Girls can have short hair too campaign

From about 9 or so many girls are larger, faster and stronger than many boys. It's a small window because obviously the boys catch up and overtake the girls, but a U10 or U12 girls team would probably do better w/o boys.

Taller, perhaps, but I'm not sure about faster or stronger. I'd want to see data on that. And such window as there is only lasts about 2 years - it's no basis for general sport policy.

That's fun. Shame she missed out the short cuts of the 80s and 90s, but not a bad overview.

I'm not sure what (if any) point I want to make, but these are my observations as a mother of a boy who has gone through the grassroots football ranks.

I take umbrage at the assumption that fielding a boy on a girls team gives that team an advantage. From about 9 or so many girls are larger, faster and stronger than many boys. It's a small window because obviously the boys catch up and overtake the girls, but a U10 or U12 girls team would probably do better w/o boys.

Many boys have long hair and have been mistaken for girls. I've watched games where a slight, long-haired boy has been mistaken for a girl and the lads have sometimes avoided being as physical. I'm talking once they get to 14 or 15 when some of the boys can be man sized.

I get a dry cut every four weeks...to maintain my hair in its short style. It costs £26. The only time I get it washed and blow dried is when I occasionally have highlights put in.

How did we go backwards so fast? Actually I know the answer to my own question - TRAs and those that support their regressive stereotypes and teach them in school.

Sorry, I don't mean to derail this with a discussion of hairdressing economics (!) but you'd think at a time when salons are facing Cost of Living pressures, stylists would be encouraging clients towards shorter cuts that need more frequent trims. Unless the cost of treatments, etc, for longer hair balances it out... although most people I know buy hair products from Boots, etc.

We need to bring back short hair for girls... no political / gender motivation here... I'm just fucking sick of nits.

I had though they'd been a shift back to normalcy.

When DD1 was at secondary all the girls had long hair - then older teens who cut short were apparently signalling they were lesbians.

DD2 younger by 4 years - they do have more range of hair styles - not all super long many above shoulders now thought haven't seen any really short ones.

It is depressing.

I did enjoy this - hairstyles though time on one woman.

Yes, I understand very well that styling is a skill which is why i mentioned my stylist's instinct and talent.......but surely a really excellent stylist should be able to style at all lengths? She can.....but the others seem scared of short hair or certainly lack confidence with it.

It's hardly crazy. Hairdressing is a skill and hairdressers/barbers specialise in certain cuts and treatments just like people in any profession specialise in certain areas.

Clearly one main root of this problem is the possibility that there might actually be boys in the girls teams. Another is the increasing prevalent cultural expectation that girls should look “girly”.

Just wanted to say I think this is a great campaign. It’s so obvious and shouldn’t need pointing out, but clearly it does. And yes, campaigning against boys being allowed to play on girls teams is also v important but it’s fine to let them have this focus here, rather than saying “they should campaign for x instead”. Seems like they are entirely talking about girls playing, who have short hair.

I've now found a fabulous stylist who is really instinctive and talented and she cuts and styles short hair really well.....but the other stylists in her salon only do long hair styles and treatments. Crazy!

On the subject of advertising...we took our granddaughter into the A&E of the local children's hospital once and there was a TV in the waiting room. Rather than have it on CBBC or Cbeebies, they had a channel on which was non -stop advertising and crappy american shows.

Japanese players do not seem to have been subjected to the same cultural pressures to grow their hair long, and most of the players you name are Japanese. I think 'one per squad' is optimistic, I just had a quick look online and hardly saw any - cf the Lionnesses, all have the scraped-back-into-a-ponytail style.
Lina Hurtig - what an icon, I wish I could have her hairdresser's number

The gymnastics retrospective was interesting sashh, but when I see female gymnasts, most of them very young, the main things that stands out is the awful style of their leotards - fully covered arms, but just a scrap of fabric at the crotch - a magnet for photographers catching women gymnasts in certain predictable positions, which then get plastered all over the internet..😠

Sorry, I derailed from short hair!
I have had to find a barber willing to cut my short hair, ladies' hairdressers
[a] won't cut it as I wish and [b] charge three times as much as the barber to not cut my hair as I wish.

I believe you can buy intensive hair treatments which keep it smooth for a long time.....and this needs to be repeated every few months.

I had no idea until recently that the whole 'pink princess' thing was so big these days. As some PP have mentioned, I thought all that was in the distant past. But it's donkey's years since I went into a toy-shop; I don't know anyone with young kids. I've got a school photo somewhere (which I just tried to turn up, and failed! 😀), but from memory, I'd say short hair was rather more common, say two-thirds to one third. What I did notice, comparing with school reunion pix on FB, is that many of the women (now in their 70s) still have exactly the same haircut they had a age 14.

This

Yup, I agree. I thought it was getting better and that no one gave a damn how girls wore their hair anymore. But here we are.

I lay the blame, at least partially, with the TRA movement. They are pushing these stereotypes so hard that it almost forces girls (and women) to conform to gender expectations again lest they want to be lumped in with that crowd.

I effing hate it!

That's interesting. Where is she, I need her number 😁I have long hair and they always seem to want to chop a load off.
Some people can be a bit weird about 'older women' having long hair. You only have to look at the Style&Beauty board on MN to realise that. I always say I'll keep it at boob length, the trouble is as they get lower my hair gets longer 😂
Hair is a feminist issue.

Exactly! I have short hair and have always had it.
DD and her friends all have hair below shoulders.

At my very strict RC girls' school in the 1980s where make up was totally banned we actually had a couple of beauticians and hairdressers come in. This was optional and after school and only for a couple of weeks.

I think the main reason was because conjunctivitis was running through the school with girls sharing mascara wands.

I found this interesting, the trends of Olympic gymnasts hair.

https://thegymter.net/2016/04/06/gymnastics-hair-a-retrospective/

My DD is super athletic, very slim, and for years had short hair. She has thick flyaway hair and she finds grooming a pain in the arse. Around 2021 the ‘but are you actually a girl?’ questioning started and then she had a student teacher who kept referring to her as ‘he’ even after being corrected. She got shoved out of the girl’s toilets and she was outraged they did it even after she’d showed them the bow on her vest lol. In the end she just grew it really long and it hangs all over the place and drowns her little face. But she’s ‘identifiably female’ and nobody bothers her. Maybe when she gets breasts she can have it all cut off again. We are indeed going backwards.

I agree. Certainly long hair is the choice of the vast majority but off the top of my head I can think of several female footballers with short hair. Lina Hurtig, Maike Hamano, Ashleigh Neville, Elisa de Almeida, Yamashita, Fujino... I'm not disagreeing with the pp's overall point, but one per squad of 20-25 players is more like it.

It's not in the same bracket but I've noticed a marked resistance from my hairdresser to cut more than a couple of cm off my hair, even when I've gone in and asked for a decent chop. It feels as if there's an expectation that if you don't already have long hair, you're 'trying to grow it longer'. I've never seen anyone in her salon with a shorter-than-shoulder-length style. Eventually I went to a different salon (birthday present from DC) where a stylist happily cut quite a lot off and I think it suits me a lot better shorter; my usual stylist's horrified reaction was, 'Why why why, you spent so long growing it to a good length!'

And she's a stylist with 30+ years experience, so it's not as if she hasn't been taught some decent bobs and what not.

Agree totally @Shortshriftandlethal . I grew up in the 70s/early 80s when we played in mixed groups, most of my (girl) friends had short hair and several of the boys had long hair. Toys were toys. When I had my eldest in 2001 I was horrified walking into Toys r Us for the first time and saw all those aisles of mostly pink and blue plastic tat. My favourite toys as a young girl were lego, meccano, my train set, scalextric and board games. In the 2000s most of those were very clearly in 'boy' aisles. There was a tiny 'wooden toys' section so that and board games was about all we bought from there. As an aside, I'm not at all surprised that gender ideology became a thing amongst young people because that's what they were being shown from a young age.