Subversive Hair

I get bored easily with the way I look. This leads to frequent, and sometimes drastic changes in appearance. When I’m considering a change I ask myself a couple of questions:

1)      Do I like it?

2)      Does Ted like it? He is, after all, the person who looks at me the most so yes – for me that means he gets a vote (as I do for him).

3)      Will it hinder me in a job interview?

That third one is an unfortunate necessity as I’m looking to switch careers. And humans, being the creatures we are, do judge one another (often negatively) based on a non-traditional hair style or color. I’m hoping that third consideration can eventually be removed from the list.

That’s pretty much all I think about. If the answer to the first two is yes and the third is no, then I just go for it. I don’t think about it any further than that. I don’t know why I don’t wonder, “can I pull this off?” like so many others seem to. I’m not a particularly self-confident person, I just figure: its hair. It falls out every day, it grows back every day. If I hate a color I’ll dye over it, if I hate a cut I’ll grow it out. But then, I never seem to hate anything. I’ve either got particularly easy hair to make look nice (at least to me) or my self-esteem about my head is in fact better than I give myself credit for.

Right now I’m sporting a pixie cut because I can wake up, roll from bed, run my fingers over my scalp and go. I do not have to put it in a ponytail when I work out or worry about sweaty strands getting stuck to my face. Also its August and I love the summer breeze on my neck and ears. I love riding with the car windows down and not having strands of hair whip me in the face. Also, I think it looks really cute.

When I go for a cut I take in a photo that I like to show my stylist, who is a genius at duplicating photos onto my head. As I was searching the internet for photos of pixie cuts I kept blundering over article after article (they felt like warnings) stressing that I am planning for the haircut that men hate to see more than any other on a woman.

I couldn’t help but wonder why? Also, who are these guys? I don’t know any of them. Are they just ghosts that marketing execs are creating to make sure women keep spending a metric ton of money every month on hair care product or do they really exist?

Appearance preferences don’t bother me, everybody’s got a right to one and they don’t have to justify it. I’m a big girl who wears a bikini and some people really don’t want to see that. It’s totally cool, they are not required to look at me. But the short haired thing feels different somehow. According to what I see online, it’s even more widely disliked than the idea of a curvy girl in too little spandex. Personally, I’ve only seen this preference among women. Countless times since I’ve gone subversively short, a woman has looked at me genuine longing and said, “I wish I could wear my hair like that.” But for whatever reason, be it that they feel it won’t look good on them or because someone significant in their lives would be seriously unhappy about it, it seems as unattainable to them as the moon.

Whether the widespread occurrence of disdain for super-short hair on girls really exists or not, I don’t give it a second thought for a few reasons. For one thing I’m old enough, and overweight enough that I’m a bit of a societal ninja anyway. The only person who’s hit on me in the past decade is Ted. Sometimes I remember being twenty and what the admiring glances felt like with some regret, nobody wants to grow older after all – but I have to admit that being an invisible woman is a good deal easier in many ways.

Beyond that, since I simply don’t understand the concept I can’t find a compelling reason to care. At most, I feel the vague curiosity that led me to write this article, asking the questions: Why does short hair feel a little subversive on a woman? Why is short hair not feminine? Why is it not beautiful? Why is seeing the graceful line of a woman’s neck or the shape of her ears a bad thing?

I can’t answer. Neither can Ted because he’s a mystified as I am.

Maybe somebody out there in the ‘net-verse can shed some light.

As for me, I'll be out riding with the windows rolled down...