Fighting fashion's long-hair fascism
The age-old question: Where does a model’s beauty lie? Her flawless, symmetrical face? Her body which is in perfect proportion to her drop-dead-gorgeous features? Her long flowing locks that drove the girl next door to shave all her own hair off? Ah – hair! It is no lie that longhaired women are seen as being more dominant, beautiful, young, healthy, with having a high fertility potential, more feminine, sexy, a symbol of obedience, peace, harmonious, empathetic, passive - - -
Stop.
Why is every platform that people now rely on so heavily, pinning each beauty standard on little dead proteins? How can hair make someone any of those things? For all that the “man-o-sphere” bangs on about evolutionary psychology and the effect of such attributes such as long, luscious locks meaning a natural sign of “fertility”, what’s really noticeable is that to get hair of any length to look like it does in catalogues and on catwalks takes unrealistic amounts of money. Is that what it means to be more feminine?
Before I get ahead of myself, let me explain. I recently got lost in the internet when searching for some anodyne haircuts but somehow, I landed on some rather controversial articles. Instead of slowly killing individual brain cells by forcing you to read every old, bald man’s tedious attitudes on global beauty ‘principles’, I shall sum up what I read for you:
“Long hair is almost universally attractive to men, when they’re actually speaking honestly… Women instinctively know this, which is why every girl who cuts, and keeps, her hair short often does it for ulterior reasons: 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.”
We need to face this bizarre reality. Long hair is a societally structured form of sexual dimorphism, or a trait that differentiates between the sexes, that is all.
Since Biblical times and before, women have been more pressured to have long hair, and males have historically been the only ones to have short hair - presumably because it was more practical for doing 'man jobs'. Times are changing and the realization of oppression is becoming more apparent in today’s society. We need to get rid of these archaic ideas telling us what it means to be masculine or feminine. If you don’t like girls having short hair, don’t date them or associate yourself with them. Girls with short hair aren’t hurting anyone or anything, so let them have their hair short if that’s what they want. Our ideas on hair length come from these ideas about gender norms, so to fix this problem about girls’ hair length we need get rid of gender norms and let people express themselves in the way they see fit.
“The idea of women having long hair is a tradition — it's got a lot of history behind it”
“It makes a woman look more self-determined”
“Women with long hair are very tender and feminine”
Who says? Male’s hair length has been a sign of wealth and power, sometimes long hair being a sign of wealth and sometimes short hair being a sign of wealth! There has been much of research on human beauty as this topic really is enthralling when it comes to dividing people. There is enough conflicting evidence presented worldwide, that the only firm conclusion we can draw is that there is no conclusion yet, proving that this social construct should be non-existent.
We need to stop overreacting when people do things outside of the gender norm like girls cutting their hair short. Sometimes she cuts her hair for symbolic or political reasons. Sometimes she has no ulterior motive and cuts her hair just because she wants to, or because long hair is annoying in hot weather and a pain to wash and brush every day. Regardless of the reason why she cuts her hair, the most difficult thing about a girl cutting her hair short should be getting used to squeezing less shampoo out of the bottle, not having to deal with all the rubbish we’re put through when we cut our hair.
Clothes are just cloth, there is no femininity or masculinity in cloth; colour is just wavelengths interacting with a visual perception system, there is no femininity or masculinity in wavelengths. Jobs are just duties we regularly do, there is no femininity or masculinity in duties. Hair is little dead proteins that form to protect our skin from the cold, the sun, injuries, there is no femininity or masculinity in little dead proteins.
Cal Carvey, Y10