'Nashville' star Clare Bowen chops off hair, encourages fans to look beyond appearances

Nashville star Clare Bowen has cut off her long, blonde hair to prove the point that your hair – or appearance, for that matter – doesn’t define a person.

In a lengthy Facebook post, Bowen detailed the reasons she decided to chop off her hair. She wrote about being inspired by a young girl who thought she couldn’t be a princess because she had short hair.

According to her post, Bowen, now 31, was diagnosed with nephroblastoma when she was just four years old and lost most of her hair.

She recalled being around other children who were "mostly bald, all tubed, taped, bandaged up and stitched back together."

The Australian actress continued on to write once she got healthy again, her hair grew back but she remained the same child on the inside.

“I am still the same stitched back together little creature, in a world where people are judged so harshly for the way they look,” she wrote. “It has always been completely incomprehensible to me. How can people think there's time for that?”

"Every scar tells a story, every bald head, every dark circle, every prosthetic limb, and every reflection in a mirror that you might not recognize anymore,” she wrote.

She  also encouraged fans to look beyond appearances.

"You are who you are in your bones. That is where you have the potential to shine the brightest from. It is where your true beautiful self lives."