That’s curious considering that long hair can be sported by both men and women. My mother has had a very short bob since I was 14 and took it as my mission to piss off Dad and cut mine shoulder length. Papa didn’t speak to either of us for a few days.

It’s funny since apparently your soul female entity is hair, at least according to my work place. Never mind your reproductive areas, your opinions and features (see earlier above rant).

But of all of things that piss me off the most, it’s mandate to keep it “long, feminine, and flowy.” I’m one of those people with fine features who happen to look better in very short pixie cuts. I’ve gone from long to short on a number of occasions, and I’m always annoyed at the level of outrage cutting my hair seems to evoke in people. You would not believe the comments that almost total strangers seem to feel entitled to make about my hair. It’s as though it’s a personal affront to men for me to cut my hair. No matter that it makes me look actually better and brings out my eyes–no one is looking at any other part of me except my damn hair. I get mournful comments, like, “Ooohh. You CUT it. It was so beautiful.”, etc, etc. Some complete stranger made a rude comment to me in the drugstore a while back…I didn’t even know the guy, he was just pissed that I dare have short hair. And I have men walk straight up to me and tell me outright never to cut my hair. I don’t even know these people!! I don’t understand why men find short hair on women so emasculating.

Right now, because of pressure at work, (yes, at work, of all places, where the expectation is clearly that all of the females have long, swingy, girly hair), I have it down to my shoulders again. It’s a pain in the ass to take care of, and it does nothing for my face, but clearly no one’s really interested in what I actually look like, just that I have “the hair”.

@BeckySharper:
100% agreement about the bumpit. Did you know they come in different sizes? The worst is the mysteriously named “Hollywood Bumpit”, which hikes a girl’s hair so far off her scalp it looks like she has a football shoved in there.

I cut my hair into a short, pixie cut before my friend’s wedding (which I was the maid of honor in) and when it was my turn to have my hair “done” the day of the wedding, the hair dresser said “So you’re the one who cut her hair!” in this tsk tsk manner and went on to make me feel bad for making her job harder. Um, hello, I just made it easier for you, just pin the flower in and you’re done, no curling iron necessary!

(And for the record, it looked really cute in the pictures.)

Anyway, I’ve actually thought about this quite a lot recently. Why? For the first eighteen years of my life, I had the Exact. Same. Haircut— dark brown, wavy and to my shoulders. And for a while I thought I’d be quite content to have it that way for the rest of my life. But then this past October I finally got the impulse to get a change, and so I went pretty short (not quite a pixie cut, but almost there) and had lighter-brown highlights put in.

The thing is, the last thing I want to do is get stuck in another rut again with my haircut. I think I’ll have it this way for another year (by the way, do I have the only boyfriend on the planet who prefers girls with short hair? Yes, he is straight. ) but I’ve been toying with the idea of growing it out. When I was a little kid I was always jealous of the girls who had long, straight hair since at that age my hair was curly, short and totally unfeasible past my chin, and since I’ve never had long hair before, I think it would be an interesting experiment. The Boyfriend was a little surprised when I first told him of this, but as much as he likes me in my current state (and I do too, since I think it makes me look like Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab circa 1994), he doesn’t care so much about my hair as what’s underneath it. And it won’t be any kind of acquiescence to the patriarchy, believe me—I used to worry that I’d lose my eccentricity if I grew out my hair, but I can always be the Kate Bush/Lene Lovich variety of kook.

It used to be cute when I was five and my mother would braid it or give me nine ponytails because it was Number Nine day at school, but after I got older, she got annoyed at my whining when she brushed the tangles out, and my father warned me they’d cut it off if I whined again. I did, and voila… the hairdresser cut off my entire braid. My mother asked if she could donate it a few years back, and we did.

When I was in highschool, I used to have it cut pixie-style short, with one long lock on one side. I thought it was The Shit, until a girl threatened to get a teacher because she said I was a boy in the girlsroom. I could handle the ‘are you a boy or a girl’ question, but the idea of getting in trouble and having to explain myself to a teacher freaked the shit out of me.

These days, I just go to my hairdresser and say: I want it short and I want it to look good. I usually end up rocking some kind of bob, which looks very mature and sophisticated when styled by her, but just generally fun when I just wash and comb it.

Also this year, I have discovered the secret of Lush Soaps, and my hair has never been less greasy!

In fairness to men, I feel the same way about women who are always nagging them to wear different clothes, shave, not shave, get their backs waxed, etc. That’s not cool, either.

So a couple nights ago, this boy I’ve kinda been seeing (who’s already exhibited a few red flags..) said I should get bangs, like those thing ones that go to your eyebrows. Now admittedly, I’ve been thinking about doing this for about a year, but when he started being all “You should get bangs! Go do it!” it made me grimace. Because of that? I think I’m going to keep my center-parted bang-less long straight brown hair for now.

At least he didn’t say it would look more “feminine” – eesh..