'I want to be bald because I am free.' Elizabeth Gilbert on exactly why she shaved her head.

Few people experience the level of success Elizabeth Gilbert has.

The journalist and author had her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts, and the book itself has sold over 12 million copies since its release.

Watch: The Advice Elizabeth Gilbert Would Give Her Younger Self. Post continues below.

She now continues to write — something she does best.

Late last year, Gilbert, 54, answered The Oldster Magazine questionnaire, and spoke openly about how getting older changed her perspective on life.

For many, ageing is a terrifying thought, but Gilbert looks at it differently, saying it gave her the “wisdom, independence, financial independence, sobriety, freedom, dozens of tools for handling the chaos of my mind and of the world.”

The author delved into the confidence that comes with age, and her lack of desire to conform to society's expectations of women — and spoke about her decision to shave her head.

She's recently spoken again about the reasons for her hairstyle of choice — something she had dreamed of doing for "years", but was too afraid to take the plunge, she recently wrote for Oprah Daily.

Elizabeth Gilbert before shaving her head. Image: Getty.

"And by 'years', I mean 'decades,'" she wrote.

For Gilbert, shaving her head was a statement, one that said she no longer cared about conventional beauty standards.

For years, Gilbert would dye her hair and inject Botox into her face, fearing that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be considered pretty anymore.

Gilbert wrote that she was spending around $700 every month in order to keep her "difficult" hair looking "pretty".

"[It] involves an enormous amount of time and chemicals," she shared. "But on the right days, with the right investment and the proper levels of humidity, I could walk out of the house with a look that caused people to say, 'I love your hair!'"

When she observed men, however, Gilbert realised that the same things women are told to cover up and erase were being celebrated in the opposite sex.

"I'm getting older, and I'm tired of it, and in recent years, I started fantasising every day — every single day — about buzzing it all off," she wrote.

For Gilbert, there were two motivating factors that led to her finally biting the bullet and shaving her head. The first was meeting a spiritual teacher in her 80s who Gilbert described as "the most beautiful woman" she has ever seen.

"Her hair is white, her skin is parchment and lined, her eyes are brilliant and kind, her hands are covered with age spots. And she is the freest person I have ever met, possessed of the wildest mind," she wrote.

"And after a week in her luminous presence, I was like, Why am I still pretending that I'm not getting older? Why am I afraid of looking my age? Why does any of this matter at all? What if I just allowed myself to become a gorgeous old amazing woman, like her? What if I were just free?"

The second motivating factor came when Gilbert attended an event in New York City attended by around 100 professionals, both men and women.

Almost all of the men had cropped, buzzed, or convenient hair.

"They were all a bunch of silver foxes with lined faces and handsome features, and they all looked great."

Conversely, the women had variations of long, expensive-looking, complicated hair.

"And I thought, Why are we still doing this?"

That night, instead of complaining about how unfair the double standards were, she decided she'd claim the same entitlement as men do. Five minutes later, she was done.

"I felt like I had never looked more like myself. I had made this decision because I wanted freedom and convenience, and because I had decided to be 'post-vanity,' but what I saw in the mirror looked like beauty to me. Fierce beauty."

While many people share Gilbert's love of her new hair, she says, white men mostly… don't. But that's exactly why this haircut is important.

"It is important because white men should not always get what they want — it isn't good for any of us."

When she first posted a picture of her new buzz cut to Instagram, Gilbert says one user asked her why she wants to be bald, prompted her to "roar with laughter".

"Dude, I wanna be bald because I wanna be free," she said.

"Dude, I wanna be bald because I am free."

This article was originally published in January 2024 and has since been updated.

Feature Image: Elizabeth Gilbert Substack.

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