To not understand why people dislike buzz cuts on little boys?

[brightmonitorx2]

I did not realise this was a thing until I buzzed my 3 year olds hair in lockdown (had tried and failed to cut it so had to buzz).
My mother hated it, friends made comments. I then googled and people say it's trashy or something 🤷‍♀️
I thought it was cute and he is asking me to do it again because longer hair annoys him.
It was also way easier to bath/dry as he hates hair wash etc.

I want to do it again but so people thing it looks trashy/chavy whatever?

I know I shouldn't care what others think but I do 😬

There is a little boy in DD1's reception class with a buzz cut and I think he looks really cute. All of the other little boys have long luscious locks.

Ok well I reserve my right to say long hair on little boys looks twee & silly next time it comes up. Because it turns out it’s not ‘only hair, anything else is projection’ after all…

@Cheekypeach

Ok well I reserve my right to say long hair on little boys looks twee & silly next time it comes up. Because it turns out it’s not ‘only hair, anything else is projection’ after all…

So many posts on here talking as if there are only two hairstyles for boys - very long or very short. Both these are at the extreme end of the scale. There is much middle ground. Personally I don't like either buzz cuts and long locks on boys.

@Cheekypeach

Ok well I reserve my right to say long hair on little boys looks twee & silly next time it comes up. Because it turns out it’s not ‘only hair, anything else is projection’ after all…

Yeah but that's just being as much as a twat as the people calling kids with buzz cuts thugs

@AllThingsServeTheBeam yep. Just highlighting the double standard on here!

I'm also disgusted. It's shocking to see that, in a group of people who generally fall over themselves to showcase their loathing of racism, homophobia and sexism that they apparently find it acceptable to judge someone for something as innocuous as a haircut and openly display hatred based on class or perceived class.

I think those things often go together unfortunately. Look at the way political parties that are all over id politics openly despise those who are not middle class university educated urbanites. They'd freak out if someone said having an afro looked thuggish (or whatever,) and if they felt that way themselves they'd be trying to check their own thinking, but they have no issue with declaring a buzz cut a sign of toxic masculinity.

I do wonder if they give their girls buzz cuts in order to avoid toxic femininity.

@Cheekypeach

Ok well I reserve my right to say long hair on little boys looks twee & silly next time it comes up. Because it turns out it’s not ‘only hair, anything else is projection’ after all…

This is the type of silly, thoughtless comment, that when repeated carelessly to kids results in the bullying of Hindu and Sikh boys at school.

Sure, from your narrow world view, long hair is ‘twee’ and ‘silly’ but for approxmately 1.5-1.6 billion people long hair isn’t some masculine or feminine, for them it’a something all humans (who haven’t gone bald) should have as a minimum.

People are dicks 🙄 chavvy thugs indeed. My 3.5 year old is very keen on getting his hair cut, it's kind of his "thing", he tells the barber what he wants and it's usually short hair. He has quite soft, straight, unbouncy hair so the long toddler hair thing looks utter toss on him, he just looks a bit greasy and unwashed. He's the same kid either way though.

@Fallingonice

I grew up in a very working class town and I don’t think (in my experience, anyway) the parents of the buzz-headed counterparts are commenting on how awful it is that anyone would judge a child’s haircut.

Try sending a floppy-haired child to school there - you’ll be told to your face ‘get some gel on that hair’ (yep really.) It goes with an incredible nosiness about everything you are doing as well and can be really oppressive and really enforces a small c conservatism, it is a real pressure to conform that manifests in attention to every tiny detail. Trainers, brand names, haircuts …

Maybe it is snobby but I don’t care, give me the middle class world where girls can wear boys hand me downs and boys can have floppy hair a thousand times!

Except it's pretty clearly the case that the mums of the floppy haired boys may well be judging. That the parents are skinheads!, or chavs, or fans of toxic masculinity and enforced gender roles. Maybe they don't say it to the face of those parents but clearly the thought is there.

And I'm not convinced the gendered expectations are different. When my kids were younger I used to go to a mums group, very mc and a little on the granola side. While you didn't see short haired boys or frilly dresses what you did see were a lot of long haired boys wearing My Lttle Pony tops and pink light up sneakers, and girls wearing jeans and neutral sweaters in natural fibers. Though their hair tended to be pageboy type cuts. The distress when their little girls wanted Disney princess stuff was palpable.

So still expectations, just different ones.

[quote brightmonitorx2]@Roarsomemore that's it! That is pretty much exactly what my little boys hair was like and how he wants it again. Same colour as well.
I didn't know it was grown out 🤷‍♀️

Everyone saying to do a longer one, my practical problem is that I can't blend the shorter sides into the longer top myself (I've watched the videos and tried, I am just crap at it).

Interesting point about the tv characters and buzz cuts. I was thinking about River Phoenix in Stand By Me because that's sort of how my boy looks but I suppose he was meant to be the "bad kid" in the show, and actually he goes on to disprove all those (and these current) horrible stereotypes. Main theme of the film.

Saying that, Vern also has a buzz cut if I remember correctly.

I wonder if it's quite American (I love American!). [/quote]
Honestly, practice makes perfect with the more complicated styles. If you try and blend and it goes really poorly, then make it all the same length. But eventually you'll get it! Make use of the different guard lengths. It may not look professional but three year olds don't care much.

It can also help to have someone more expert, like a barber, do it once, and then work on maintaining that over time.

Everyone judges.

My mother (from a council estate) cannot deal with my son’s long hair. Nor could she deal with my daughter preferring trousers.

@OlympicProcrastinator

I could be wrong, but I interpreted that as she has negative associations with it on white boys (skinheads etc), whereas it's OK on afro hair because it's a way of "managing" the hair. I could be wrong, of course

That’s exactly what she meant. And I’m saying that’s racist.

It's something. I'm not sure if it is exactly racist.

We've all been told we are not supposed to have negative associations with "black" hairstyles. Which in all truth have evolved a certain way because black hair tends to be different to European hair.

But why the negative association with that hair in the first place? Partly outright racism but also because those styles (or some of them anyway) also became class markers. There are some styles you'll see on poor black kids that I do not see on the black sons of doctors or lawyers. That's a class distinction.

But, as I said, mc people have been delivered the message that it is not ok to judge these styles, not even the ones that are mainly worn by wc or poor black kids. A lot of people would be horrified if someone came out and said that a kid with one of those haircuts, and wearing a track suit, was a look to avoid so as not to be associated with that kind of person.

But there seem to be a lot of people here not only saying that the association exists with "chavs" - which is clearly true - but they feel quite alright with saying that they wouldn't want their own kids to look like chavs.

So I guess that kind of classism is ok with white kids but not kids that aren't white? Is that racism, or what? In truth I suspect people don't like either look but just won't say it when it could be construed as racism. So really, they don't want their kids to look poor.

Thuggish? Chavvy? On a child? Fgs it's a quick, cheap, easy maintenance haircut. I had very sporty sons who were permanently hot & sweaty, so this type of cut was great. We were a professional family who cared nought for what anyone else felt, it suited us. My teenage grandson (19) chose a buzz cut in lockdown, loved it so much he's stuck with it, that may change if I don't stop rubbing his head whenever he has a fresh cut though! The bovver boy, skinhead association only rears it's ugly head on occasional demonstrations, for 99.9% of times buzz cuts can be regarded as dope. Why anyone worries what others think I have no idea, unless your child requests a different cut, do what you want.

@Howeverdoyouneedme

Everyone judges.

My mother (from a council estate) cannot deal with my son’s long hair. Nor could she deal with my daughter preferring trousers.

Yes, my mother can't deal at all with my nine year old DS's hair, which he wears in a sort of disorganised surfer cut and recently dyes pink with that spray-on colour you can get in Boots. She is also visibly perturbed by my preference for androgynous/men's clothes and boots -- when we recently ran into a childhood friend on the street who presents as ultra-feminine, she was nearly puce from not saying 'LOOK AT HOW NICE AND FLATTERING x'S CLOTHES ARE!!!'