Lupita Nyong’o Debuts Dramatic New Look: “Happy Without Hair”

We’ve already seen some impressive hairstyle trends this year. From threaded micro braids to the modern perm, there’s lots on our beauty mooodbards. And now Lupita Nyong’o is making a case for rocking a bald look.

Taking to Instagram on 10 May, the “Black Panther” star shared that she’s just as content with hair as she is without. “Happy without hair!” she captioned her stunning selfie, which saw the 40-year-old actor posing with a gold and black smokey eye, which she completed with a swipe of peach metallic lipstick. “(Application for the Dora Milaje submitted!),” she quipped, referring to the group of all-women warriors in Wakanda, the fictional country in which the Black Panther franchise is set.

She joins a slew of other celebrities taking the plunge and shaving their head, including Florence Pugh, who recently debuted a buzz cut at the 2023 Met Gala, as well as Shawn Mendes and Maisie Williams, who have both opted for close-shave looks.

While Nyong’o is embracing her dramatic new appearance, it’s not the first time she has shaved her head completely, revealing that she had previously found it “so scary but so liberating” all at the same time. “I remember doing crazy things, like sleeping with my head above the headboard so that my curls wouldn’t get messed up for the next day. I’d have these terrible neck aches because I was determined to keep my hair as pristine as possible,” she told Allure in 2018 of the lengths she went to in her teenage years. “My dad joked, ‘Why don’t you just cut it all off?’ And a few months later, I thought to myself, Why don’t I? I went into the hair salon, and I said, ‘Let’s cut it off.’ It was almost a dare to myself: Can I live without hair? He shaved it right off.”

Despite the actor debuting some truly stunning hairstyles in the past, including her recent buzzcut and the gorgeous “hair chandelier” hairstyle at the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” premiere, her shaved head might be our favourite look yet.