POWER CUTS
Within two weeks of finding out I was pregnant with Maggy I had shaved my head.
I did it for logistical reasons, though the more I delved deeper into the symbolism behind shaving one’s head the more I felt it had been fated all along.
It would be the morning we conceived him I calculated, unbelievably that I would finally get the bright blond pixie cut at 33, I had wanted since Sienna Miller played Edie Sedgwick in the movie Factory Girl when I was 20.
It took 13 years to build up the courage — to be able to cast off the shackles of the conditioning growing out puffy boob buds during the American Pie era where misogamy was interwoven effortlessly through pop culture and beauty standards fit into a simple manila folder: big tits and long hair.
I was convinced that if I cut my long hair, I would not be desirable. And yet still, I never stopped dreaming of that short hair cut.
At 33 I took the leap and booked the most expensive, most pretentious hair dresser in the whole of the Byron Bay Shire.
I deliberately chose somewhere where everyone thought they were better than you and likely sipped ristrettos at the Roadhouse in their free time — and not my usual hair dresser who was a great conversationalist but smelt of Benson and Hedges cigs and did my foils at the Ocean Shores shopping mall at an unbeatable price.
I wanted to mitigate the risk of the Edie Sedgwick reference being missed, and looking instead like I was 55, divorced and liked my house Chardonnay with ice cubes in it. (Although this hair would certainly come, many times over, in the years after).
There was a deer head with antlers on the wall, vegan of course. And the salon smelt of orange peel, cedarwood and fair trade bergamont thanks to the diffuser blowing mist in the corner. My hair dresser was so good looking I could barely look at him — his thick sterling silver jewellery jangled with every snip into my mane, and subsequent vulnerability.
Little did I know that inside me right as I was stripped of my hair, Maggy had just begun, stardust was colliding.
This hair style that I had hyperfixated over for more than a decade, which cost me almost a week’s wage, lasted barely 14 days before I took my partner’s beard shaver to it.
I felt Maggy implant like fireworks into my womb a few days into my pixie cut. I knew he was there more than I’ve known anything before, and I confirmed it with 3 pee tests. My next thought was that I did not want to continue to bleach my new and completely unforgiving do every few weeks throughout my pregnancy. But I also didn’t want to not bleach it and look like Justin Timberlake as it grew out.
I decided to cut my losses and just shave the thing off. Hilariously the shave is still my most favourite hair ever. It was rebellion, surrender, mourning, grief, it was renewal, it was making way for wild rampant new growth. It was giving 0 fucks at last and rocking up to the golden gates of motherhood looking like ghandi.
This winter, I gave the garden the same.
“The shave is still my most favourite hair ever. It was giving 0 fucks at last and rocking up to the golden gates of motherhood looking like Ghandi. This winter, I gave the garden the same.”
Mostly, it was needed thanks to the cyclone and months of wet - a heavy prune to take stress off the perennials so that they’d pull through and come back prolifically in spring. But I also just felt completely drawn, like insatiably so to strip everything right back. A 3 blade for the garden.
This garden is not just where I grow all the hero fruit for Crack Fox It’s where my inspiration comes from. It’s my canvas, where the recipes first find me, the marketing ideas, the slogans and copywriting — it’s where I feel deeply creative, at peace and connected, in ever growing knowledge and in deep awe of the natural world on which this sauce is juiced straight from.
Cutting everything right back to the earth’s scalp has been drastic, but I felt I needed it be able to block all out the noise, and get clear on my vision again.
Cos in this economy which has done a back flip since starting this business as a 33 year old pregnant skinhead 5 years ago — and in this ever changing world, it’s not just about a product simply being good, or delicious anymore.
To be successful in business in 2025 its about algorithms, views, and somehow without a PHD in neuroscience, cleverly and covertly overcoming the deep financial overwhelm everyone as a collective is experiencing at present — and convincing the customer to ditch their budget and recklessly splurge on your product instead.
Staying true to one’s vision throughout this — one’s morals and ethics and our duty of care to the customer despite it all at present is an absolute rubix cube. This year and it’s only half way, without a doubt has been the toughest in this business yet — and I did 2 years of Crack Fox with a baby who didn’t sleep, without family around, and with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.
Perhaps I just needed to drop into that bold shaved head energy without shaving my own head.
(It’s taken me 5 years and many 55 year old divorcee with ice in her Chardonnay looks (including a brief stint with extensions) to get to hair that is at my shoulders again: like heck I’m touchin it.)
As someone who is overly sentimental about everything I own and do, and despite my greatest neurosis of forever and nonsensically trying to know what’s to come — these bold displays of throwing everything to the wind really are the antithesis to everything I am.
It’s had me thinking these last few weeks why. Why I do this so flippantly every so often right immediately after clinging onto things for dear life?
I like to think it’s confirmation that I am not just my anxiety. That underneath it all there is indeed a wildly optimistic glass half full gal who can and does win — and has a penchant for tossing the bumper lanes out the window to really fuck with the anxious other 96% of me.
To prove that no matter how hard/ scary/ unknown things are they will work out as they are meant to with or without worrying — so just chill Idiot and enjoy the ride.
(If things don’t work out at least I’ve got enough passionfruit from the arbours I’ve just scalped to make a year’s worth of kombucha.) X
