Short Hair, Don’t Care

Hair is a funny thing. All humans have it, so it’s in no way unique. For the most part, it’s a renewable resource as it continues to grow until we die. With extensions, you can even buy someone else’s hair and pretend like it’s yours. It shouldn’t carry the importance it does.

But from time immemorial hair has symbolized many things—strength, virtue, vitality, sexuality, youth, economic status, ethnic community. It has weight, both figurative and literal. Its existence—or lack thereof—is an intrinsic part of our personal identity. And—especially for women—society has opinions on what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Last week my hair was cut into a layered bob. It wasn’t meant as a political statement. I was tired of styling long hair, annoyed with having to move up highlights, conscious that I was throwing good money after bad trying to condition old tresses. Plus, I wanted a change. I wanted to go back to my original dark brown color and—possibly—start to grow out my grey. I wanted to be free from the effort that long hair requires. So, I went to my sister Marissa, who is an incredibly talented hair stylist, and said “do it.” Two hours later I walked out a new person.

All the World’s a Focus Group

I knew people were going to be surprised about the haircut because I hadn’t revealed my intentions to anyone. My daughter did a double take when I picked her up from school, declaring immediately: “I LOVE it!” My husband cut right to the chase. “I like it,” he said. “You look happy.”

Overall, the cut has been received well. I even walked by two women the other day and had one of them call out to me “beautiful!” as she pointed to my hair. But—you knew there was a ‘but’—I did have one over-the-top bad reaction to the chop.

Sitting in a crowded meeting this week, I had the following conversation with a female colleague:

Her (shouting out across the room): “What did you do to your hair?”

Me: “I cut it.”

Her (aghast): “Why????”

Me: “Um, I wanted a change.” Notices everyone staring at us. “I’m getting the feeling that you don’t like it?”

Her: “No, I don’t.” Pause. “It just doesn’t look sexy anymore.”

It was a bizarre and slightly unsettling exchange. So much so that the two male colleagues sitting next to her made sure to pipe up with positive feedback. I don’t think she was trying to insult me—it seemed like a genuine reaction that obviously didn’t get censored. But it got me thinking about the very common notion that hair length equals feminine allure.

Long, Sexy Hair

If you’re a woman, every aspect of your hair—the texture, the color, the style—has meaning. But few signifiers seem to be as universally associated with the XX chromosomes as length. It doesn’t matter if you’re a tiny baby or a man with a beard, long hair makes you “girly.”

As psychotherapist Heather Garbutt said in a recent interview with Stylist Magazine: “There are some very deep traditions that run within our culture with regards to the length of women’s hair.  

“Long hair, for whatever reason, seems to simultaneously represent the innocence of childhood and the allure of adult femininity. Think about it – how many times have we seen the letting down of a woman’s tresses as a sensual and sexy experience? 

“It’s almost a symbol of opulent femininity, an image of exposure and vulnerability that draws out feelings of sexual attraction often allied with feelings of protection in men.”

Popular culture reinforces this association ad nauseum. Victoria Secret models and Playboy bunnies have long, flowing hair. Product commercials depict shiny waves cascading in slow motion around naked shoulders. Classical art depicts harlots and goddesses alike with breasts peeking out from tumbled tresses. There’s a whole product line called ‘Sexy Hair’ in case you were confused about your goals in life.  

Crime and Punishment

Historically, when the patriarchy wants to punish women, it shaves their heads. During conflicts like World War 2 and the Irish War of Independence, the shearing of a woman’s head was used as a deterrent from colluding and interacting with enemy forces. This photo from LIFE photographer Carl Mydans depicting a crowd laughing as a woman’s head is shaved during the Liberation of Marseilles pretty much says it all:

Here’s is a fun letter written in 1872 from the Governor of Glendairy Prison in Barbados which posits that cutting female prisoners’ hair is worse punishment than imprisonment:

“From my long observation of the classes which supply the inmates of prisons in this colony and others similarly situated, and looking to the very slight effect of imprisonment as an instrument for reforming offenders, or leaving them open to the influences of self-respect, I venture to express an opinion that the deterring influence of the disfigurement and consequent personal shame of women being without their hair, without any reference to the disgrace of attaching to it as a badge of imprisonment, is of greater importance and benefit to the community than the rare and improbable contingency of any woman losing her own self-respect, or being prevented from recovering that of her neighbours, by the circumstance of her having being cropped in prison.”

Many religions have rules around women hiding their hair because of its ability to inflame the desires of men, part of the theory around why nuns wear habits and Muslim women wear hijabs. The book of Deuteronomy says that captive women can be married, but only after their heads are shaved. A New York Times article stated that “In 1486, the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ identified witches’ hair as so laden with mystical powers that along with such tortures as hanging the accused from their thumbs, the best-selling manual of the Inquisition suggested that their locks should be shorn. To finish the job off, the witches’ heads were sometimes splashed with alcohol and set on fire.”

And who can forget the scene in Game of Thrones when Cersei Lannister’s religious opponents punish her infidelity by shaving her hair, stripping her naked, and forcing her to walk through the city while people throw trash and yell “shame?”

The Butterfly Effect

Thankfully, most of us will never have our hair forcibly removed, and we are in control of how we present our image. For us, decisions regarding our hair can be made for any number of reasons: creativity, professional considerations, lifestyle changes, identity makeovers, politics, love, loss, boredom, rebellion, and—my favorite—transformation.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my colleague had inadvertently identified an important existential alteration that I hadn’t recognized. Newsflash: I don’t care about being called sexy. As a happily married woman in mid-life, my desire to be labeled as sexy by society is virtually nonexistent. I have no need of that label outside of my relationship, and it’s certainly not something I wish to pursue as a marker of my identity.

For most women, the “sexy” label quickly becomes imbued with impossible expectation and disappointment. It’s like as soon as girls start menstruating, the world places a 50-pound weight on their bodies and says “congratulations, you are now a sexual object.” Then we spend decades trying to live up to that denomination only to discover that it means nothing after all. No woman on her death bed ever called out: “I wish I’d been more sexy!”

Don’t get me wrong: sex itself is still incredibly important. It’s the label, not the act, that’s restricting. I think that it’s only as we age and start to reclaim self-sovereignty that we can unburden ourselves from labels and find freedom. The transformation I’m enjoying is about being me without worrying about the judgment of the male gaze or my value in attracting a partner. It’s about the confidence to just feel good as myself, not in relation to anyone else. That’s why I didn’t feel the need to tell anyone I was chopping off my hair: I did it for me.

“When women choose to cut off their long hair, it is often in a time of transformation and letting go of the old and embracing of the new,” notes Garbutt in the Stylist article.

“Whenever there is a letting go, there is grief for what is gone – as well as excitement for what is to come. It’s a much deeper thing than a simple change of style; it’s a shift in identity. The cutting of the hair represents that big step and that’s why it sometimes brings tears – in a way, it’s a matter of saying goodbye to an era and the person that we were before.”

I love my new hair. I can’t stop touching it. I’m excited to look in the mirror. I feel in control and powerful. I have officially joined the #shorthairdontcare club. I feel more satisfied overall and, dare I say it, sexy. After years of being vaguely disgruntled, I’m taking pleasure in my appearance again and it’s having a Butterfly Effect on everything else in my life. In the immortal words of Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her 2001 Yale Commencement Address: “Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will.”

Main image by Sebastian Tiplea at Unsplash.