Hair length

[Moobaloo]

Hello

Long time lurker on this board. I have something niggling in my brain at the moment.

I have a toddler DS. He has chin length hair. It's very cute. It gets in his eyes so I tie the top part into a topknot thing.

Naturally he gets called a girl a lot. This happens even when he's in blue/a top with a truck on but I mostly dress him in gender neutral bright colours. I have no problem with people mistaking him for a girl, it's not their fault! I just say "he's ..." Whatever they've asked.

However what has been bothering me is the constant "why haven't you cut his hair yet" "you've got to do it sometime!" "He looks like a girl!"

Pretty much all with a negative tone.

Two things: 1. What's wrong with looking like a girl? Is this some implication that being a girl is 'bad' or a negative thing? What's wrong with girls? I feel that this could promote bad stuff if slightly older boys hear this "looking like/being a girl is bad" all the time.

And the one that's really stuck in my head: since when can boys not have long hair? There are loads of men with long hair! And the biggie - I am a twenty something woman. With short hair. I have a pixie crop. I like it, it suits me. NO ONE has ever told me to grow my hair because I look like a bloke!

Anyway. I don't really know where I'm going with this.

Suggestions of answers for the people who tell me to cut his hair?!

Thanks for the rant space x

Wow this is all really interesting, thank you for all the posts!

He 14 months old.

Yes I am making a choice for him as he is too young to choose or communicate his choice. But if I cut his hair I would equally be making a choice for him, thus it would be because he wanted it.

If he is older and tells me he wants his hair cut, he can of course have it cut. Though I would first discuss his reasons and as a pp mentioned we could talk about how he should choose what he wants rather than what other people feel he should have... But I would never let him be bullied if I could help it. I have been bullied for being different and it was nothing I could change. It got me down until I realised that I wasn't the one with the problem.
We are an unconventional family for various reasons, so slightly unconventional hair is not going to be the sole reason someone has for picking on him. I have found that, ultimately, if someone is going to bulky someone there is always something they can use. (One of the things I was bullied for was how I walked?! I had to laugh at that. It was around when I stopped giving a shit)

It isn't something that affects him negatively but is kept purely because I like it - that would be cruel. It's washed regularly, brushed daily and tied out of his face. No problem! The this that irritates me is not people assuming gender by appearance as such, as telling me I 'should' cut it 'because he looks like a girl'.

I have a friend with a gorgeous 4 year old DS who has chin length blonde hair, when he gets called a girl he smiles and says "I'm a boy actually" and when they apologise he says "it's ok, it's because of my golden locks isn't it?" Which is freaking adorable. He's super cool. I think encouraging confidence in themselves is far more important than encouraging them to fit in. I'm not saying they shouldn't have conventional hair/dress, just that they should choose what they want because they want it and for no other reason. Yes I choose for him now, I also choose what he eats and wears. That won't last forever, it's my responsibility to keep him clean, clothed, fed and happy. How long or short his hair is is rather irrelevant as long as it's not in his eyes or clogged with snot all the time. It may well be short for practical reasons when he's older (nits!!) but whatever.

Hope that's not too rambly and incoherent!

He IS 14 months old, sorry.

Argh. Sorry for typos.

"It's because of my golden locks isn't it?" Awwww.

DD is in a children's choir. In the front row, every concert, are three angelic little blondies with chin-length bobs.

Two years down the line, she's fairly sure from the names that two are boys and one is a girl, but none of us can tell which is which.

I think people generally just want to be able to use he or she without worrying about using the wrong pronoun and prepubertyhair/clothes are the easiest things to go on. Saying that I was asked if DD was a boy or a girl while she was fully naked at swimming the other day...

Aubergine- visual cues aren't enough for some people though, if a child isn't 100% gender conforming, or conforming in the "correct" way.

When dd was 3-ish she went through a dress phase. She wore a dress nearly everyday. The amount of people who simply couldn't comprehend a child with short hair, in a dress.

They insisted she was a boy. She constantly got asked why she was wearing a dress. I was openly questioned, as cheers says, as to why I would be so "cruel" as to let my boy wear a dress in public. Old ladies teased about dressing up in her sisters clothes.

Same in a swimming pool. 2 children stood in front of her, in the shower, and took the piss because she was wearing a girls costume. Kids must have been about 7.

Saying she was a girl met with point blank denial. Of course he isn't, he has short hair. It's a boy in a dress.

which bring me back to the point that the more children don't fit in, the more those that can't won't seem weird or abnormal.

Isn't that bizarre Micah?

Less gender-policing please. It's not doing anyone any good.

Micah, I hear what you're saying. To an extent I was coerced into fitting in. I had to wear the hideous jumper that Auntie X had knitted when we went to visit. No explanation for why Auntie X's kids were out and I had to go to see her, or why I couldn't grow/cut/dye my hair.

My DD will happily wear a dress one day, a batman/spiderman costume the next. Her friend (male) will happily put on one of her fairy dresses and push a pram around the garden, or put on the batman/spiderman costume and play cars.

Some children can't grow their hair long. Some children have other visible differences, some children have invisible differences. You'd think that by the time we had reached the 21st century we'd be focusing on people's personalities and encouraging them to do all that they can to achieve a happy and fulfilling life. Instead we see stupid pink and blue gender specific toys and clothes and a lot of pointless waffle about needing to know whether they're male or female.

I haven't forced my DD to have her hair cut (she has asked in the past, and it has been cut/trimmed accordingly). She has asked me to colour it - I used wash-out colour on the ends. She told me when she grows up she wants to marry a lady. I told her that as long as they love each other and make each other happy then it's fine. I haven't imposed my religious beliefs on her (she told me 'I don't want to believe in God'. I told her that's fine, she doesn't have to believe in anything).

My role as a parent is to be supportive and to encourage her to be the best person she can possibly be. My role is not to turn out a beige robot that goes with the flow because that is the way of least difficulty.

Well said Pedestriana!

That's so odd, though, Micah. When did short hair come back to being 'boys only'? It was more than acceptably girly in the 80s (as evidenced by unfortunate family photos in which you really can't tell which is scruffbag me, my younger brother, or my ballet-obsessed sister).

Really pisses me off. DH has very very long hair as does DS1 - DH occasionally gets jokey comments about 'cut your hair you hippie' but DS1 often gets called a girl and when DS2 cut his short was told at school that he (DS1) should also have his hair cut 'like DS2 as it's a real boys' hair cut' .
Now DD, used to get mistaken for a boy because apparently she 'ran like a boy' .

I have had a massive range of hair lengths and styles (and colours) from skinhead to halfway down my back, rarely mistaken for a boy but it has/does happen; the more common reaction is that people assume I'm lesbian 'cos obviously if I was straight I'd want to look all girly and feminine to attract men .

My other bugbear is that my boys can't wear skirts/dresses if they want to. I hate the way they are forced into trousers/shorts unless they want to get teased massively. They only time this doesn't apply is when we're at festivals and you have loads of people wandering around in whatever they want and lots of men with lovely long hair

It would be nice if we could all take an example from Mary Gentle's 'Golden Witchbreed/ Ancient Light' alien species and have all children referred to as ke and kir until they're actually through puberty.

In Ursula Le Guin's Lefthand of darkness's planet Winter people are androgynes. But when the one male human was asked if women were a different species he couldn't answer. That just about sums up how messed up we are about this gender business, I think.

I grew up in the 70's, child of a father who just didn't give a fuck about other peoples' opinions.
My sister and I could dress 'like boys', climb trees, play with cars, mechano.
When people disapprovingly pointed out the error of his ways 'oh well' was about all he could manage. He seriously rocked. :D

ETA 'Oh well' is just such a dampener of a response, isn't it?

My DS2 had very long hair til he was 3.5

He sometimes got mistaken for a girl, but an equal number of people said he looked like a surfer. A couple of strange mums at Kindergarten told him he was going to marry them when he grew up - nobody ever told me I should cut it - and we live somewhere really old-fashioned about most things...

I threatened to cut it several times between the ages of 2.5 and 3.5 when he wouldn't let me brush it, and his response was always [DS2's names have long hair, it's DS2 hair!] ... it worked to get him to allow me to brush it, though he wouldn't have it tied back. I did cut about 4 inches off it on holiday when it was looking ragged at the ends, just before he turned 3.

He asked to have it cut though when a (female) dentist who came into Kindergarten insisted on referring to him as a sweet little girl all morning, picking the little blond girl as her volunteer, and refusing to "hear" him each time he told her he was a boy (doesn't help that his ordinary English name isn't heard much here so she may not have caught his boys name...).

After that a few kids teased him about being a girl and we got it cut, at his request.

Not sure what the "moral" of the story is, but people's assumptions will have an impact one way or the other, even if people appear to approve of your choice, and between about 3 and 8 or 10 most kids want to conform, it takes an unusually strong character or a lack of social awareness (two very different qualities of course) to insist on going against the grain at 3, 4 or 5...

I'd say just make sure once he's old enough to express a preference you let him be the one to choose either way.

I think there is probably a happy medium.

I've known people who have been quite honest about the impact of their conformist upbringings. They have felt that they are always being judged by others and need external approval to feel good about themselves, so they find it hard to really enjoy anything, as they can't trust their own feelings and judgement.

On the other hand I know people who feel that their parents ignored their feelings and were controlling by making the kids do nonconforming things, or that they lacked an identity as part of a community because they were so different to everyone else they knew.

DS often had long or mid length hair and was often mistaken for a girl (when away from home - holidays etc) until he got to about 15 and developed broad shoulders, deep voice etc. But he was pretty comfortable about it, probably because it was considered unremarkable where we live. I suspect he may have wanted shorter hair if we lived somewhere different, and while I would prefer people not to bully over appearance, I can't control other people's bullying behaviour, and sometimes we all go along with stupid unwritten rules to avoid conflict and encourage our children to do the same.

But I think it is very important to impress upon children that appearance is just appearance, and we don't make judgements about people based on gender rules or class distinctions around appearance. Appearance says nothing about the value of someone as a person.

Victorian boys had long hair and wore dresses until they were about 5.

Around here loads of boys have long hair as they are sikh.

"Why is it bad for a girl to look like a boy or vice versa?"

Because then I can't treat them differently according to what sex they are. I might end up giving the girl higher pocket money and I might praise the boy for his kindness and gentleness, instead of how fast he can run. I might assume that the girl is suited to running and climbing and shouting and letting off steam and assume that the boy is capable of considering other people's feelings.

They might grow up able to realise their full potential because they haven't been discouraged from exercising half of the part of themselves which make them human.

And then where would we all be?

Love it AskBasil

Not read the whole thread just feel compelled to post. My daughter, 12, is really good pals with a young lad off our estate. He's only 9. He had beautiful white blonde long hair, you could almost see him in twenty years in leather pants fronting a rock band. Such a lovely polite little lad. This week he came calling for my DD and I stood at the door and didn't know he was. Some boys at school have been laughing at his hair and he's had it chopped into a typical man 'do. He didn't want to, he liked his hair, he wanted to be a rock star or a lion trainer but he was coming home from school in tears every day because he had girls hair. I'm not making good sense but that made me really really sad.

My DS has had spells of keeping his hair long (it's short at the moment). I have always left it up to him apart from insisting that, when it's long, it gets washed and combed regularly - and that the fringe gets cut if it's in his eyes. It's his hair, and if he wants it long, it's certainly not going to be cut to placate morons.
I have also always had a policy of telling him that 'only silly/nasty people think that' about issues such as gender policing, or believing in gods. And I am very fond of 'Goodness, you must be really inadequate' (said with a big smile) as a response to strangers who make uninvited comments.

Because people who are obsessed with gender-policing are silly and inadequate, and if they are going to air their unwanted opinions, it's fine to laugh in their faces.

Also, DS did get bullied at school a couple of years ago - other kids calling him 'gay', possibly because of his long hair. I went into the school and requested the bullies get dealt with. If the school had suggested DS have his hair cut, I would certainly not have complied - it's the bullies who need to be made to change.

NoTech - I was going to mention the Ortheans as well! Great books. I rarely read Sci-Fi but got into those after a review in Spare Rib.

I think there's strong cultural connections here. Someone mentioned little Asian girls with shaved heads. In my DD's primary school she was the only girl with short hair (after the third infestation of lice). All the boys had very short or shaved hair. At my friend's DD's primary (much more middle class) longer hair for boys was way more common. At our school you could tell the handful of middle class boys by their longer hair.

Going back to babyhood, DD was wearing a second hand very pink & frilly dress (not our usual attire, she always looked lovely in navy) and I was twice asked 'boy or girl' by people who were not English. Perhaps baby boys wearing frilly pink is not a problem for Turkish or Arabic people.
Just like boys in the UK in the past who would be be in dresses until 'breeched'.