Tiffany Haddish gave herself the big chop during a series of Instagram Lives, and she shared an empowering message along the way.

The big chop is the part in a person’s natural hair journey, in which they cut most of it off – taking away any relaxer, hair dye or chemical perm – so that the hair left is completely natural.

Showing a pair of hair scissors to the camera, Haddish tells her viewers: “Today is the day”. She then proceeds to cut her locs right to the root, laughing and joking through the entire haircut while her family and friends react in the background off-camera.

“I’ve been talking about it for years,” she says. “Everybody been trying to block it.”

Once she’s done cutting her hair to a short length, Haddish tells her fans: “Oh my god it feels so good to comb it”.

If there’s one thing that’s clear throughout the video it’s how happy Haddish feels with every snip of the scissors. Sadly, though, fans began questioning her reasons behind the hair transformation and even began discussing Haddish’s mental health.

Just last week, the USA celebrated its first ever National Crown Day, a national holiday that celebrates the banning of race-based hair discrimination in some US states, as well as a signal of solidarity with black people and the right to wear their natural hair without fear of discrimination.

So why are people still pushing the narrative that chopping off your hair is a sign of something wrong? Particularly when something like the big chop is a common part of the natural hair journey and a chance for a woman to feel confident about her natural hair.

Shortly after, the Girls Trip star decided to film a second Instagram Live, in which she addressed all of the comments about her new hair.

“Why when a woman decides ‘hey, I’m gonna cut this hair off because I wanna see my scalp’, she gotta have a mental problem?” she asks her fans. “Nothing is wrong with my brain, guys. I’m not suffering from no emotional shit, nothing.”

She adds: “I’ve literally been talking about this for years – how I wanna see my scalp. I know every single part of my body. I know where every mole is. Anybody that knows me knows I’ve been talking about this a long time.

“I want to see my moles because I have – I’ve been counting – I have almost 100 moles all over my body. But how many do I have on my scalp?”

She added that her neck and shoulders now feel so much more relaxed: “My neck don’t hurt. You know how heavy those locs was?! That’s a lot of neck work.”

Haddish goes on to describe how liberating it felt to have a shower without having to worry about getting her hair wet. She also expressed excitement about being able to run and exercise without any worries, as well as the amount of time she would save not having to do her hair everyday.

“As a black woman, that’s a good hour to two/three hours on your hair everyday,” she explains. “It is a lot of work. So, I’m taking time off. I’m going to use that same energy that I would have been putting into my hair into my mind.”

A few hours later, Haddish returned to Instagram Live to show her friend Precious evening out her hair with a pair of clippers and transforming the hairstyle into a buzzcut.

Throughout the video, Haddish’s excitement heightens even more, telling her fans, “just imagine how much time I’m gonna save”.

“They think I’m crazy for cutting it off but if I was a man then I’d be cool though. I wouldn’t be crazy.”

And it’s true. There is a ridiculous deep-rooted belief that if a woman decided to get a buzzcut or go bald it is a signal of poor mental health. But celebrating the beauty of a buzzcut or being bald is long overdue.

One platform working to create change is Girls Will Be Boys, which launched an Instagram series series titled Buzzcuts in April. The videos feature different people from around the world who share their story of shaving their head.

The first episode in the series began with Girls Will Be Boys founder and public speaker Char Ellesse, who talks about her experience with shaving her own head.

In the video, she says, “I wanted to be enough without hair. I did have an attachment to the weaves and wigs that I wore, so I wanted to be enough, I chose myself, and I haven’t looked back since.”

You can watch the full episode with Ellesse below.

Main image: Getty