A rather hideous little article popped-up on my Facebook wall today. I’ve put it at the bottom of this blog post, but I’m going to quote heavily and give you the gist in the hopes that you won’t click on it and generate ad-venue…
The article describes how girls with short hair are obviously ‘damaged’ and remarks on all the ways in which it is much better for a woman to keep her hair long because she’s then far more likely to appear ‘bangable’ to strong, virile, hetrosexual dicks.
I’ve chosen to place special emphasis on sexual orientation because the writer of the post expresses a desire throughout his work to be known as such, and God forbid I take away any shred of his perceived dignified status as a hetro-male.
I mean, can you imagine a blog post in which one person chooses to treat another one or group as less than human?
Oh yeah. Wait.
Here’s the introduction for you:
No woman in all of human history has ever looked better with short hair than she would with a head full of healthy locks. Despite this irrefutable fact, American women are “chopping it off” in greater numbers every day. This rears its ugly head in an array of ugly permutations, from the boy-like pixie cut to bizarre semi-shaved head topographies. The rationalizations—whether it’s donating their hair to sick kids or the summer weather—are immaterial. The effect, and true reasons, are the same.
Every single day, when I log into facebook or tumblr or twitter or youtube I see a fair amount of similar body-shaming, tritely-written bullshit. I briefly flick through it, despair at the state of the world, and then look at pictures of baby pandas until I remember that not everyone’s an arsehole and I feel ready to talk to people again, but every now and then one makes me stop and really read and even baby pandas couldn’t save me this time…
Body-shaming – i.e. negatively commenting on any part of another person’s body or even your own – is never okay. It is both a cause and effect of the epidemic that is our twisted relationship with society’s prescribed beauty standards. And whilst I am not naive and I understand that these sorts of articles are often written just get people talking and passing them along to generate ad-revenue, that doesn’t obliterate the fact that they are damaging, demeaning and reflective of a much larger and more dangerous mentality.
The thing that really made me read-on instead of just rolling my eyes and closing the tab was the introduction (above) and the part where it claims that there are true reasons as to why girls and women cut their hair short.
‘True’ Reason One:
Because women are jaded and ‘damaged’, usually after a man breaks up with them.
Not only is short-hair unattractive, it’s one of the biggest signals a man can get that a woman is damaged beyond repair.
This fact is highlighted by a supposedly real-life conversation the writer had with a short-haired girl once in which she apparently said she cut her hair off after a break-up because she wanted to be left alone for a while. (The writer of the article, despite clearly interpreting this ‘keep away’ sign, decided to initiate conversation instead.)
The article uses the word ‘damaged’ as a synonym for ‘mentally unwell’, which besides being outrageously ableist, promotes the idea that a women without a man is somehow incomplete and by removing her hair she is choosing to hold-up a big, red ‘keep away’ flag.
At certain points in our lives – like bad break-ups, for example – it is perfectly natural to feel a little lost and out of control and sometimes we need to regain a sense of that control by making a change and often these are bodily-changes because that is the one thing that is ours to control; people join gyms, start diets, get a new hair style, buy new clothes etc. at times when they want to make a change. This is not the only reason to do these things, but it’s an entirely valid and good thing to do and shouldn’t be mocked or seen as the behavior of someone who is ‘damaged’.
‘True’ Reason Two:
Because women want to conform, in fact, they want nothing more than to blindly jump-off the bangable bridge with everyone else because the teeny, tiny female brain is incapable of unique thought.
While men—to paraphrase an astute manosphere commentator—seek to stand out from the crowd, women’s aim to stand out in the crowd. Just like women don’t go to the bathroom alone, they don’t go into a style alone. The plaudits a Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, or Anne Hathaway receive when they cut their hair off—from people who have no business commenting on the attractiveness of women, like gay men—creates a copycat cycle that increases the trend geometrically.
This was one of those moments when you read something and are genuinely left speechless. I honestly don’t know where to start.
Firstly, anything you choose to do to your body is an act of self-expression; whether you’ve taken the idea from a celebrity or have a dream in which God tells you to get a Mohawk. You are choosing to do or not to do something with your body – that’s what self-expression is.
Of course, I look back on my first full-fringed bob from 1999 and cringe, but that’s the 90’s for you. I was seven, and at the time I loved it almost as much as I loved double-denim outfits.
The writer suggests gay men have ‘no business commenting on the attractiveness of women’… Which is true.
Gay men don’t have the right to tell women what’s attractive. Neither do trans* people. Neither do other women. Neither does the writer of this article.
Complimenting someone in the right situation (i.e. you know them or are in a social situation in which your comments are going to be welcomed) is fine. Commenting on how anyone looks in an inappropriate way – i.e. negative comments or unwanted compliments or cat-calls – is an act of body-shaming and makes you a bit of a creep.
‘True’ Reason Three:
This is perhaps my favourite reason of them all:
Short hair is a political statement. And, invariably, a girl who has gone through with a short cut—and is pleased with the changes in her reception—is damaged in some significant way. Short hair is a near-guarantee that a girl will be more abrasive, more masculine, and more deranged.
Despite the idea above that short hair is just a sign that women are copy-cat conformists, short hair is also apparently a political act of rebellion in women who don’t want to conform to the desired beauty standards of our society. An act of rebellion they choose to participate in due to (-wait for it-) men!
We just can’t fucking win. Whatever we do, we apparently do it for or because of men.
It’s almost impressive to see such a short and badly-written article manage to tick the boxes for being sexist, ableist and homophobic all at once.
The cowardly and deluded among us perpetuate the myth that “some girls can pull it off.” Pulling something off, I often respond, is the equivalent of “passing” a class. Just because you have enough left-over attractiveness to remain bangable after cutting off your hair doesn’t mean you wouldn’t look better with it back on.
What a shame the choices I make about my body reduce other peoples’ perceptions of my fuckability.
Oh look, here I go, getting the fuck on with my life…
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tl;dr:
What I do with my body, I do without your dick in mind.
So how about you keep your dick away from hair?
Alice.
Read it here if you really want to:
(Trigger warning: some of the comments are particularly nasty, so please be aware)
http://www.returnofkings.com/26763/girls-with-short-hair-are-damaged
The Selfie Revolution 