Kit Barrus was 18, working a full-time job at a law firm and living with her parents, when she decided the easiest way to stop men from talking to her at church was to shave her hair off.
Kit Barrus grew up in a Mormon family where marriage and motherhood were among the primary goals for young women. Because she wanted to keep living with her parents, they made one condition: she had to attend church.
They wanted her to become a member of a Young Single Adult ward, a special ward of the church for unmarried young people where everyone was trying to find a future spouse. Kit Barrus did not want to marry a Mormon.
“I was 18 years old and working a full-time job at a law firm,” Barrus said. “My parents said that if I wanted to stay in our house, I had to go to church. They wanted me in the single adults ward, which was basically for singles around 18 to 24 who wanted to get married.”
Barrus had no desire to find herself a Mormon husband. Every Sunday, she sat near the back, trying to satisfy her parents’ demands without attracting extra attention. But it did not help.
“I sat in the back pew just to tick this box for my parents, and every Sunday a different guy sat next to me and tried to chat,” she said.
A couple of weeks later, she told her coworker sitting at her desk that she was tired of that. “I just want to buzz my hair off, and then they won’t talk to me anymore,” she said.
Her coworker encouraged her.
“She said, ‘Do it. Do it now.’ So on my lunch break I drove to Supercuts and said, ‘Just give me a buzz cut.’ I didn’t even know how to order one,” Barrus said.
Barrus had long hair, and the stylist checked a couple of times to make sure.
“I said, ‘I don’t know. Just get it all gone.’ The stylist asked, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.'”
The reaction at home was not friendly.
“My dad freaked out and took my car keys,” Barrus said. “He said, ‘You’re not a boy. Stop acting like one.'”
In church, her haircut did what she wanted.
“And then nobody sat next to me at church,” Barrus said. “It was great.”
Barrus insisted her actions stemmed from a desire to stop unwanted attention.
“I never wanted to talk to boys in the church,” she said. “I never dated a boy from the church.”
It was not because she found those men unappealing, but because she disagreed with some strict views on gender, marriage, and family life. She remembered overhearing two young men talking about their plans to support their families and how they would feel if their future wives were more educated or earned more money.
“They were quiet,” she said. “They were like, ‘Well, she’ll still stay home with them.’ And I thought, ‘Is that what’s best for your family?'”
“Your job as a man isn’t to make all the money,” Barrus said. “Your job is to create a safe, nurturing home where your family can be their best.”
Barrus described Young Single Adult socializing as similar to organized dating, with cooking nights, movie nights, and other group events.
“It’s like speed dating,” she said.
“These activities feel a bit like dates, but they’re big group events,” Barrus said. “Mormons like group dates because then you can’t, you know, hook up.”
“The goal is to come, socialize, and find your person,” she said.
Conversations between potential couples often focused on faith, Barrus said.
“It was like, ‘Do you love God?'” Barrus said. “You try to see if your spirituality matches, then you can figure out the rest.”
Barrus admitted she didn’t want to participate.
“I was really abrasive when I was young because I’d grown up with this and dealt with it for so long,” she said. “Guys would come up to me, and I would tell them to back off. I would raise my hand and say, ‘Get away from me.'”
“I have to be here to live in my parents’ house, but I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.
The pressure to pair off began much earlier, Barrus said. She recalled church dances where boys and girls could dance with some distance between them. Although she looked like other girls, she said that she was rarely asked to dance.
“It wasn’t because I had short hair, because I didn’t,” Barrus said. “It was because I had these ideas and drive.”
Many young Mormon women she knew were successful and worked hard, Barrus said, but she felt that they were told to show less of that.
“They’re really successful, but they downplay it,” she said. “It makes them more acceptable, I think.”
Barrus also described the sense of urgency about marriage. Young men usually went on church missions around 18, and young women could go later, which led teenage girls to date slightly older men who had just returned home from the mission.
“So girls will be 18 dating guys who are 21 who just got back from their mission, and then the guys want to marry quickly,” Barrus said. “As soon as you marry, you’re aiming for kids.”
Barrus attended the Young Single Adult ward for about a year to a year and a half before she stopped attending the services.
Barrus, who later built a career around monetizing male attention, said her views on relationships didn’t change much. She does not mind whether her partner earns more or less than her.
“I don’t necessarily want a rich partner,” Barrus said. “But I want a man who works hard at what he does, has hobbies, and interests.”
“I don’t want a man who’s just after a meal ticket,” she said.
She has no regrets about the buzz cut. At 18, with many people wanting to marry her, she knew what she didn’t want: a husband or pressure to be more appealing. She wanted the man in the next pew to leave her alone.
So she shaved her head, and it worked.
