Nashville Actress Chops off Hair in Moving Statement

We all know of people with such outstanding hair, it seems like an integral part of their very character. Well, Clare Bowen, who plays country singer Scarlett on the show Nashville, is one of those people. Which is why people are reeling from the fact that she just cut it all off.

Yep, those lustrous trademark locks are gone. And Clare Bowen felt obliged to explain why she chopped it all off in a poetic Facebook post, along with an image of her captioned "It's Just Hair," which has garnered almost 150,000 'likes.'

Big deal, you may say. I know I did. There was a wave of gorgeous actresses getting pixie cuts not all that long ago. Newsflash: it's 2015 and short styles on women can still look feminine and sexy (says she who just dared to go short).

Except in Bowen's case, the story runs deeper. What many people don't know about the beautiful Australian actress is that as a child she was said to be terminally ill. Without spoiling the post, Bowen went on to survive (obviously), yet being critically ill in a children's hospital ward taught her valuable lessons about beauty.

"I survived, my hair grew back and I got strong again," she writes. "I look relatively normal on the outside, but on the inside, I am still the same stitched back together little creature, in a world where people are judged so harshly for the way they look. It has always been completely incomprehensible to me. How can people think there's time for that?"

Drawing her inspiration from a little girl similar to her, Bowen cut off her hair to prove that hair is not what makes a princess or, indeed, a woman. 

"Every scar tells a story," she adds, "every baldhead, every dark circle, every prosthetic limb, and every reflection in a mirror that you might not recognize anymore. Look deeper than skin, hair, nails, and lips. You are who you are in your bones. That is where you have the potential to shine the brightest from. It is where your true beautiful self lives."

As a teen I shaved my head, which was way more radical than a pixie cut, believe me. So I can relate to all the horrified glances and wordless judgment I was met with every day and every painstaking inch that it took to grow back.

As Bowen rightly says, "self-esteem takes a lot longer to grow back than hair."

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