To Wig, Or Not To Wig
It’s just a wig. Except it isn’t.
Two years ago I was invited to the New York City premiere of Will & Harper, a documentary about a decades-long friendship tested and deepened by one person’s transgender identity. I chose not to wear my wig that night. It was warm, and I wanted to represent the real me.
While waiting in line, I encountered another bald woman wearing a head scarf. When she saw me, she pulled it off, high fived me, and said “good for you, sis! Bald ladies represent!”
That moment should have been more moving than it was.
The truth is, every time I leave the house, without fail, I have to decide whether or not to wear my wig. It is a decision I have come to loathe, and one I have also tried to make peace with. Some days I manage both at the same time.
I think most women get it, at least a little. That feeling of walking into a room and knowing your appearance is the first thing people clock, and sometimes the only thing. For some trans women, though, this feeling carries higher stakes. Being visibly trans in public isn’t just about confidence or comfort. For a lot of us, it’s about safety.
I’ve been harassed numerous times. Pointed at. Laughed at. Called names. Someone once got right in my face and told me how disgusting I am. And once, a half-full cup of milkshake was thrown at me from a moving car. It scared the hell out of me, and I had to go about the rest of my day like nothing happened. When I told people, most of them minimized it. “This is what women deal with,” I was told. “Walk it off.”
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They weren’t entirely wrong. But they weren’t entirely right either.
I was already doing the wig math before I ever left the house. Those moments just confirmed why I bother.
Being teased about my hair isn’t new. Guys had been giving me grief about it since my twenties. Back then it was easier to brush off. I wasn’t yet living as myself, so in some ways there was less to lose. When I understood I was transgender, the math changed completely. I remember sitting in my therapist’s office telling her I would never be the woman I wanted to be. She asked me why. I said because I am bald. She looked at me and asked, very calmly, are there no beautiful bald women?
Well played. She wasn’t wrong. I knew it as soon as she said it. But knowing a thing and feeling it, really believing it, are two different zip codes.
Knowing a thing and feeling a thing are, in my experience, two completely different zip codes.
What I’ve come to understand in two and a half years of being transgender is that the baldness is almost beside the point for me. It’s just one of several things I clock in the mirror on the rougher days. Hair, or the lack of it, tends to be what other people notice first. And for certain people, it becomes an excuse to get me wrong. So every time I’m deciding whether to wear the wig, I’m really asking myself one question: do I have enough in the tank today to handle being misgendered with grace and poise? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I reach for the wig.
And here is the part I’ve resisted saying out loud for a long time. When I put it on, something happens. I put it on upside down for maximum fluff, then throw my head back to let the hair fall softly into place. There is something in that gesture that feels, at least to me, unmistakably and completely girlie. It elates me in a way I didn’t expect the first time it happened. I look in the mirror. I position it. I brush her into place. I see her as part of the whole picture. And something in me settles.
“Yes, Miranda. You are a woman.”
Also, it’s pink. So it has its own 🪄fairy magic 🦄 going on.
The wig doesn’t make me a woman. What it does, on the days I choose to wear it, is help me remember that I already am one.
The wig is the icing. The cake was already there.
So I make the choice. Every time. Lunch with friends. Drinks at a bar. A day at the museum. Is it raining? Is it hot? Do I have enough in the tank today? I ask the questions, I do the math, I make the call, and hope it’s the right one.
