It was the bald head that grew to become the avatar of 1,000,000 dreamy rebellions; the shaved pate that bridged the hole between the indignant and the elegant. It’s virtually unattainable to consider Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer whose loss of life was reported on July 26, or her work, with out desirous about her hair. Or lack of it.

With out desirous about the putting curve of her shorn cranium on the quilt of her 1987 debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra,” her face under caught mid-scream; the nakedness it appeared to convey within the 1990 video of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” as her blue eyes brimmed with tears; the purity of the road on the quilt of her 2021 memoir, “Rememberings.” Which comprises a whole chapter entitled “Shaving My Head.”

It was successfully her signature — in a 2014 story in Billboard Ms. O’Connor, 56 when she died, recognized herself as “the bald girl from Eire” — alongside along with her Dr. Martens and torn denims, and it adopted her all through her life, simply as a lot as her ripping up the photograph of the Pope on “Saturday Night time Reside” in 1992 did. Even within the few intervals when she grew her hair again, she was usually referred to because the “previously bald” Sinead O’Connor. And as such, she was an integral a part of the renegotiation of previous stereotypes of gender, sexuality, revolt and liberation that’s nonetheless happening at present.

“I simply don’t really feel like me when I’ve hair,” she instructed The New York Instances in 2021.

Now that feminine baldness has turn into extra frequent, has turn into a badge of id for ladies corresponding to Ayanna Pressley, the consultant from Massachusetts who went public along with her alopecia in 2020, and X González, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty scholar (then generally known as Emma) who grew to become a campaigner for gun management, to not point out the Dora Milaje of “Black Panther,” it may be laborious to recollect how extraordinary it was when Ms. O’Connor emerged.

However that seeming repudiation of her personal porcelain magnificence within the wake of a spate of juvenile pop queens, at a time when armoring your self in a helmet of massive hair was a giant factor and shaving your head was nonetheless largely seen as a punishment, was as a lot of an announcement of singularity as her sound.

Maybe, it was additionally the primary signal of the controversial politics to come back, together with refusing to play the nationwide anthem earlier than her concert events and stenciling the brand of Public Enemy into the facet of her head on the 1989 Grammys when the present’s organizers declined to televise the first-ever award for Finest Rap Efficiency.

She supplied varied explanations of the selection. All of the tales come right down to the identical factor in any case, which was a refusal to cater to conventional definitions of “fairly” as established by the male gaze as way back as Rapunzel and Girl Godiva.

In shearing her head “she was actually shearing away a false narrative,” stated Allyson McCabe, the creator of “Why Sinead O’Connor Issues.”

In 1991 Ms. O’Connor instructed Spin, “shaving my head to me was by no means a aware factor. I used to be by no means making an announcement. I simply was bored sooner or later and I wished to shave my head, and that was actually all there was to it.” Nevertheless, she additionally stated, “The ladies who’re admired are those which have blond hair and massive lips and put on pink lipstick and put on quick skirts, as a result of that’s a suitable picture of a girl.” And, “As a result of I’ve no hair, folks assume I’m indignant.”

In a 2017 TV interview she instructed Dr. Phil that it was as a result of throughout her abusive childhood her mom had in contrast her along with her sister, who had lengthy pink hair, not like Sinead. “Once I had lengthy hair, she would introduce us as her fairly daughter and her ugly daughter,” Ms. O’Connor stated within the interview. “And that’s why I reduce my hair off. I didn’t need to be fairly.”

Within the interview she additionally stated, “It’s harmful to be fairly, too, as a result of I stored getting raped and molested all over the place I went,” and “I didn’t need to gown like a lady. I didn’t need to be fairly.”

In her memoir, she wrote that she was engaged on her first album in London, and had been instructed by a male music government she ought to develop her (buzzed however not shorn) hair lengthy and begin to gown extra like a lady. The following day she went to a barbershop and had all of it shaved off.

Throughout the interval after the “S.N.L.” look, when she was rejected by the music trade and revealed she had been identified as bipolar, Ms. O’Connor’s bald head was taken as an indication of instability (simply because it was later with Britney Spears). The truth that she continued shaving her cranium for the remainder of her life instructed it was, reasonably, an indication of selfhood.

The primary time she regarded within the mirror after that go to to the barbershop, she wrote within the ebook, “I regarded like an alien.” One other strategy to put it, nevertheless, is she regarded like the lady she grew to become. And in turning into that girl — in giving herself that permission — she helped prolong it to us all.