hairdresser real money to do the job. No scruffy amateur haircut for my daughter. She\u2019d hired a professional.<\/p>\n

Daughter\u2019s self-esteem intact. Check. Mom a good mom. Check.<\/p>\n

Days later, a second picture showed up on Facebook. There was Christina, fully made up and looking . . . goth and dark and edgy.<\/p>\n

She was stunning.<\/p>\n

Furiosa — One Tough Broad<\/h5>\n

I paid six bucks to watch \u201cMad Max: Fury Road\u201d on TV. Turned it off halfway through. Couldn\u2019t stand it. Way too grim and gory\u00a0for the likes of me.<\/p>\n

Some day, when I\u2019m feeling personally more self-esteemy, maybe I\u2019ll toughen up and try to watch that movie again. I’ll pay a visit to the dark side, and watch as this edgy Furiosa broad triumphs over evil. She does, doesn’t she? I mean good always wins out over evil in the end, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

\"Christina<\/a>
Halloween 1998: Anything but pretty. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

More about my adventures in mothering a daughter at\u00a0“A Cry in the Night. ‘Mommy, I’m Scared.'”<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

You can get my weekly posts by following me on Facebook or Twitter, or via email updates. Look for the icons at the top of the \u00a0column on the right.<\/em><\/p>\n

And watch for my memoir-in-essays book, coming up one day soon, with stories of Christina and Peter at their adorable, school-age best.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"the<\/a><\/p>\n

Christina had shaved her head bald. What was next? Multiple nose rings? Twelve-inch fingernails? Scarification? Crack cocaine? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1588,146,34,566,1589,618,1590,1591,82,1592,1593],"class_list":["post-23380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-bald","tag-christina","tag-dont-miss","tag-fashion","tag-furiosa","tag-halloween","tag-happy-endings","tag-mad-max","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-self-esteem","tag-the-dark-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}