“I Don’t Have to Fit Into Societal Beauty Standards” — Rashi Singh

One sultry afternoon in Kerala, far from home and expectation, Rashi Singh, 26, picked up a razor and let go of what remained of her hair. It was not a grand declaration, not at first. “I was like okay anyway I don't have much hair, I can also try it and let's see what harm can it do,” she says. There, in a place where no one knew her, it felt like a small step. It turned out to be something much bigger.A year earlier, Rashi had been living what she describes as a straightforward life. She had graduated from college in 2021, and moved to Bengaluru for work. Then, in 2022, things began to change. “So I started losing a lot of hair and I didn't pay much attention to it initially,” she recalls. It was her mother who first noticed the bald patches.

A doctor soon confirmed it was alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition that causes hair loss.“I had no clue that something like this exists and I’ve never seen anybody with alopecia before,” she says. The diagnosis brought not just uncertainty, but fear. “I was extremely scared what’s going to happen and will I lose all the hair or will it be patches.”

The loss was swift. Within a few months, Rashi had lost more than half her hair. “That period was very difficult,” she says. “Every day was a challenge.” She tried to conceal it with low buns, ponytails, scarves. Nothing worked. The mirror became an adversary. “Initially I was like this is not good, this is ugly. I myself felt like this is bad, I don't look good, I cannot show in front of people like this.”Eventually, she stopped trying to keep up appearances. She left her job and retreated indoors, limiting contact to a small circle of family. Wig shops offered little comfort. “Nothing was looking good. I was not happy with anything.” What she was confronting was not only hair loss, but the collapse of a familiar identity.The turning point, when it came, was unceremonious. During her Kerala trip she met a girl who had shaved her own head simply because she wanted to. Rashi followed through. Then, almost on impulse, she posted a photograph online. “I just took a selfie and I posted it on Instagram and just spoke about it,” she says. Though she was apprehensive but the reactions she received was something else entirely. “So many people… they were all appreciating my strength and they were all like you look so good in this.” The response unsettled her assumptions. “So I was thinking, what will people say about me, will they make fun of me, and all that story was just going on in my head. But what showed up on Instagram, how people reacted to it, really gave me a lot of strength.”

One cannot call the a courage built overnight but slowly. “First I only accepted it okay this is what it is now and it's not that bad,” she says. Acceptance, she realised, was not passive. It had to be practised, defended, and extended outward. When she first showed her mother her shaved head, the reaction was tears. “I had to console her… tell her okay it's fine.”From there, Rashi began to step back into the world, this time without concealment. “I never used a scarf later to cover my head,” she says. She noticed the stares, the discomfort. But she also noticed something else. “When I am comfortable with myself it’s fine… they also respond to my energy.”Travel followed, then visibility. Slowly, her baldness ceased to feel like a deficit and began to feel like a form of clarity. “I have felt really myself,” she says. “I don't have to fit into societal beauty standards.”That clarity would lead her somewhere unexpected. Rashi had long been drawn to modelling, but had never pursued it seriously. After her transformation, a friend suggested she apply for Femina Miss India. She did. “I thought like okay yes, this can be something changing for my career.”Backstage, among seasoned contestants and industry insiders, Singh encountered a different kind of reception. “Everybody appreciated my look and they were like are you already a model,” she says. She was not. Not yet.Though she did not advance to the final stages, the experience proved catalytic. Her story was featured, her images circulated, and soon, opportunities began to arrive through social media. “A lot of people with alopecia also text me and they appreciate that I am doing this,” she says.

For Rashi, this was perhaps the most important shift. “Initially, when I had alopecia, I was like, who do I look up to, there is nobody. I had never seen a bald girl just walking out normally and minding her own business. I might have seen a few people using wigs and covering it up, but nobody who could just walk confidently with a bald head.” Now, she found herself in that position for others. “I feel like there are so many people who are looking up to me. They can show their families that this is also an option, because families pressurise you a lot to cover it and not let people know about it. When you are living in that bubble, you don’t realise that there is a way out, that you can do things differently. You can just be yourself, you can shave your hair and keep it clean, and you don’t have to hide it all the time." She adds, “Now people message me. There is a schoolgirl who writes to me every now and then, saying, ‘Wow didi, you are doing so good, I’m really inspired, I also want to be like you.’ These things make me feel like, okay, that’s good.”Her entry into professional modelling followed a similar pattern of disruption. After signing with an agency, she was selected to walk at Lakmé Fashion Week. The designer duo Shantnu & Nikhil chose her specifically for her bald look. “They picked me out of like all these beautiful girls… especially because of my bald look,” she says.There is a certain symmetry in that moment. The very industry she once feared would reject her was now inviting her in, not despite her difference, but because of it. “The beauty industry itself… they were asking me for the way I am,” she reflects.Alongside modelling, Rashi continues to work as an architect in Bhopal, balancing creative disciplines that might seem disparate but, in her telling, share a common thread of self-expression.

Another pillar of her journey has been yoga, which she began after leaving her job. In Rishikesh, she undertook a teacher training course, initially motivated by a desire to heal physically. What she found instead was a different kind of restoration. “It helped me more mentally,” she says. “I was literally thanking my body for all the things that it's doing.” The practice, she explains, brought a sense of calm that gradually replaced the anxiety of her early months with alopecia. “I started stressing less and staying more happy,” she says. Today, she teaches occasional sessions, though her primary commitment remains her own practice.If there is a philosophy that underpins Rashi’s journey, it is one of agency. She speaks of a book that resonated deeply with her, Reinventing Yourself by Steven Chandler. “That book is about ownership and victim,” she says. The distinction, for her, is crucial. “You need to stop criticising your body… and start owning yourself.”This is not, she insists, an easy transformation. It is incremental, sometimes performative at first. “Initially, I was just showing up… pretending that I'm extremely confident,” she says. Over time, the performance dissolved into something more authentic. “It stopped feeling like I am pretending it started feeling like myself.”There is a pragmatic honesty in the way Rashi frames this evolution. Confidence, she suggests, is not always innate. It can be rehearsed, even borrowed, until it becomes real. “Fake it till you make it… and then confidence will follow you.”What began as a personal crisis has, in her case, unfolded into a public narrative. “I’m just being myself,” she says. Somewhere between loss and reinvention, between concealment and display, Rashi has found a way to stand in her own image without apology, and in the process has become someone others can look up to when they are searching for a way to be seen on their own terms.