Guest Post - Sharra From The Blahg

Last updated on 8 January 2025

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Today’s guest post is from Sharra, over at The Blahg. Sharra’s blog is all about nail polish and it’s always awesome to see what colour and sparkle-level she is posting about it. But today she’s not talking about her love of nail polish…she’s talking about…well…you’ll see!

Hello everyone! My name is Sharra and I’m from Canada (eh?) and I am so excited to take over Anjali’s amazing blog for the day! I have a little blog about nails and I am anything but anonymous on the internet so find me and say hi. Anyway, I think this is a great opportunity for me to plaster my face all over here, don’t you think? As such, I’m going to tell you all about the time I shaved my head.

Yeah, the whole thing! Not for nothing though: I participated in a program called “Balding for Dollars” to raise money for cancer research, treatment and auxiliary costs. In the process I donated a lot of my hair and made a spectacle of myself. It was enormously fun.

Here’s my hair beforehand. There was a lot of it, it was shedding all over the place, and a haircut would have cost me $40 I didn’t have. It had been in the back of my mind to donate it for a while but I knew to do that I would have to pare it down to a bob style (ugh) and if I then asked someone to cut it to a pixie or a boy haircut, they’d just impose whatever they wanted and not listen to me (I don’t trust hairstylists haha).

Anyway, my school (Simon Fraser University) has a group of students that plan this big fiasco every year to raise money for BC Children’s Hospital with Balding for Dollars, and about a month before the big day, I signed myself up and started my campaign. I set my goal to $300 at first, not realizing the generosity of my friends and family. I quickly had to change that (to $500), which they again exceeded until the big day…

I was super surprised too! The day arrived and I had a nice big fan club show up for me. There were performers, and my group was so big that the people trying to showcase their talents ended up being displaced to the sides xD

My best friend got the first snip! Tying it up this way gave everyone a chance. My dad took a piece off too!

This is where I realised that hair is really grody. Somehow this picture was snapped between me making grossed out faces at it D: I’m glad somebody else gets to enjoy it now.
My loving boyfriend got to take the razor to the rest of it! For about three weeks prior, I’d taken every opportunity I had to make him eat it so that when this day came he would be happy to see it all gone. ;P (I’m funny, right? Except I really did do that…)

In the end, I looked pretty good! There’s a really boring 8 minute video of the whole thing, but this is pretty much the best parts. Oh, and this:

Ta daaa! (1 week later)

Some things I was surprised at:

My self identity adjusted to a lack of hair really easily. What I mean by that is I didn’t miss my hair at all and I adjusted to rubbing my head rather than reaching for the ends to twirl really quickly.
I have really cool friends 😀
I have really bad dandruff D:
If you go to a barber shop to get your haircut, they’re still confused you’re there even though your hair is like three centimeters long.
People really expect you to have a back story for doing stuff like this. I mean, I guess I do have a back story (my mom died of leukemia when I was ten years old) and it’s a huge part of my identity, but it didn’t really have anything to do with me deciding to participate here. I mean, even she couldn’t get me to cut my hair if I didn’t want to when she was alive. That’s weird I guess, but… eh.

Some things I’m enjoying:

Attention! (hah!)
Short hair!
Small amounts of shampoo!
Not cleaning my drain every time I shower! (You know what I’m talking about!)
Telling people just how much my haircut cost ;D
Hats!
Coming out of the shower and looking like a super saiyan (Gohan <3!) xD
Calculating the rate of growth xD (4.2cm/116 days OR 0.362mm/day OR 362 microns per day)

Some things I’m not enjoying:

Rude people staring when I walk places. As in, I smile, no smiles back, just staring. K.
My neck was cold when it wasn’t summer.
Stereotyping.
How fast the back grows and how fluffy it is.

I had to think really hard for things I’m not enjoying, and I keep thinking of things to add that I’m enjoying so I’m just going to stop there. Now, just in case any of you were thinking of doing anything like this (and for this post to be somewhat useful)…

Some tips for fundraising:

Get EXCITED! Tell everybody. Remind them! Ask them to spread the word and advertise for you. Gush over everyone being awesome.
Utilize social media, all of it. Daily! I posted on Twitter, Facebook (by creating an event and inviting people to come watch on the day, and posting it in my status) and my own blog. I didn’t get many near-strangers donating, but some did spread the word for me and that was super cool. By this time most of you probably have instagram and tumblr, and those are excellent vessels for your cause. I also promised the video so people who couldn’t make it didn’t feel left out.
Thank everybody, individually, as it happens. That way, everyone knows how much you appreciate them and you’re not overwhelmed with a list of a million people to individually thank at the end.

I think that’s really all I did. If you’ve got a close community or neighbourhood, talk to them too. Bring it up in casual conversation (excitedly!) and lots of people get into it.

And now I’ve run out of things to say, can you believe that? Thank you, Anjali, for letting me take over today.

Thanks again <333

Such a great thing to do. My little sister is hoping to do something like this too, so these are great tips for fundraising! Thank you, Sharra, for this! Make sure you guys go and check out her blog.