Saying goodbye to her hair

So Britney buzzed off her hair, and the media is acting as if it’s never seen a bald woman before.

Attention, People magazine: My wife got a buzz cut too.

She was not a pop singer having an identity crisis. If you must know, she was 53. And the reason she had her hair sheared was that she had breast cancer.

A lot of women with cancer pull a Britney. The cancer no-hair ‘do says to chemotherapy drugs: “I’m not letting you wipe out my hair, because I’m shaving it off first.”

Sometimes a husband does the honors; sometimes the woman is the stylist. One woman said that while her husband made pancakes in the kitchen, she went in the bathroom, whipped out a Lady Gillette, and took it all off. She came out and asked, “What do you think?”

“You look beautiful to me,” he said.

Good answer.

That’s not to say the close shave is easy. Some breast cancer survivors say that the loss of their crowning glory was harder to face than the loss of a breast. A loose-fitting blouse can conceal a mastectomy. But a bald head means she is a cancer patient. On chemo. And every morning when she looks in the mirror, her hairless reflection stares back.

But a streak of dark humor runs through cancer world. Every cancer patient has a story to share about her new look. And they can be pretty funny.

My wife got her cancer buzz cut at a wig salon. I held her hand, held back the tears and marveled at her courage. Then, the cut was done. All around us were boxes of wigs. I’d always wondered what it’d be like to be married to Dolly Parton. Now I know -- Marsha donned one humongous hairpiece after another. We howled. It was the first time we’d laughed since her diagnosis two months before. In the end, she settled on a sensible pageboy that mimicked her pre-cancer look. Sigh. But I did fall in love with her bald head: sleek and curvy, like an egg.

Marsha kept her baldness hidden from all eyes but mine. Other women aren’t as shy. I met a North Carolinian who ate out with her husband and some friends in the middle of the chemo months, her wig atop her head. At a nearby table, a lady was griping about the bad hair day she was having.

The cancer patient couldn’t stand it. She grabbed her wig, flipped it onto the table, and said, “You think you’re having a bad hair day!”

Now really, isn’t that a better bald tale than Out of Control Pop Tart Shaves Her Head?

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Marc Silver, an editor at National Geographic, is the author of “Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) Through Diagnosis, Treatment, and Beyond.”