Fed up with everyone assuming only boys have short hair

[Sailorchick14]

Feeling so frustrated and annoyed for my DD age 11.
She prefers her hair short. It was in a pixie cut from age 8 till she got fed up with being called a boy so tried growing it last year. We got to bob length and she'd had enough and had it cut back to pixie length last month.

Just dealt with tears and anger from her tonight. Hates her hair. She hates it long but again is fed up with the boy comments. It's kids and adults. Even teachers at her school.

I don't know how to help her with this one. I tell her to confidently correct anyone getting it wrong but why should she have too?.

No it isn’t. Trans women aren’t always ‘girly’ for example. Many wear comfortable clothes for example.
The only people policing this stuff and linking it to sex are the anti-trans people.
It wasn’t a trans ally abusing the masculine lesbian in the ladies’ toilet queue in London recently.
It isn’t trans supportive kids picking on the OPs daughter. The only time I see reactionary comments around how people present is from the GC side.

Tedious isn't it?
My DD had her hair cut short from yr5, then really short between the ages of 12-18. She's actually grown it out to shoulder length now.
Also not keen on girly things - a perfectly legitimate preference. She's also has some sensory issues so long, tangled hair upset her, she didn't like the feeling of clips in her hair and she still dislikes the feeling of makeup, so doesn't use any. All normal.
She's had years of being called a lesbian (she's straight) and occasionally misgendered. Which annoys her a bit but accepts it's because of this ridiculous assumption that boys have short hair.

It makes me cross too. Like some other posters I was at school in the 80s and loads of girls had short hair, probably more had short than long. No one batted an eyelid or called them boys. Why things have gone so backwards now I have no idea.

My daughter's bestie has just had a pixie cut and it looks fabulous on her, really suits her face shape. She also hates washing and brushing her hair and is always out on her bike, helmet on and off regularly, so it makes life easier and more practical.

My daughter (11) currently has very long hair (her choice) but had a very short bob for a couple of years and it was a dream to deal with and looked really cute. Conversely my son (20) has always had long hair apart from a five year spell when he gave in to peer pressure. People would ask me (and later him) all the time when he was getting his hair cut. So rude! He says grown man are the worst - van drivers will yell at him "get yer 'air cut" in the street. His favourite retort is "it's better than being bald mate".

I’ve realized as I’ve got older that I have sensory issues similar to your daughter. I exercise a lot and can’t bear the feeling of damp hair around my neck and having to tie it back all the time was a pain. Also don’t like make up and rarely wear it now. I wore it to work as part of a sort of uniform but not very much of it.

But usually that happens due to a negative connotation with “girly” things

Does it though? I was never interested in girly things, and had short hair, but consider myself a feminist.

Children have been brain washed to hyper focus on gender.

Her hairstyle should not be discussed at all, especially by the adults, other than to be complimentary.

In my daughters school it is a good mix of boys with long hair, girls with mullet styles, they're teenagers.

All she needs to say is "I'm a girl". Job done.

At 11 though, and faced with this nonsense from both peers and teachers, that’s a lot easier said than done, and assumes the kind of resilience and confidence that tend to come with age.

This really is a staff training issue and needs to be taken seriously.

I’d be speaking to the Head.

Exactly. I’m 56. I grew up with short hair. I also hated bows frills, anything fussy. They are not feminine things, they are stuff society says are feminine.

I am feminine because I am female.

As for putting accessories into her hair. wtf

get a few stock phrases for your daughter OP. It’s great training for her on dealing with ass holes & idiots. She’ll meet lots in her life.

The only internalised misogyny is coming from you. Not from girls who want don’t want to wear long hair! Your view on this is very antiquated

Is it?

I’m very aware that teenage girls in 2025 are navigating a very different world to 1983 or whenever. It’s absolutely irrelevant that back then lots of girls had short hair. In the here and now, RIGHTLY OR WRONGLY, the vast majority of girls have long hair. I don’t have to like that or agree with it or to understand why that might be to know that it’s a fact.

So to be a girl with short hair is to stand out. And that’s hard for a young girl who just wants to have her hair how she wants it and dress how she likes.

A girl in 2025 also has to navigate gender ideology, which wants to label her and stick her in a box and lie to her and tell her there’s only one way to be a girl.

She also has to exist in a porn-soaked world where so many women in the public eye present in a hyper-sexualised way - that’s what she’ll see on a daily basis.

I don’t like any of that. I don’t want that to be the case. But it is the case and that could impact how she feels about women, womanhood, what it means to be a girl. That could turn her against her own femaleness.

And that’s what I wondered is the case. But the OP has confirmed she doesn’t think so, which is good.

How I felt having short hair in the 1980s is neither here nor there.

What is the relevance of long hair for girls being ‘a thing’, whatever the fuck that means? You seem to think that because this is ‘the reality’, then this girl is somehow obliged to deal with whatever it is that the ‘reality’ of the ‘thing’ visits upon her. That’s not right. That’s not even wrong. It’s just gibberish.

And then you leap to the completely invented scenario in which the girl prefers short hair because she thinks femininity is ‘lesser’. There’s nothing to suggest that. She just has a preference. But having invented this mindset, you then say that there’s an implication of internalised misogyny in her preference - the motivations for which you have conjured out of nowhere.

All of which, incidentally, is based on the deeply sexist presumption that long hair is feminine and short hair is masculine. Is that a ‘thing’ too?

But what really irks is that patronising ‘Well…’ with which you open your post. One can practically hear you folding your arms, puffing out your cheeks and putting on your “if you’ll all shut up” voice.

Of course, you might not have meant it to come across like that. I may have just completely invented your attitude. I’d be very annoyed if someone just made up how I feel in order to make a point about whether it was appropriate for me to feel that way.

But, well, the reality is, that’s a thing.

I had short hair in 1996, age 13. I was a late developer so still completely flat-chested and none of the gifts at my school wore skirts. I was constantly being asked "Are you a girl or a boy?" (they knew perfectly well that I was a girl) and teased about my "boy hair and man hands". Pretty sure that was more than 20 years ago! I grew my hair and even more hate photos of myself from that time.

100% agree.

Back in my primary school days (many moons ago), I had a big crush on a girl with short hair because she looked like a boy. I knew she was a girl, her best friend had long hair and was very pretty but in my head I saw this short haired girl the same way I would a boy. It was really quite odd as I’m completely straight and I knew she was a girl, but my reaction to her was as if she were a boy. This was back in the 60s and I was about 9yrs old, she was two years above me in my sister’s class. My point being children (from any decade) can get a bit muddled when they see another child that doesn’t fit the stereotype ‘norm’.

I didn't like girly things when I was 12 and under. I never wore skirts / dresses, wore cargo pants and shorts.

I also hated hair accessories - no issues around femininity as I just found the stuff annoying ( especially hair accessories) but since the age of 15 onwards I have been the complete opposite - I even wear lots of jewellery / accessories when I am at home (currently on maternity leave).

The OPs daughter is being teased for not being mainstream and I think this is what needs to be looked into.

It's fine not to like girly things and still want to be identified as a girl because that's what she is : )

Was all of that aimed at me? I mean, not that I’m going to bother responding to it but just checking 🤣.

Oh and I always had short hair as my hair is extremely curly and that was the only way I could wash it myself and take care of it!

Wasn't going to have my mum still wash my hair for me when I was over 10 years old.

Surprisingly I never had anyone label / mistake me as a boy but sometimes other girls would mention that I was a 'tomboy...this was all 20 years ago when I was around 10 / 11 years.

I’m 45,had a pixie cut for years until I got sick of the comments,I dress “alternative” so it went with my style,I now have a choppy bob,no comments.

Ok but they’re your own concerns, not those of the vast majority of girls. I’m not sure what porn (?) and the rest of the bluster has to do with any of this. Perhaps you’re projecting based on your own experience but to presume that a girl has ‘internalised misogyny’ and is ‘turning against her own femaleness’ because she wants a pixie cut is not just a stretch, but completely bizarre.

I think my reason for harping back to the 80’s is that it’s just amazing to me that we have actually reversed progress for women in some ways and at one time in my life I wouldn’t have thought that would be possible.

the fact that so much seems to depend on the length of your hair, how people perceive you, whether it/you are considered feminine or not, is just crazy to me.

the belief that this is just how it is now and it’s better to conform and put stuff in your hair, wear earrings etc…I honestly am glad I’m not a young woman now.

The problem is that 'girly' stuff is so boring and stereotyped. Same for boy stuff really but it's girls we are concerned with here.

My DD disliked 'girly' stuff from a very early age, just couldn't be doing with it. Modern girly is 17 steps on from my adolescence. You have to be very slim, wear pink/unicorns/sparkles/make up. Have your nails done? She's have rather been climbing trees. DD has no use for Disney princesses and massive amounts of make-up. She's definitely a girl though. They are not all the same.

It's possible that she hates the way girl's clothes are designed. My dd has always worn boy's clothes. Even now at 22 she mostly shops in the men's dept. She hates clothes that are tight and clingy and show skin or her figure. Not because she hates being a girl, but because she doesn't see why she should be sexualised just because she's a woman.

There’s a lot of cynical commercialism going on too. If you convince people that push chairs, for example, are gendered and design them accordingly, you can get many people to buy two, instead of handing their dds push chair down to their ds.