Dan sounds like he'd be annoying as shit for long periods of time. My hair is pretty much perpetually shaved. It's awesome. You didn't talk about the first time you ran down a hallway and felt the wind breeze over your aerodynamic-ass head! Also, you don't use nearly as much shampoo, and (at least for me) no conditioner at all. But whenever I start a new class and my hair happens to be grown out and curly, and then I get it shaved, I always have the same "YOUR HAIR IS ALL GONE (!?!?)" conversation with people in that class. Kinda like when I decide to wear my contacts/glasses for the first time around people. It's not weird to me that people are attached to hair and glasses and stuff - boys and girls - I get it, but it's just never been very important to me. I've told three different girls that I bet they could pull off short hair super well. Two shuddered and recoiled in horror. The other was my sister, who was interested, but too scared to try it - her hair goes past her waist when she straightens in, and reaches the length of her back when it's curly.
I did not get along well with Dan over time. Yeah, I definitely used less shampoo. I also was lazy and (don't be disgusted) would take "rain showers." AKA if I went out in the rain with a bare head I was like "OK, don't need to wash my hair now!" I had very interesting reactions to shaving my head. It's definitely not accepted for a girl to do. I had a former high school teacher (who I'd been close with) reach out to me, get coffee with me, and tell me that seeing I'd shaved my head had alarmed him and he wanted to make sure I was okay. Later that year I went to visit the school and saw another teacher I'd had, with whom I'd also been close, and she reiterated how worried he was by my sudden hairlessness. Typically, I'd be first to call "sexism" or whatnot, but unfortunately, I wasn't in a sound mental state at the time and he was spot on. I remember talking to my parents about it some time afterwards and apparently it's not surprising for mentally unbalanced women, in particular, to shave their head. It can also be a grief reaction. Just look at Britney for a modern/current example of the shaved head/mental disturbance thing, I guess. However that's backed up in the ideas of the society my parents were raised in, idk about actual psychological facts there. I also did find I was thought to be gay a lot more, but then again I also had a girlfriend so there was like half one, half the other. I DID try to grow out a mohwak. My job finally came up to me when it was about an inch long and told me I needed to "stop with that business." Over the summer as it was growing out I bleached it and dyed it blue. Another thing I'd always said I wanted to do with my hair. I prefer my hair longer but I also think haircuts are horrendously expensive and I'm not paying $50 every 2 months to maintain a shorter cut. I like to get it cut every once in a while (last time was about 1.5 years ago) and then just let it grow-grow-grow from then on. I do admit when I cut it, it is usually still for some sort of reason, a desire to demonstrate change, a desire to move on, usually. The last time I cut it was when I cut out a boy I'd cared about deeply, and I needed to signal to myself that it was done, done, done.
Hair is the one aspect of our self-image that we can most easily influence. It has a lot of "youth" and "vitality" in its payload and hair grooming carries a lot of the conformity signals within society. That's one reason why the Abrahamic religions tend to have assorted taboos against cutting hair - it's a vanity cue and by leaving hair in its natural state (or protected from the world under a turban etc) one is showing austerity for God. With social baggage like that, the act of attacking one's hair is justifiably seen as a socially-deviant act, just like vandalizing empty buildings. Worthy of note - you didn't go to a salon and say "I'm thinking of going shaven; make me look good" you went to your Crowlian friends 'cuz they had clippers. Worthy of note - I had friends that would shave their heads before they opened for a big headliner. But they were in industrial bands. Not very good industrial bands. And in that crowd, walking around in a G-string with electrical tape over your nipples was considered normal, so the context needs to be considered.
It's even more interesting to examine what I did, 6 years ago, with the context of time and insight like this. It makes perfect sense that I would chop off my hair. That group of people was my 'core group' for a while. I really, really don't like them now. I did opt to go by my middle name after shaving my head and since joining the business world I reverted. That's about 4 years ago I guess. Anyway, now I sometimes wryly comment that I know if I like someone based on what they call me: if you call me by my middle name chances are good I want nothing to do with you, because you knew me then. Used to sometimes get drunk and tell boys it was what I went by. I'd catch myself at that and realize whoever I was talking to already didn't have a chance.