Neehar Sachdeva, a desi content creator based in the U.S. redefined a bride look for us, and she looked beautiful. We live in a society where the beauty standards for women are irrational & Neehar changed that gracefully by giving us this absolutely stunning bald bride look.
She collaborated with Brown Girl Magazine in the #TheBaldBrownBride campaign last year to normalise a bald look for brides. Neehar was diagnosed with alopecia (hair-loss condition) at the age of 6 months and had a rough journey battling with it. She was bullied in school for being different and had to wear a wig.
She spoke about her experience and thought behind this campaign:
#TheBaldBrownBride was something I had dreamed of for so long! I wanted to create this representation that I had never seen before, that of a bald South Asian bride. This campaign spoke to so many facets of South Asian beauty standards, a few of them being the desirability of long hair and the necessity of it to be “eligible”, in this case as a bride.
Neehar has had a journey and is now empowering every woman out there to be bold and beautiful. She would have never imagined this until one day she asked herself, “What does a bald South Asian bride look like?”
Essentially, boiling down to one’s beauty and worth to one thing: hair. And with my lack of, these were things that I felt my entire life and now, I am no longer phased by them. This freedom and empowerment are what gave birth to this concept, and everyone showed such an outpouring of love for it!
Her Instagram profile has been championing bald representation on social media for a few years now, and she has been educating people about alopecia and breaking beauty standards.
More power to her!