by  Yiyao Li

K-pop swept through China like wildfire when I was in eighth grade. It made perfect sense—Shanghai sits just an hour’s flight from Seoul, close enough that you barely have time to settle into your seat before the descent begins. But by the time I was nearing high school graduation, that cultural bridge had crumbled under political tensions, and K-pop vanished from our world as suddenly as it had arrived.

I was one of those magnetically drawn teenage girls, completely captivated by EXO—twelve impossibly beautiful, almost ethereal Korean and Chinese men who seemed to exist somewhere between masculine and feminine perfection. Among them all, the most striking was Kris Wu, though his name now carries complications I’d rather not dwell on. He’s since fallen from grace, convicted of crimes that make my teenage admiration feel complicated and distant. But at thirteen, all I saw was someone who made a buzzcut look like poetry.

That dangerous morning in eighth grade, the idea crystallized with startling clarity: I want to look like him. I’m getting a buzzcut today. The thought had been circling for weeks, and I’d even mentioned it to my mother, who responded with the full force of parental opposition. She went so far as to visit every barbershop within walking distance, pleading with each barber not to touch my hair. But we both knew her words carried no real authority—just a mother’s anxious attempt to maintain control.

Everything felt simple at that age. Want something? Do it. The same impulse that would later leave my skin decorated with tattoos, some I treasure, others I’ve learned to live with. Desire was action; there was no space between wanting and becoming.

The barber looked shocked when I walked in, though not completely surprised—my mother’s warnings had prepared him. He settled me into the chair, draping the cape around my shoulders like armor, and tried one last negotiation. “Maybe something shorter, but not too short? Like Li Yuchun?” he suggested, referencing the androgynous Chinese musician. “It would suit your face.”

But I was already beyond compromise. “No. A buzzcut. All of it.”

Something amusing: I had texted my homeroom teacher on WeChat, asking if school would allow a buzzcut, but I never bothered consulting my parents. He said it would be fine as long as I didn’t carve dragon designs into my scalp—that might make me look like I belonged to a triad, he joked.

The first pass of the razor created a barren strip across my scalp, and nervousness flickered through me. When the barber finished and turned me toward the mirror, fear finally found its voice. My newly bare head sat strangely atop my soft, feminine teenage features. The disconnect was jarring. What have I done? Will people stare? How will my parents react? All the questions I should have asked beforehand came flooding in.

My parents were devastated. My father shook his head: “Why did you break our hearts?” I had no answer. He walked away, and we didn’t speak for days until my mother, forced to accept reality, began the gentle mantra: “Hair grows back.” But what if I didn’t want it to grow back?

My English teacher, Mr. Pardy—whom we secretly called Mr. Pai Dui, the Chinese word for “party”—pulled me aside after class. With his background in psychology, he recognized that this wasn’t merely aesthetic rebellion but something deeper stirring beneath the surface. When he asked what was going on, I struggled to articulate the storm inside me. All I could say was that I didn’t want to be like my mother—a truth that felt both cruel and essential.

Most people said nothing, their silence more telling than words. But at one dinner, one of my mother’s friends leaned forward with bright eyes and declared, “You are a bold and courageous woman who will become something great.” Her fearless enthusiasm in a room full of diplomatically quiet parents felt like a lifeline. She was herself a remarkable woman—CFO of Spring Airlines, Ph.D. holder—and perhaps she recognized something familiar in my rebellion.

The most amusing reactions came from well-meaning strangers who would approach with worried expressions, gently asking if I had cancer, or the massage therapists in Thailand who kept inquiring whether I was a nun—apparently convinced that no one voluntarily parts with their hair unless God or chemotherapy is involved. I completely understood their confusion; my sweet, modest fashion sense was hardly the aesthetic to pull off such a radical choice. When something looks wildly out of place, people’s brains scramble to create logical narratives, and apparently “teenage rebellion” wasn’t as plausible as “medical emergency” or “religious calling.”

Looking back, it truly was a bald move—one I’m unlikely to repeat but grateful to have made. That razor sliding across my scalp was the sound of something beginning, not ending. It was my psyche announcing itself before I had words for what was stirring within me.

The buzzcut became a bridge between who I had been and who I was becoming. In that chair, watching my hair fall away in dark clusters around my feet, I was performing a kind of metamorphosis—shedding not just hair but the version of myself that sought approval before authenticity. It was my first real act of self-authorship, clumsy and impulsive perhaps, but undeniably mine.

The hair grew back, obviously. But something else grew too—my willingness to disappoint people if it meant understanding myself better, my comfort with being misunderstood, my knowledge that the biggest changes sometimes start with the smallest, most dramatic acts. That buzzcut was the first time I really chose myself over what everyone else wanted.

Photo by YearOne on Unsplash

Editors’ Note: This essay originally appeared in Heart on our Sleeves in September 2025.