Article: 'Women can have short hair too - Pseudo-progressives are resurrecting gender stereotypes'

[UtopiaPlanitia]

Another excellent article by Victoria Smith which my Gen X self really enjoyed reading.

https://thecritic.co.uk/women-can-have-short-hair-too/

'If you are a Gen Xer like me — that is, someone who grew up when genuinely androgynous women such as Grace Jones and Annie Lennox were at the height of their fame — this seems especially odd. It is as though something very obvious about what it means to reject femininity has been lost in translation. The degree of misunderstanding might be summed up by a bizarre meme featuring Jones and Lennox, which features the caption “I don’t really understand how people who were young in the 80s act so confused about different gender identities and expressions when the celebrities of their time looked like this”. The trouble is, we weren’t confused at all.

We knew that Grace Jones’ style didn’t make her less female; it showed there were other ways in which to be female. More space was being created for female self-expression. If someone said of Jones “you can’t tell if that’s a man or a woman”, you knew they were lying. You also knew that the comment was intended to reinforce rather than shatter norms. Now, pretending not to be able to tell is treated as laudable.

There is a part of me that finds the seriousness with which some young activists now take trivial gender markers quite funny. It reminds me of the Onion article “Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People”. I almost want to tell the girl in the TikTok video “hang on — you look like that and yet … you’re not a boy? Consider my tiny, Karen-y mind blown!” Yet overall, it’s not that amusing. I can’t help feeling something has gone very badly wrong when the space for free expression for young women in particular has become so narrow that looking totally unremarkable counts as earth-shattering. It is as though the moment one does not conform to the strictest of feminine standards some kind of declaration must be made. Even if one does not go so far as renouncing womanhood entirely, one must at least make it known that one knows this is a little bit on the edge. '

Brilliant article. Thank you.

Thanks for sharing this.

Changing your appearance doesn’t change your sex, and if people judge you for looking “less feminine”, it is because they notice your sex, not because they don’t.

I also find it annoying that the youngsters really do treat older woman as invisible. We almost all have short hair (always did, it was signal of adulthood).

I chopped all mine off when I graduated (1975) and have had short hair ever since. Sometimes very short hair.

Super article, thanks for posting.

Short hair seems to be anathema to young women, I was people-watching the other day and the only short hairstyles were on considerably older women.
Women's footie matches looks like gymkhanas with all the flowing ponytails.

A female having short hair has become a huge complex edgy psycho-socio-cultural statement.

'Hair by Foucault of Paris'😁

The sports women with long hair really baffle me. Surely that hair swinging behind your head throws out your balance?

I am also Gen X and mum and me were big Wimbledon tennis fans and the fortnight was our time with the telly. The first year I really remember was 1977 and Virginia Wade in the final and mum couldn’t watch for the tension and I had to keep calling out the score to the kitchen where she was distracting herself. Anyway, the point of this was that mums theory on why Virginia won that year was that she’d just cut her hair short and didn’t have to spend the breaks fiddling with her long hair to keep it up and out of the way, and could use the time to focus on herself and her performance. Mums generation regarded long hair as a luxury most women didn’t have the time or resources to deal with.

and of course, the most famous women in the eighties when I was a teenager were Princess Di and Mrs T. Both had hair no longer than the collar. But a bit more stylish than the unisex pudding bowl cuts we all had in the 1970s.

It's ridiculous that it's come to this. It's got to the stage where I'm actually considering a short haircut as a statement - and I hate having short hair (with my hair peculiarities it's less faff long and put up).

I don't understand the sports ponytails at all. A bun is so much more practical.

A point was made a number of years ago that we live in more conservative times than ever. There's a pressure to look celeb-beautiful that has tickled down to young girls and boys through the endless parade of filtered photos on social media.

Look at the English football squad. In the 70s - 90s we'd have expected short haired tomboys, now everyone has blonde mermaid hair and lashes / brows done.

Under all this pressure, gender expression which has always existed has become more polarising. Androgyny has actually become 'I'm not a woman at all'. I love this article because it points out what those NBs refuse to see - they are shrinking what it means to be a woman rather than expanding it - which is regressive.

so true
'its as if Devil Woman had never been written' (Rik)

'If you are a Gen Xer like me — that is, someone who grew up when genuinely androgynous women such as Grace Jones and Annie Lennox were at the height of their fame — this seems especially odd.

Shock horror, Bowie wore make up, as did the lead singer of Kiss. New Romantics boys wore hairspray, eye liner, lip gloss and pierced an ear or two. Then we watched David Beckham play football and have his longish hair in a pony and wore a shhhhhh whispers behind hand a skirt!

Yeah. I don't get this gender nonsense at all.

I’m a 80s teen so of course had most of my hair shaved off at some point. Also wore men’s jeans, jackets and DMs (they didn’t even make women’s ones back in the day).

It’s all such regressive bollocks now isn’t it?

We were in a pub that started playing 80s club music. We were bopping around, laughing and getting all giggly. I remember how much fun it was to be ‘doing young stuff’ back then. We were involved in student politics (grant cuts, education cuts etc) but we had a bloody good laugh. We’d all go the the SU and have a pint and a chat - people from all walks of life and politics (from very posh rich girl living on flat daddy have bought her, to skint single mum living in council flat). We would debate and discuss.

Kids today (not all but the ones you see crying on TikTok because someone ‘looked at them’ or used the wrong pronouns) seem to wallow in misery and drama. Or threaten people who don’t think the same way.

DS says at his uni the ‘arts kids’ are like this so the ‘science ‘n maths kids’ avoid them.

Where’s the fun? We had AIDs, nuclear war threats, WW2 was still ‘living history’, only 3 channels on the telly…

Early 70s there were makeup ranges specfically for men. There was Bowie, Bolan and the whole glam and glitter rock scene.

I've had my hair all different lengths, from a short pixie cut (teens) to almost long enough to sit on (late 20s). Most frequently it's been a chin-to-shoulder length bob. My school photos from the 80s and 90s showed a similar range of hair styles, most common being the aforementioned bob.

I find it rather depressing that in DCs' school all their girl friends all have long, usually straightened, hair - and the associated full face of make-up and rolled-up skirts. The only female pupils who have a non-girly-standard hairstyle are the persons-of-gender: the ones who identify as blokes have short "boy" hair, the ones who identify as NB have a range of shortish styles.

It’s obvious - Princess Diana was non-binary innit.

My bro was obviously a woman them. He had very long hair back in the day…

This article says it so well. Growing up in the 1990s, short hair for girls/women felt like a choice and not a statement or identity. I wore my hair short and did not feel judged for it. It seems very different today and think fashion has gone in that direction to sell more products and encourage women to spend more time and money on looking a certain way. If you asked me 30 years ago, I never would have thought style would progress so that most girls and women are expected to have long hair unless they want to make a statement. I do not see the tides of fashion turning any time soon.

It's shocking how regressive things are now.

I’m a[n older] Millennial so caught the tail end of Short Hair Is Just Short Hair but by the time I was at secondary school it was a hugely unusual choice unless you were an adult - & by the time I got to uni it was somehow an identity signifier. Deeply depressing.

I was a teenager in the late 70s, when glam rock was in full swing. Men had long hair and wore make-up, and when I, a girl, had my long (well past my shoulders) hair chopped off to a jaw-length bob, strangely enough nobody at all started mistaking me for an adolescent boy.

But those were the Dark Ages, obvs.

Actually my mum (born in the 30s) always had short hair. She had it cut in her 20s (short ‘bubble cut’ and never changed it. So that would have been the 50s). My my, a trailblazer!

You know what really hacks me off? Manpolish - when men plaster cheap nail polish over bitten and scrappy man nails (so that it’s all chipped and lumpy looking). What the hell is that all about?

At least learn how to do it properly or go to a salon…

Boots 17 Cosmetics ads from 1985

It’s just occurred to me that the late Queen (like many of her generation for that matter had short hair most of her adult life - who knows what Genderfeelz she was concealing beneath her many splendid hats? We know she wasn’t averse to shaking up gender norms [& the Saudi King] after all…

Blimey I remember those ads!

My hair length as an adult has varied from chin length to collar bone. But over the last five years I’ve grown it as long as I can and it’s now down my back and the longest I’ve had it since I was six! Not from any femininity reason but because I was brought up that very long hair was for girls and adult women don’t have the time to be dealing with long hair. And as a menopausal woman it’s a bit of a mini rebellion to my upbringing to have long hair at my age. Plus actually I do find it easier to shove into a messy bun than style it.