feministe posted about the perceived s

Aside from a couple of obnoxious teenagers driving through Berkeley and yelling obscenities, I can’t remember anyone ever hassling me about my hair.

You should read my experiences cutting bangs. I once had plain, long blonde hair (natural, thank you) and about six months ago cut very short bangs. The reactions that I get to the bangs are absolutely astounding. Apparently short bangs communicate some sort of “sluttiness” or “easiness” that I never before encountered.

Before, with the plain blonde hair, I was considered to fit the “blonde” personality (until I opened my mouth). Now I’m seen as some sort of S/M sex symbol. Here is one such example of harassment. And here is another. Both are completely true. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

I’m FTM (pre-hormones, etc) and almost entirely non-passing. Two years ago, I passed relatively easily, at least about 50% of the time.

In the intervening time, I’ve gotten better at binding, I dress almost exactly the same and, according to most people, have gotten better at walking.

I’ve also dyed two blue streaks in my hair and grown out the locks they’re connected to.

(Admittedly, this has also drawn more attention to my face in general.) But even I can see, if I look in the mirror, how much different it ‘reads’.

Blue down, girl. Blue up, boy.

…Of course, the major irony in this all is that I’ve dyed that hair in honour and remembrance of a friend of mine whose hair was the same…and was very decidedly male.

Just a thought.

Another thing: my girlfriend had short hair when I did, and we often got harassed just for walking arm in arm together. “Lezbos!”? “Dykes!”? called from cars, etc. For the two years that we’ve both had long hair, we haven’t been harassed a single time, not once! Not even when we’re walking hand in hand, or with an arm around the other’s waist. We joke that we could be having sex in the street and passerby would would comment about what good friends those two obviously heterosexual women seem to be. It’s all in those six extra inches of hair, I guess.

Same here! Apparently some lesbians are acceptable (namely those who fit traditional ideas of how women should look, of course), but others are the spawn of Satan. Who knew?!

As for the throwing things thing, I have an inch-long scar on the back of my head from having a desk stapler thrown at me during a homophobic assault based solely on the way I look (the guys didn’t know me). I also used to get abused in the street and on the bus, but since growing my hair back nothing’s happened, except my ears are warmer!

But everyone knows that no matter how much the Beta tries to copy the clothing or hairstyle of the Alpha, they will never be able to actually become the Alpha. Thus, if I straightened my hair and people interpreted that as wanting to look like white people, it wouldn’t be seen as a threat to white people’s identity, but rather as an acknowledgement of the inferiority of my own natural appearance. So I am rewarded for recognizing superiority when I see it and trying to emulate it as much as possible, even though I’ll never fully measure up.

I am not implying, however, that all Black people who straighten their hair are doing it because of any feelings of inferiority or wanting to look white. Do whatever feels good to you, your motives are none of my business.

Take fingernails, for example. If a woman has short, unpainted nails, it’s supposed to mean something. On me, it means, “I don’t feel like wasting money on nail polish” and “especially since I work at an occupation where they would just get chipped”. But folks instead make assumptions on my level of femininity and sexuality because my nails are unadorned. When I have short hair, it usually means, “it’s summer! It’s so fucking HOT!” but is again taken to be a “statement” of some sort.

Men have to work hard to cross the boundaries. We don’t.

La Lubu wrote: “Stella: It’s true that women have more fashion options than men, but the flip side of that is that we’re ‘required’ to use those options! And if our option is low-maintenance, casual, and natural, there are repercussions for us. Men can be low-maintenance, casual, and natural and not think a thing about it”

Exactly. And also, yes, the options available to women are seemingly varied, but you must at all times maintain a standard of “femininity”. That is, you can have short hair, but it has to be cut in a sufficiently “soft” way so that it doesn’t look butch. Also, as someone else pointed out, veryt long hair is an option, but only if you’re under a certain age: after that, it has to be above shoulder length or shorter or you are criticised. And you can have the colours you like, as long as you like colours that say “style” and not “I don’t give a fuck” or “revolution”.

The men might have the hard, fast boundary past which they can’t fashionably go, but for us the boundaries are ever shifting and hard to keep up with. Our clothes and hair ‘have’ to vary sometimes several times in the same day, let alone over a period of years! And I regard that as a pain in the ass, frankly.

To be fair, one reason she was a fashion don’t was that the braids were uneven and badly done and didn’t go with the dress. But back in the 70s, when Bo Derek wore braids for 10, it was a big thing. Though it didn’t catch on, even though the response was positive.

I think it’s more the case that it’s the expression of solidarity with the oppressed that’s outrageous, as well as the implied rejection of the belief that the dominant group should be emulated. It’s implicitly subversive.

The ruling class ideology in the modern world is that “anyone can grow up to be president” — that is, that this is an open and free society in which anyone can achieve high status, and should strive to do so. Of course, very few people actually can, but the message is that it’s the fault of the individual, and if they’d only try harder… etc., etc.

In other words, in this area at least, the tightest limitations and the harshest punishment seems to be reserved for those who relinquish the symbols of privilege, not those who claim them.

I don’t mean in any way to minimize the punishment women receive for gender noncompliance. As a short-haired woman who frequently dates butches, I have both received and observed some of the crap that masculine-looking women get in this culture. But when I walk into a rough bar wearing chinos and a button-down shirt, I mostly get ignored. Whereas a man who walked into the same bar wearing makeup and a dress would stand a real risk of getting his ass kicked.

So say you’re at the gas station and you, a guy, have picked up your soda and are walking towards the counter. Another guy is over to the side and has just finished filling out his lottery tickets. You didn’t see each other at first, but now, at the counter, you both realize that you’re heading for occupying the same space. A kind of hesitating, jockeying for position goes on that results in one person going first. How is it decided? Well, it’s complicated and entirely dependant on how the man in question deals with this sort of thing. One can be very aggro about it or very deferential. Still, it entails sizing up the other person. Men do this all the time, every day. (ask one.) At the gas station, walking down a crowded street, waiting for an elevator.

As far as my example goes, since I got the red stripes in my hair, young square guys, even aggro looking ones almost automatically defer and let me go first. I guess so they can keep an eye on me…..

My perspective on it is that it’s a matter of Alpha and Beta groups. Women are allowed more latitude in what they can wear such that ‘masculine’ clothes are acceptable for women where ‘feminine’ clothes are still not readily acceptable for men because men are the Alpha group and women are the Beta group and everyone knows it.

As a white woman with occassionally ‘black’ hair, I’ve thought a lot about why so many more black women wear their hair straight and blonde than white women wear theirs in cornrows and black braids. I think of the hullabaloo when Juliette Lewis wore her hair in cornrows to the Oscars and was widely booed for the fashion don’t, but has a big deal ever been made about black women with long blonde locks?

I think there’s a premise that everyone wants to be more Alpha so Betas mimicking Alpha styles is understood as as a way of ‘leveling up’, but why would Alphas want to mimic Betas, to ‘level down’? Outside of white people, mostly white men, who adopt ‘gangsta style’ as a way of trying to bolster their idea of street cred (and there’s a whole ‘nother thread), it’s generally understood that it is better to be like Alphas more than Betas. Think also of the way Japanese cartoonists draw their cartoon heroes so frequently with blonde hair and blue eyes, or the way blondes are far overrepresented in TV, movie and other media. There’s a hierarchy of hair that posits blonde at the top and not-blonde beneath.

Rastafarian women also wear dred locks (I don’t know if they are forbidden to cut them, though). When they go out in public, or when they have company in their homes, they must wear a head wrap to cover their locks.

I’ve gotten a lot of criticism in the past for not straightening my hair (I’m a black woman). I wear it in braids now (no extensions, just my own hair which comes past my shoulders), but when I wore it unbraided and just natural, people really used to talk.

Huh. That’s interesting. My perception is the opposite: that I as a woman have far greater leeway in my appearance than men do.

I can have hair of any length from an inch to a yard; I can dye it any color from platinum to raven; I can wear pants, skirts, dresses, or shorts; and I can wear any color in the rainbow — all while remaining at least minimally compliant with professional standards. (Granted, I work in a “creative” profession, and I exploit the latitude that gives me to the fullest.)

But I’ve always felt sorry for men because their choices for self-expression in appearance seem so much more limited.

And I wasn’t playing it with you. I interpreted your reply to my post as meaning that punk males had *never* defied convention. The only reference you made to hardcore was to women punks during that era, not men.

And anyway, during the hardcore days, I knew more than a couple of guys who wore makeup. And that isn’t an “I was a punk before you was a punk” statment, either, just a statement of my personal experience.