Heartless MIL’s Reaction to Woman’s Newly Shaven Head for Chemo Is Next-Level Cruel

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Needless to say, hair is a pretty important thing to most women. No matter if you cut it, dye it, wear it down, or throw it up into a pony, the way you wear your hair can completely change how you feel about yourself. It's also why losing hair from an illness can be devastating, with some women choosing to shave their heads instead of watching their hair slowly fall out in clumps over time. One would hope that any woman going through this would have a loving support system around her, but unfortunately that's not always the case. As one woman recently shared on Reddit, her mother-in-law actually laughed in her face when she saw her for the first time after losing her hair to chemo. (Yes, really!)

The anonymous mom has cancer, and she decided this week that it was time to make a change.

Reddit

Luckily, her cancer is still in its early stages, she explained in her Reddit post, but her chemotherapy treatments have caused hair loss. Tired of seeing her hair shed everywhere she went, she decided it was time to get buzzed.

"I decided to just shave it off and call it a day," she recalled. "It’s not so bad as I thought it would be, I kinda like this look actually."

She was even feeling pretty good about her new look -- until her mother-in-law came over for a visit.

"MIL came over, saw me without hair, and just burst into laughter," the woman wrote. 

Even worse, her MIL couldn't stop laughing.

"She was laughing aloud as if she just heard the funniest joke ever," the poster continued. "She was like 'Oh my God, you look as if God was drunk when he made a human! You look like a d–n shaved egg! You look like an inmate that has got out of prison after decades! Jesus, you look so silly!'”

To say her reaction was insensitive would be quite an understatement.

Her husband was away for the month on a work trip, so he wasn't there to see his mother's antics in person. The poster's 20-year-old son was home at the time, however, and quickly shut down his grandma.

"My son heard what MIL said and was like 'Shut your effin’ mouth before I do it for you,'" she recounted. "'Look at your own mug in the mirror,'" he told her, "[you look] like a scarecrow from the yard of a loony bin.'”

Yikes! (But at the same time, we're kind of proud of him!)

The mother-in-law shot back that the poster should expect to get some commentary about her new look.

"She said that I must be ready for comments like this, because people immediately will see I’m ill," the mom recalled.

And of course, her son didn't like that either.

"My son was like 'Well, be careful, don’t kick the bucket yourself,”" she wrote.

The problem is, she claims her MIL sort of believes that she's immune to getting sick herself.

Because the grandmother has no family history of cancer, she apparently believes there's no risk that she could get cancer herself. But as the poster pointed out, she also had no family history of cancer — and yet, here she is.

"This is a nasty trait of my MIL," the poster continued. "Whenever she sees someone with a disability or someone who because of a health condition visually looks different than others, or just someone who has a major illness, she often sneers and comments that this person must have done this or that to end up in that condition and it’s their own fault."

Naturally, the poster is well aware that this is far from the truth.

"Today you’re healthy and tomorrow you might not be able to get out of bed," she wrote. "MIL’s so sure she’s going to be fine at all times and that her health is the strongest of them all. It’s like diseases don’t exist to her, it’s something that happens to everyone else, but her."

That is probably why her MIL (once again) told her to wear a wig, so she wouldn't "look like an alien."

The woman explained that whether she wears a wig or not, it will be her choice — not her MIL's — and there was no way she was going to tolerate getting teased in her own house.

"MIL was like 'Jesus, stop being so dramatic. You know yourself, people laugh at bald women. How about you just wear a wig and calm down?'” she recalled.

But by that point, the woman's son had had enough, and kicked grandma out of the house entirely.

"I don’t really understand why was it necessary to comment anything about my hair," the woman later shared. "And if she absolutely had to, she could do so without being mean. I wish she appreciated being healthy, as that can change at any minute."

There was no doubt about it: Redditors thought the MIL was a real jerk.

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"What the ever living [expletive] is wrong with her!??" one commenter asked. "I think I would have spit on her holy [expletive]."

"Your MIL is a [expletive]," another person agreed. "Your son is good people. Well done you."

"I'm really struggling to understand why you would have such a disgraceful woman in your life," a third person wrote. "There is no possible justification for behavior like that, and she will only serve as a leech on your life at a time that you will be needing support."

If we're being honest, we'd have to agree. There is no reason to keep someone around who berates or teases you — full stop. And on the flip-side, we really can't justify teasing someone going through chemotherapy, even if you think it's not mean-spirited. It looks like this MIL needs to learn a lesson in empathy — STAT.