"Everything I do is political," says Representative Ayanna Pressley, about revealing that she is, in fact, completely bald.

There's no explanation of why she lost all her hair — was it traction alopecia from wearing tight braids? — but she does explain why she's choosing to reveal that she is bald, rather than simply hiding it by continuing to wear wigs. The explanation is that everything she does is political, and that, she says, pushed her to talk about it and actually to show it (which you can see at 6:00 in the video).

I think she looks fine being out-and-proud bald (other than that she's projecting sadness and loss). I wish more people who go bald would be openly bald. If you're bald and you choose to wear wigs, it may be a good idea to wear a perfectly wiggy wig — like they say in the old song, a "wig-hat" — so that there's no expression of hiding or shame.

I think of Andy Warhol. He wore wigs from 1955 on, and they were very wiggy-looking wigs. From "The Andy Warhol Diaries":

Tuesday, March 15, 1983 It was a beautiful day. Walked on the street and a little kid, she was six or seven, with another kid, yelled, “Look at the guy with the wig,” and I was really embarrassed, I blew my cool and it ruined my afternoon. So I was depressed.

If you're wearing obvious wigs, you might still care a lot about being seen bald. In 1985, a woman grabbed his wig off his head:

Wednesday, October 30, 1985 ... The day my biggest nightmare came true....  I’d been signing America books for an hour or so when this girl in line handed me hers to sign and then she—did what she did...

[She pulled Andy’s wig off and threw it over the balcony to a male who ran out of the store with it. Bernard held the female while the store called the police but Andy declined to press charges. The staff at Rizzoli asked him if he’d like to stop, but there were people with books still waiting so he said no, that he would finish. The Calvin Klein coat he was wearing had a hood, so he pulled it up over his head and kept signing.]

I don’t know what held me back from pushing her over the balcony. She was so pretty and well-dressed. I guess I called her a bitch or something and asked how she could do it. But it’s okay, I don’t care—if a picture gets published, it does. There were so many people with cameras. Maybe it’ll be the cover of Details, I don’t know. If I would’ve hit the girl or something then I would’ve been wrong and there would be lawsuits and everything. It’s getting violent out there again, like the sixties.... She was really pretty, a nice-looking well-dressed girl. They had her cornered for a while and then they let her go. It was too unusual. I guess these people had gone around telling everybody they were going to do it, because a lot of people later said they’d heard things. It was so shocking. It hurt. Physically. And it hurt that nobody had warned me.

And I had just gotten another magic crystal which is supposed to protect me and keep things like this from happening. So I was too nerve-racked, it was like in a movie. I signed for one and a half hours more I guess, pretending that it didn’t mean anything, and eventually it doesn’t. You have to live with it. It was like getting shot again, it wasn’t real. I was just the comedian there, pleasing the people. And it was so close to Halloween....

So, despite the wigginess of his wigs, he really was ashamed. I can see why Pressley might want to deal with her bad feelings about baldness by making people look right at it. Face your fears.

But, you may ask, is it political? I'd say:

1. If it makes you feel better to visualize the personal as political, go ahead.

2. If your politics include convincing other people that "political" is a big category, then whether it's political or not, your characterizing it as political is political.

3. Hairstyles really are political!