5 years old: never seen a girl with short hair

[RicketyClickety]

I found out yesterday that my daughter has never (knowingly) seen a girl with "boyish" hair, in real life or fiction. We were reading a poem about a tomboy with an accompanying illustration of a short-haired girl playing football, and my daughter asked me a few times if it was a boy, and then was asking me to explain how the character could have boy's hair if she was a girl, and why the character had hair like that. She was confused but happily fascinated.

She knows all about girl vs boy bodies. But in day-to-day life she also tells girls of her age apart from boys almost exclusively by their hair styles.

It made me realise that none of the girls at her nursery, clubs or school have boyish hair. None of her books have girls that look like that. Or any of the television she watches. Or Disney films. Or music videos.

She doesn't get much screentime though so there might be some very mainstream young kids TV that has tomboys on. Maybe I'm missing the obvious illustrated books. Or has UK media really become so homogenous in how girls are presented that most kids are reaching five without ever seeing girls of their own age with short hair?

I saw a great article by India Knight a few years ago linking itto the proliferation of porn.

Interesting point Annasgirl. I think there was more variation in girls' hair length when I was young. I think there is more pressure on girls and young women to conform to a Love Island look these days. But is that any different to the perms of the 1950s? I wonder if the 80s and 90s were just atypical in terms of the ways in which girls and women could present themselves.

I do wonder if the diversity people are remembering is a little exagerated or not totally accurate

Totally agree

We used to make our own clothes or buy second hand, dressing more uniquely. I don't know any teens who make clothes

I was a teenager in the 70s- never knew anyone who made their own clothes. As for buying second hand, I did but that was very much the exception.

TO BE FAIR, kids that age think that if you can see the moon "it is night" even though they've definitely seen the moon in the daytime. It's what is reinforced in our culture even though reality doesn't match up.

She will have definitely seen a girl with short hair. Pre-schoolers and toddlers don't always have long hair because they haven't been growing it for very long, right?

This thread makes me even more worried and angry than I was about people like Diane Ehrensaft, a leading US developmental psychologist FFS, saying things like this:

I have a colleague who is transgender. There is a video of him as a toddler–he was assigned female at birth–tearing barrettes out of then-her hair. And throwing them on the ground. And sobbing. That’s a gender message.

They can show you about what they want to play with…and if they feel uncomfortable about how you are responding to them and their gender… if you’re misgendering them. So you look for those kinds of actions….like tearing a skirt off. …There was one on that Barbara Walters special, this child wore the little onesie with the snap-ups between the legs. And at age one would unsnap them to make a dress, so the dress would flow. This is a child who was assigned male. That’s a communication, a pre-verbal communication about gender.

This whole article on 4thWaveNow is gobsmacking. 4thwavenow.com/2016/09/29/gender-affirmative-therapist-baby-who-hates-barrettes-trans-boy-questioning-sterilization-of-11-year-olds-same-as-denying-cancer-treatment/ It includes an audio clip of DE saying at least one of the quotes above. If I hadn't heard it I might have thought there had been some mistake.

How can anybody believe that very young children know what their so called innate gender identity is when it's so abundantly clear that they can't reliably recognise what sex another child is and work from gender stereotypes like length of hair, clothing choices, toy preferences? For that matter, on the evidence of this thread, a lot of adults seem to struggle with the same thing.

I can't actually see why it matters very much for people to know what sex a child is, or why it's a big deal to be mis-sexed. Little boys and girls look extremely similar before puberty.

There is a developmental phase where young children think that by changing clothes to the opposite gender means the person changes sex. Nursery children will be happy to wear dress up clothes of either gender... Then all of a sudden sometime before reception, boys most noticeably will reject anything they perceive as "girly"

"because she is a boy! Look at her!"

We have a friend whose dd (let's call her Jenny) has short hair. Not a pixie cut or a bob but an actual short, no.3 haircut with it a little thicker on top. She is 8 and this has been her hairstyle since she was about 6.

Jenny also dresses exclusively in clothing from the boys section of the shops, and only really plays with the boys in her class.

She is a girl, refers to herself as a girl, as do all of us, and has never asked us to call her anything other than Jenny.

My dc still now look back at pictures of her with longer hair (bum length at times) and say "when Jenny was a girl".

They know she is a girl if pushed to answer. But there Just seems to be this thing where they associate specific hairstyles with one sex or the other. Does my head in, and it's something we are quite keen to change.

I was at school in the '70s and '80s and most of the girls had very short hair then, even the very gender-conforming ones who liked wearing make up.

Maybe she has seen girls with short hair, but just assumed they were boys?

Isn't a lot of this just fashion? I mean, you don't see a lot of girls with bubble perms these days like you did when I was at secondary school.
I don't agree short hair was the norm in the 80s. Looking at my old school photos (and trusting my memory), there was some variation - bowl cuts seemed popular for boys and girls! But plenty of long hair, just straight or pigtails, or bunches. A few shortish, but I'd say they were exceptions.
From observing at the school gates, I wouldn't agree girls don't have short hair either. Obviously longer is the most prominent style, but there's always some with short hair.
I don't think things have changed all that much.

My daughter's hair grew into a lovely wavy bob, so I kept it like that for her first haircut. Once she was turning 3 she expressed the opinion that she wanted a pixie cut (pointing at women and saying 'want that hair'). It took a while to convince the local hairdresser we were serious but for the next couple years she looked like a small Emma Watson. She also liked trousers at this point.
Fine at nursery, but come Reception she clocked that all the girls had long hair and she wanted to grow hers. By Y1 she decided she wanted pinafores like other girls as long as they had pockets.

What's interesting is that at least 10% of the boys have long hair that has to be tied up for school, and probably half of them still do come Y6, but it's only in Y6 when a couple girls might try short hair again (and most of those I know, it's because they couldn't get hair dye out before term started). So I think a lot of it is fashion.

A few weeks ago I went to meet DD at her (secondary) school. While waiting for her I amused myself by counting the number of girls with short hair. There were four. Not every kid went past obvs, but this school has 2000 pupils. Half girls, half boys. Anecdotal but striking.

My girl had short short hair at that age.

I posted everywhere I could think of looking for depictions in movies and books of girls who looked like her. There was a whole post on the mighty girl Facebook page.

Most people define short hair on a girl as shoulder length or above.

I was pointed towards tinkerbell (not a child, but definitely female) and later someone suggested Andi Mack (Disney series about a 12y old).

Children don’t really have any cues to go on beyond hair length/skirts/ugly pink clothes. The latter two are the exception not the rule so it’s not surprising that she’s fixated on the hair. Adults do the same (although they tend to be better at interpreting clothing and behaviour than children). It’s not helped by schools enforcing short hair in boys. Obviously as children age they develop physical differences that help to distinguish sexes but in younger children everyone tends to rely on gender stereotypes to discern sex.

Also the Hayley Mills version of Parent Trap.

These are all beautiful young adult women with very short hair.

She may well have seen girls with short hair but, because children think that sex is determined by appearance, she thought she (the girl) was a boy.

It doesn't take a 100% hit rate to build children's categories of what a given thing can look like.

medium.com/@katieja/young-children-reality-sex-and-gender-3421f4f165f1

@KatieAlcock I've read that article before and it's one of the pieces that has meant the most to me. I think about it often.

When I was at primary school, I secretly believed for years that I was a boy and that my parents had made a mistake... your article really helped me understand the thought processes behind this belief, and also that what I went through was perfectly normal. I have high functioning autism, so it seems like I went through normal stages, just a few years later than my peers (so I still remember it).

My sincere thanks for that Katie! I do feel like everyone should read it. Have you thought about writing something on the topic for the national press?

Oh thank you so much!
I would need someone to ask me/ask for a contribution - but you never know.

My DD is in year 6 and got her hair Cut short.

She was asked by a reception child if she was a boy or a girl.

She was asked by another young child if she had cancer 😱.

They had never seen a girl in school with short hair before and couldn't understand why a girl would get her hair cut short.

Oh I just remembered another thing. For a long time my daughter would only wear swimming shorts and bare chest to pool/beach so along with her short hair it was confusing, mainly for kids. Lots would stare at hair (pink trunks as she loves pink)
And one particularly precocious child came and asked me in the pool ‘is that a boy or girl?’
Lots of times when she refused to wear dresses to parties, weddings etc too. Very discomfiting for others!

This conversation has me thinking about my woke friend's thinking. She's very into kids and their gender preferences being important, she also tends to be big on the idea of non-gendered kids clothes and toys. And she was really disturbed when her own kids, at the typical age, became very narrow in their idea of what counted as "boy" and "girl" stuff.

So much of this seems to come down to, little kids are just not thinking like adults. And it's not particularly something to worry about, it will pass as they get older and gain more experience. It doesn't mean they wil be sexists or try and enforce long hair for everyone.

It seems to me that getting upset about kids going through this stage may be as much of a problem as any of the rest of it. All that is really required is, if it comes up, pointing out that while there may be certain fashions they are just that, not rules, and you are a boy or girl whatever har you have, and in due time they will get the picture.

What they don't really need are big lectures that probably go over their heads and confuse the issue even more.

Just read your article KatieAlcock. Thank you so much. It’s really interesting. Also, RicketyClickety and posters for this thread. It is a really important discussion about self expression and how much it is influenced by what others think.

My 6 year old lost her hair due to chemotherapy. Although it’s a great charity in a lot of ways I struggle a bit with the assumptions behind the little princess trust - it’s very much aimed at girls, and their hair being a defining feature. My little girl did get a wig (which helped her come to terms with it and it’s not for me to decide for her how she manages that!) but didn’t find it comfortable. She wears hats (usually either leopard print or a pink Liberty print) but is still frequently addressed by adults as a boy. There’s lots of assumptions out there. And that makes me sad.

When I had short hair at sixth form (circa 2003) I was regularly called a 'dyke', thankfully not a word I ever hear the kids using at the secondary school I teach at so must have gone out of fashion. I would never have my hair short again following that experience. I'm sure at 30+ I wouldn't get called names but it's still horrible and I still remember it vividly.

10yr old Dd loves her short hair though.