Monday
Feb132012
Ageism, Gender Norms, and Rocking the Short Hair
Monday, February 13, 2012
I got this weird idea in my head that, because I'm turning forty this year, this would be my last chance to grow my hair out, which is pretty stupid.
It turns out that I have all of these presuppositions about life after forty that I don't really notice I have until I base actual life decisions on them, and then I realize that I am dangerously close to turning into that person who sells all her flashy jewellery and any clothing with an ounce of cheer in it because it's her fortieth birthday and she has to accept that it's her old lady times now.
I decided that I had to TAKE A STAND against my own ageism, as though this were some kind of revolutionary power struggle against an oppressive political regime, and I secretly chose to let my hair grown out. I felt vert boot stompy, very 1990s riot grrrl about the matter (if that riot grrrl could see the adoption of 1950s' gender norms as rebellion, that is).
So, after my last haircut in late November, which left it at just under an inch long — I've been cutting my own hair with clippers for years now — I left it to grow. I imagined it growing down around my face and whisping under my chin. I imagined how it would feel to tuck it behind my ears again, or how it might look kind of poetic and tortured as it fell across my eyes while I worked furiously over a hard piece of writing.
What I didn't imagine was how slow the process was going to be. Two months into my experiment with hair growth, it barely covered the tops of my ears, and one side seemed to have grown almost a half inch longer than the other side, and my cowlicks along my hairline were sticking out in tufts like baby ducks on the back of my neck.
The other thing I should have known would happen is that I got a creeping sense I was verging on drag, again. When I was a kid, I truly believed that I would grow up into a man, so when I threw a towel over my head to simulate long hair and belted out Diana Ross songs, I was dressing in drag, and I loved it, but as I grew older and family and friends worked to impose the adoption of feminine accoutrements upon me — I had to suffer through many sessions that involved having my hair curled to "soften" my appearance and being taught how to apply eyeshadow just so — it became a different kind of drag. The first was a gender bent laugh riot, but the second was a true misinterpretation of who I actually was. Makeshift wigs were fun, but being soldier-marched into gender conformity based on my genital structure was heartbreaking.
I admit to wearing eyeliner and mascara on a regular basis now, and I love a pair of heeled boots and a bright scarf, but I do gender on my own terms, mixing it all in with men's flannel shirts and jeans and letting my body hair grow as long and as thick as and where it will.
Somehow, though, longer hair feels like too much. It is somehow the line that, when crossed, tips me over into feeling like I did at fifteen when my mother paid her hairdressser to give my hair a "feminine softness" with toxic perms and texturizing shears. As soon as that hair creeps down around my ears, it feels like a deep and shameful lie is being committed. I'm that kid in 1988 again who can't reveal the truth that lies in the great grey areas of her heart.
So, because I was rebelling against the ludicrous idea that no one can grow their hair after forty, I was growing my hair out, never mind the fact that I'm not actually forty yet, and then I ran headlong into my heart's battle with cultural gender norms. It's not surprising that this wasn't working out for me so well. No one wants to listen to a person whine about how long her hair is when it's barely over two inches, so I got with my previously successful program and sat down with my clippers a few days ago, snapped on the 7/8ths-of-an-inch attachment, and returned myself to my beautiful, nearly brush-cutted former self.
I realized that this was not about turning forty, and this was not about confronting gender norms. This was about, once again, accepting my own sense of beauty on my own terms, because really? How much sense does it make to go through the awkward process of growing one's hair out and to perform an uncomfortable level of female drag for over a year just because I'm going to be forty in ten-and-a-half months? It makes no sense at all.
Plus? I really do rock the short hair.
----------------------------
PS. I'm up for a 2012 Bloggie, for which there is voting to be done. Ahem.
It turns out that I have all of these presuppositions about life after forty that I don't really notice I have until I base actual life decisions on them, and then I realize that I am dangerously close to turning into that person who sells all her flashy jewellery and any clothing with an ounce of cheer in it because it's her fortieth birthday and she has to accept that it's her old lady times now.
I decided that I had to TAKE A STAND against my own ageism, as though this were some kind of revolutionary power struggle against an oppressive political regime, and I secretly chose to let my hair grown out. I felt vert boot stompy, very 1990s riot grrrl about the matter (if that riot grrrl could see the adoption of 1950s' gender norms as rebellion, that is).
So, after my last haircut in late November, which left it at just under an inch long — I've been cutting my own hair with clippers for years now — I left it to grow. I imagined it growing down around my face and whisping under my chin. I imagined how it would feel to tuck it behind my ears again, or how it might look kind of poetic and tortured as it fell across my eyes while I worked furiously over a hard piece of writing.
What I didn't imagine was how slow the process was going to be. Two months into my experiment with hair growth, it barely covered the tops of my ears, and one side seemed to have grown almost a half inch longer than the other side, and my cowlicks along my hairline were sticking out in tufts like baby ducks on the back of my neck.
The other thing I should have known would happen is that I got a creeping sense I was verging on drag, again. When I was a kid, I truly believed that I would grow up into a man, so when I threw a towel over my head to simulate long hair and belted out Diana Ross songs, I was dressing in drag, and I loved it, but as I grew older and family and friends worked to impose the adoption of feminine accoutrements upon me — I had to suffer through many sessions that involved having my hair curled to "soften" my appearance and being taught how to apply eyeshadow just so — it became a different kind of drag. The first was a gender bent laugh riot, but the second was a true misinterpretation of who I actually was. Makeshift wigs were fun, but being soldier-marched into gender conformity based on my genital structure was heartbreaking.
I admit to wearing eyeliner and mascara on a regular basis now, and I love a pair of heeled boots and a bright scarf, but I do gender on my own terms, mixing it all in with men's flannel shirts and jeans and letting my body hair grow as long and as thick as and where it will.
Somehow, though, longer hair feels like too much. It is somehow the line that, when crossed, tips me over into feeling like I did at fifteen when my mother paid her hairdressser to give my hair a "feminine softness" with toxic perms and texturizing shears. As soon as that hair creeps down around my ears, it feels like a deep and shameful lie is being committed. I'm that kid in 1988 again who can't reveal the truth that lies in the great grey areas of her heart.
So, because I was rebelling against the ludicrous idea that no one can grow their hair after forty, I was growing my hair out, never mind the fact that I'm not actually forty yet, and then I ran headlong into my heart's battle with cultural gender norms. It's not surprising that this wasn't working out for me so well. No one wants to listen to a person whine about how long her hair is when it's barely over two inches, so I got with my previously successful program and sat down with my clippers a few days ago, snapped on the 7/8ths-of-an-inch attachment, and returned myself to my beautiful, nearly brush-cutted former self.
I realized that this was not about turning forty, and this was not about confronting gender norms. This was about, once again, accepting my own sense of beauty on my own terms, because really? How much sense does it make to go through the awkward process of growing one's hair out and to perform an uncomfortable level of female drag for over a year just because I'm going to be forty in ten-and-a-half months? It makes no sense at all.
Plus? I really do rock the short hair.
----------------------------
PS. I'm up for a 2012 Bloggie, for which there is voting to be done. Ahem.
categorized in fashion & style, personal history and tagged in beauty, childhood, gender, hair, haircuts, past, style
fashion & style, personal history and tagged in beauty, childhood, gender, hair, haircuts, past, style 
Reader Comments (24)
You really do rock the short hair, in a way that I never could. I tried it in the 80s, and damn if I did not look truly awful.
Also? I'm 41, and my hair's the longest it's ever been. :)
Also turning 40 this year. Also rocking the short hair, and realizing it's because I feel most myself this way. Also faced years of family members and male acquaintances making pointed remarks about it. I love your perspective on it.
i'm letting my hair go white & i love it. you rock the short hair & i love it.
we do what we do and fuck what anybody says about it.
Letting my hair grow for the first time time years as well and surprised that I still have hair. It looks stupid though.
You seriously do rock the short hair and I am jealous of it. I have no idea if I could rock it or not because I don't have the courage to even try. I did cut it short once and I just wasn't happy with it but I wanted to like it so much. I think because I wasn't confident enough to be that exposed, and go so far out of what is the norm for women.
Keep rocking that style my friend, you wear it well. (although I am sure that you would rock the long hair too!)
I think that short hair on women is very bold - I have always toyed with the idea of shaving my head, but I am uncertain as to whether it is lumpy under there and I have a weird looking head and don't know it. I think it looks cute and suits you and I can't picture you any other way, really.
PS - You got my Bloggie vote. So excited for you!
So strange the ideas of beauty and femininity we have wrapped up in hair length. I feel I'm most beautiful, strong and sexy with cropped hair. When it's longer, I feel mousy and hidden.
My 7yo looks beyond beautiful with short hair but aches for long hair. I finally let her grow it (with sadness, I must say) and she loves it.
The other day she told me I'd look prettier with long hair which led to the conversation about the only opinion that matters about how we look -- is our own. If she likes herself with long hair, it doesn't necessarily matter what her mama thinks. And that if I think I'm a goddess with short hair, I'll still think that regardless of what others say.
I'm over-simplifying things here but you get the point. I hope she feels free to express herself just as I try to do the same.
Also, I hope you find 40 as empowering as I have. I've found you get to leave a lot of bullshit behind.
I've always liked short hair on women. Is that a gay man thing? I'm thinking about what Michelle Williams said about how straight men don't really like her hair.
I had let my hair/beard grow a little bit over the last month or so, but today I went back to the completely bald/goatee look. I normally shave down to the skin: I've lost pretty much all my hair on top by now and when the side hair grows out I just don't like the jarring difference between the two. It always feels so...gross on a tactile level.
At some point, you find a look that works for you, and then when you do anything different, it just feels wrong.
You really do rock the short hair. It's so important we define beauty on our own terms. Also? As a woman who is now past 42, I'm finding that the number doesn't matter so much as the attitude ;)
I have done the short-to-long thing and let me tell you that staying short (especially when it's what you really want to do and it's a look that looks great on you, as it did not on me, at all, SIGH) is really the only way to avoid a truly painful and ridiculous-looking 2 or 3 years. So...good decision is what I'm trying to say here. Well done.
You seriously do rock the short hair, and I am ... not jealous, exactly. I rocked the short hair for years, and then had a bunch of kids and grew my hair out -- they were somehow related, I swear -- and now I'm not sure what to do. With my hair, I mean. I think often, and fondly, of cutting it all off. But it's so healthy, and looks good, so I don't. I think what's really bothering me is that I am stuck in glasses (which you also rock) after wearing contact lenses for, oh, 30+ years. I'm not sure what the issue with my eyes is, but I don't like wearing glasses. Even the cute purple-framed ones I wear. I want sunglasses, and peripheral vision, and the end of fingerprint smudges over my eyes (that would be the kids, especially the 14mo). Anyhoo: don't let age or gender norms dictate anything. That's my policy.
You seriously do rock the short hair, and I am ... not jealous, exactly. I rocked the short hair for years, and then had a bunch of kids and grew my hair out -- they were somehow related, I swear -- and now I'm not sure what to do. With my hair, I mean. I think often, and fondly, of cutting it all off. But it's so healthy, and looks good, so I don't. I think what's really bothering me is that I am stuck in glasses (which you also rock) after wearing contact lenses for, oh, 30+ years. I'm not sure what the issue with my eyes is, but I don't like wearing glasses. Even the cute purple-framed ones I wear. I want sunglasses, and peripheral vision, and the end of fingerprint smudges over my eyes (that would be the kids, especially the 14mo). Anyhoo: don't let age or gender norms dictate anything. That's my policy.
What Priya said.
Ack! I'm in mullet hell. I have short AND grey hair. I've been trying to grow it out but I'm breaking, hard and fast. I'll be hitting Canada for a book tour in April which means I will finally, finally be able to sit in my sorely missed stylist's chair once again. I think I'm gonna have to have me some serious razor time. I too rock the short hair.
ps voted for you so bonne chance!
The haircut that is perfect for your age is the haircut *you* feel most comfortable in, nothing else. I have long hair - because I loathe sitting in the hairdresser's chair and feel happiest with a great big Wilma Flintstone unkempt type do - and I have no intention to have it cut short when I hit 40 in 3 years' time. Currently considering adding a touch of color to the ginger - purple perhaps - because it's fun and still shopping at teenage stores for jeans and hoodies, still wearing Converse shoes, still watching cartoons, still building Lego and still collecting Wacky Packages cards because... I can and want to. Take that ageism!!!
I'm 50. Turning 51 in days...... and it's liberating.
I was once a day-glo redhead with crooked teeth and an afro (courtesy of a Toni home permanent). I was Fright Night on legs....
You're a girl. A baby.
Beautiful With rockin hair.
Enjoy.
I've had short hair for most of my life. I'm groing it out for charity and as soon as it gets long enough I'm chopping it off. Long hair is more work than I ever imagine.
It's not really agism if I dye my hair forever. I always did it.
At 54 I am growing my hair. Again. This time at the request of my husband. I've had short hair for most of my life and I think I prefer it but after 30 years of marriage, I think I'll humor him for a bit. I've gone from very short (shaved back) to almost shoulder length and layered. It's taken about 5 months and I still have a bit to go. Fortunately, I have a very good hair stylist who is helping me keep from taking the scissors to my hair. I've cut my own hair many many times and have a hard time letting someone else do it.
I will admit, it looks better than I thought it would (but I'm not giving up my hair color and letting it go Mrs Claus white)
You DO rule the short hair. I think it suits you perfectly. You are beautiful, inside and out.
I love when you allow us into your head, your perception, your perspective... give us glimpses of your past, and put so many good words and emotions into the discussion of gender and femininity and expression.
And you are beautiful.
I think it is so sexy when a woman claims her beauty, whatever that looks like to her. I, for myself, prefer short hair, no make-up, jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers with color. But there are days I want to put on a skirt and flats. I will wear whatever makes me happy and I won't care what you think. My husband loves me and never pushes me toward one look or another. And for the record, my hair is not turning EVENLY gray fast enough. It's a wonky brownish, reddish, patchy grayish design that needs to be colored.
P.S. I shaved my hair into a mohawk in high school on a dare. My mother about died. I put gel in the hair that was left and rocked it for a few weeks.
"Never" is a strong word, but having chopped all my hair off and realizing I can still do girly or stompy all by myself (f you, Tyler Perry, f you), I find it hard to believe I'll ever grow it long again. It wasn't bad, before, that longish bob thing that I had, but-- short was kind of my unfulfilled hair destiny. There's still lots about my new and aging body that I am getting used to, but the short hair? That's not hard at all.
I am working hard on the lesson of if it makes you happy, try not to think about it too much, and just-- let it make you happy.
I am glad your short hair makes you happy. It sure makes you gorgeous, no matter what benchmark.
I just grew out my hair, after 15 years of alternating between short and shortish, also because I turned 40, but not because I thought I couldn't, but because I thought it was my last chance because most women in their 50s seem to have short short hair. Which I have no problem with, except if it's expected, you know? It's so stupid to be so caught up in what we can and can't do at different ages with our hair, for chrissakes, I mean really, who cares? But somehow I still do worry.