Can you be a feminist if you have long hair?

[Fizzypoo]

I would love to be a feminist. I have read some books, I have read the feminist boards on here for a number of years (before GC) and I have learned about the structural inequality women have, and still have more to learn.

But I have long hair, I like looking hot on a night out and realise this is for Male attention. I have a lovely boyfriend, 2 DC and work in a LA job where I have to be careful about what I say online (and even who I follow on twitter as I'm GC). I would love to be a no nonsense sort of person like Greer and have that inner confidence in what she says with no fucks given, but I'm not.

I would like to go to meet ups in the city I live near, but I don't think I would fit in! I feel like a young naive girl as opposed to a strident feminist woman who knows her shit. Can I really belong in feminism?

Bertrtand - interesting that you say that as you are one poster who has consistently attacked me (under many previous names) for not being "feminist enough".

I am not sure what your definition of "Feminist" is - that is the point. Everyone's definition is different and once you have a definition it then follows that you have things which "are" and things which "are not" - hence the OP's question.

She has previously encountered views that assert that those with long hair who seek male attention for their looks are not "True Feminists", (unless we assume she is a troublemaking troll as some have already.).

If you personally think we must name in order to acknowledge, - (and frequently - in practice name so that you can be in "our club" ), then I, and I would guess the OP, want to know whether we fit the definition and so can be "acknowledged" as Feminists.

Jenna - which is my point exactly.

Surely whether long, short or in between length hair is considered the height of femininity is about fashion, not feminism. If short hair is in are feminists all going to grow theirs long and vice versa? I think not.

Furthermore I don't think there is any specific requirement to call yourself a feminist in order to support and advocate for women's rights or to attend meetings. I reckon if you're interested you can just show up and get stuck in.

FWIW I have long, naturally grey hair and haven't set foot in a hairdresser's since I was 14. I don't own any make up and only iron clothes for funerals and job interviews. This has nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with can't be arsedism.

I used long hair as one example. Long hair, make up, care taking, flirting with men ect can be thought as conforming to typical stereotypes to please men. I believe we have been, as women, socially constructed to please men using our femininity. But I also like my femininity. It's a cognitive dissonance within me. If I was a striding (and I use that word not to be troll-ly but because it's an excellent word and I heard Greer use it to say we should be more strident) feminist I would accept that my sex has nothing to do with how I look as we've been socially constructed to want to look pretty for men. My cognitive dissonance is that I know this but I still enjoy looking like a 'sex pot' sometimes and the Male attention that I recieve validates me even though I know it shouldn't.

I was horribly assuming that the feminist groups near me would not include me because I am still a product of my social conditioning.

Have you ever listened to a podcast called the guilty feminist? They talk about about the issues that women face daily but also admit to the things they do/say that make them 'bad feminists' its really very funny. you should really give it a listen if you've never heard it before.

No I haven't but I will give it a go thanks @Hepte

Only if your leg hair is longer than the hair on your head

Well some of the comments on this thread demonstrate perfectly why I am to hesitant to become more involved in threads on this board.

It was a perfectly valid question that I'm sure many women ponder.

But thanks for making myself and others feel like we're being mocked.

I think as soon as you recognise that your actions may be influenced in part by gender expectations then you could expect others to accept you as a feminist. But if we have rules about what a feminsit should look like, How they must act, and those rules say look and act like men, thn I wouldn’t be sure we were any improvement on patriarchy

Don't worry, Fizzypoo, you can present as gender conforming as Marilyn Monroe - wotcha, Posie! - and it won't matter a bean if you say anything that fails to centre the penis. You'll still get called a far right bigot.

Wear what you like, love. Just centre women.

Tbh, I felt that feminists were being mocked by the question.

But at least we all talked until we understand each other , which is why I like this space.

So a woman can be very feminist but still wont cut her hair short, when really we all should, because we all know that femininity is imposed on us define us to mark us out as our class.

Did glam rock, hair metal, and indeed most of rock music history not happen? A lot of men wear long hair, but are still very much men. Hell, five out of six Iron Maiden members have long hair. Look at pictures of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. For a woman who enjoys or performs rock music, long hair is part of the look across the board, not part of femininity.

Well some of the comments on this thread demonstrate perfectly why I am to hesitant to become more involved in threads on this board.

Don't be. On another thread I 'learned' that I'm worse than a prostitute because I've lived with a man for more than two years, the poster was very specific about the two year limit, without getting married, while simultaneously 'learning' that if we had got round to the marriage thing I'd be a prostitute.

That is every bit as an impossible standard to ask of women as any man has ever imposed.

It is also an extremist view. You'll find extremists in any group but if all the non-extremists walk away nothing useful will ever be achieved. So don't be hesitant, if you are a woman you have as much right to speak of women's rights as any other woman, because it is about you.

Trans ideology champions femininity.

That doesn't mean that we should oppose it or champion masculinity in females. If we do that, we define ourselves as being in opposition to them, which is a way of letting them define us.

We should declare femininity and masculinity irrelevant. They are just arbitrary labels for groups of character traits and behaviours, some positive and some negative within each group.

Long hair actually requires less upkeep and fuss than short hair. I hate fussing with hair and I loathe hairdressers, so mine is long and mostly does its own thing.
I think the real question you're trying to ask here though is about whether young heterosexual feminists must reject the performance of femininity for males.

We should declare femininity and masculinity irrelevant. They are just arbitrary labels for groups of character traits and behaviours, some positive and some negative within each group.

Absolutely. Not only are the labels arbitrary they aren't even consistent across the English speaking world in the right here and right now, never mind across cultures and history.

Here in Scotland playing football and wearing skirts (yes kilts are skirts) is considered the height of masculinity. In the USA little boys exhibiting such behaviour are, in some circles, being told they're really girls.

You simply cannot arrange society around such sexist stereotypes and expect a happy outcome because the stereotypes shift constantly. It is a recipe for misery.

A lot of men wear long hair, but are still very much men.

That's what's so silly about things like this.
Men = short hair, women = long hair just isn't a thing.
It may be more common in general, but certainly not a hard and fast rule.
Especially as what is considered normal changes over time.
Men used to wear long powdered wigs, would they have been less masculine not to wear them?
I've had my hair very short, very long and everywhere inbetween over the last 25 years. DH's hair was longer than mine for the first 15 years we were together.

Can’t say I gave much more thought to my hair style than, ‘do I like it? ‘Is it practical?’ The fact that it just happens to be very short is because of those reasons, nothing else.

If the reason for your hair do is, ‘well it’s a pain to look after but hubby likes it’ then maybe a little word with yourself is in order, but if it’s, ‘I like it,’ then who could, or should, have an issue with that?

It’s the annoying blurry line between liberal feminism, which basically says, ‘I choose to do x so therefore it’s feminism,’ and actual feminism that says, ‘it’s your’s, so do as you please, but be aware of the context in which you’re doing it.’ There’s nothing inherently wrong with putting a lot of effort into your appearance in order to garner male attention, it’s where the awareness of what you’re doing ends and the belief that it’s a feminist act by virtue of the fact that you’re doing it where the problems start. That is the lie that has been sold to women, not that we should or shouldn’t be doing x, but that we should feel empowered by doing x just because we can with no thought or consideration to The reasons why we might be doing x.

.......But at least we all talked until we understand each other , which is why I like this space.

Me too MIdgebabe

Well this board has got strange lately. And no, not troll hunting. Just confused as to this sort of question and similar being asked so frequently recently... I personally thought we, as in feminists and women in general, had moved away from having to worry about how we present ourselves and whether or not it gives the ‘wrong message’, be it to men or to other feminists.
My advice OP? Try to let go of worrying so much about what others think about how you wear your hair or clothes, it’s very liberating. There is no feminist uniform. There is no need to analyse the fuck out of everyday tasks that don’t really have a lot of meaning in the scheme of things, not every choice we make needs to be put under the feminist microscope. I am trying to liberate women, not just from men either.

I’m not even going to tell you how I wear my hair! Because it is irrelevant.

There is no FAQ here for new people. and people come to feminism from all sorts of places&background and I think that society is getting more rigid and tribal which explains to me some of the questions. It might feel like having the same discussions, becuase we can’t see that the people are different most times. It’s just words on a screen

The trolls add a layer of complexity.

Perhaps more people are coming across this board who are new to feminism and it's often contradictory concepts. I think if you've been eyeballs deep in theory and arguments posed by the different waves of feminism as we've been for so long it can sometimes be easy to forget that people don't know all this stuff inside out.

I opened this thread and immediately eye-rolled because it seems like such a basic question, but then I checked myself because it might well be one of those contradictory things that is giving a fledgling feminist self-doubt.

No, long hair/ looking stereotypically feminine doesn't mean you can't be a feminist. Women shouldn't have to wear or look in any particular way- we should be free to choose how we dress and groom ourselves. However, our choices don't occur in a vacuum and are subject to a wide variety of influences throughout our lives- which are worth analyzing.

I've also thought overnight about the Serano argument that femininity is devalued. I think this Serano is totally off, it actually pains me a little bit to have to analyze it as I stopped listening to males and their theories years and years ago.

What is devalued is femaleness, which is something totally different to femininity we we know.

Then femininity is imposed (some say violently) on female people. For example when I became a single mother and returned from abroad with my kids I knew I wouldn't have managed to get the bank job I did if I hadn't been fully feminized. My boss was a transwoman. Femininity was expected of women in this workplace, but the city was Liverpool and I read that Liverpool women spend more on beauty practices than other cities in the UK. I think London is far less "feminine" on the whole. You had to have brows properly done, mascara , skirts! to look the part. A few women had obvious boob jobs.

If I hadn't done femininity I could've ended up homeless . And homelessness leads to you losing your kids, and getting raped and murdered.
So being feminine is no small thing.
But I digress

So we know femininity is imposed on women and there are punishments for not performing it.

I think it's really important for women to recognise and support each other in fighting the battles we can; choosing which hills we feel able to die on. That will differ woman to woman. We are all fighting the patriarchy on those different fronts but in the meantime we have to live in the world as it is and that includes the neccessity of, for example, working in industries where we'd put ourselves and our families' financial situation at risk by exposing ourselves too much.

I'm very much of the radical persuasion and 'personal is political' mindset so as part of that the way I present myself (hairy, confortable, anything a man doesn't have to do with his appearance for social acceptance I'm nor gonna do either) because I feel like we won't reach a point of being seen as people in our own right and not as sex objects without men being confronted with this. But I am in the position of this being broadly OK in my line of workad having a husband who actively supports me. It's also an active choice which from day to day feels liberating and scary because I have been socialised to belive my body in its natural starlte is unnaceptable.

Basically there are no easy answers, there's no one way to approach challenging the patriarchy and for this reason it's vital we work together. Also ambivalence is normal - it id much easier in many ways to toe the line. But ultimately feminism is about centring women and sharing our experiences for mutual support. That makes you always already welcome xxx

So because we know femininity is imposed on women

( and it really is irrelevant if some women like it, just like it's irrelevant if some prostitutes like it, or if some wives like it or whatever)

it's a feminist act to reject femininity. It's also why I admire butch lesbians because they do this every day and have to navigate the world as unfeminine women. The bravery

That being said, I've never come across feminists who have looked down on women who still do femininity. Well maybe the odd one. But Femininity is so ingrained in me that I just feel so invisible and uncomfortable not doing it.