Haircuts and the Obligation of Attractiveness

How I've presented myself, my clothing and haircut and all of that physical appearance stuff, has changed significantly over the nearly 21 years I've been around, which isn't really surprising.  I grew up unschooled, and as with most kids who don't go to school, I wore an eclectic and often colourful mix of clothing made up of whatever it made me happy to wear, with very little awareness of what "in style" even was, let alone whether I was doing it right.  My hair was worn long, curling and tangling down my back.

Once in my teenage years, I hit a patch where I really wanted to fit in, and I wore at least vaguely fashionable clothes, make-up, bought some real bras, and presented in a very "typically" feminine way.

Then my sister instigated our two-woman bra-burning, razor chucking revolution, and I cut my hair.  Not just the fairly short haircuts I'd had in the past, but really short: mohawk-ish style, with the sides shaved and a wide strip down the middle left to curl and tangle. As with my young self, my hair and clothing choices were once again based on what made me happy.

And I started noticing an interesting shift in how people reacted to me and what people assumed about me.  Suddenly, a lot of people were asking "are you lesbian?" Once when I was walking through a park, some dude-bro type teenage guy yelled "I just saw a lesbian!!" as I passed.  To be fair, it probably wasn't just the hair. The loose jeans, "smash the state" t-shirt, and plaid button-up shirt might also have fed into his stereotypical ideas around sexuality.

Suddenly I wasn't a "nerd," as I'd felt I was classified as for years, but apparently "lesbian" instead.  This is a weird thing to me, in part because being read as queer (and I feel I'm often read as queer by queer people, as well, not just asshole guys in parks) feels somehow dishonest to me, since though I don't identify as straight, I also don't identify as queer, and feel pretty conflicted and uncomfortable with any labels when it comes to my sexuality. It also seems really strange to me that people think so instantly that they've figured out a large part of my personal identity because of, what, the way I cut my hair? As the amazing Andrea Gibson, queer activist slam poet extraordinaire, says in her poem The Jewelery Store: "I can guarantee a haircut will never tell you anything about someone's gender, who they love, or how they fuck."

And I started thinking about the reaction people often have to me and other women (and people perceived incorrectly to be women) who don't shave, don't wear bras, wear "un-feminine" clothes, have "un-feminine" haircuts or similar things, the reactions of anger, indignation, disgust, and I started trying to figure out where that was coming from. People are always punished socially (and sometimes institutionally, as well) for deviating from the norms dictated by the dominant culture, but I find it interesting and eye-opening to track down what exactly is the root emotion or idea the negative reactions are stemming from in each case, since though people are punished for not "dressing like their gender," not sending their kids to school, practicing Wicca, or a large variety of other things, how and why people react negatively differs in each instance.

So why, I wondered, is the reaction from men to women dressing in "un-feminine" ways one of indignation?

And here's what I came up with as at least part of the answer: this culture rewards and centers around white-cisgender-heterosexual-males above all else. Those men are told from the time they're small how much they're worth, how much they're owed, and that that they have the right to own others, among many things. And women, well, we owe (white-heterosexual-etc.) men our bodies, and our attractiveness. We have an obligation to attempt to be attractive to heterosexual men. So when we fail in our cultural obligation, the reaction from men is not just anger, but literally indignation. "How dare they??"

Other women also often react very negatively when some women choose not to try and draw the male gaze by attempting to fit culturally-sanctioned ideas of attractiveness, but when it comes to women, I feel like the emotion is usually more akin to resentment and sometimes disdain. It's anger at a reminder that all the effort, work, and possibly misery that goes into their own shaping of attractiveness is being dodged by others. I guess it's a bit of a "how dare they?" reaction as well, but one spurred by anger at what's expected of them instead of a sense of an obligation left unpaid.

I guess it's nice to know that the very way I've presented myself is, in a way, a big "fuck you" to some people who really deserve it. 

But ultimately, the way I choose to dress/present myself has less to do with giving people the finger and more to do with what's personally comfortable, what makes me feel good and confident and like I'm expressing my true self. The fuck-you's are just sometimes a happy bonus. And at this point, I'm no longer as happy with my haircut. I used to smile every time I looked in a mirror, liking what I saw, but now I'm more likely to grimace. Now I want to be presenting as more feminine than I feel I have been, not because I'm caving to any societal pressure to do so, just because that's how I feel right now and I know that will make me happiest. So I'm impatiently waiting for my hair to grow out, at which point I'll shave one side, and put purple streaks in the long hair which will then be braided. Now that will make me happy.

And hey, the shaved-side-of-head-and-purple-braids can still come across as a bit of a fuck you to mainstream ideals of beauty, right?

The zesty joy of weight loss

The other day I saw a particularly squicky ad. Of course, advertising is one of the worst places to look in terms of rampant negative stereotypes and terrible messages, and unfortunately I'm so used to seeing women in bikinis flocking to men because they have the right beer/cologne/shampoo/high speed network that I just can't feel angry every time. But sometimes it's the more subtle, insinuating messages that seem worse to me, personally, and that was the case with this Special K cereal ad that I saw. It starts by showing the feet of many women standing in front of their scales, nervous about stepping on. Then, as each of them steps up onto the scale, instead of showing numbers the little digital screens read 'joy', 'spirit', 'freedom', etc.
 

So let's start with a simple fact: losing weight isn't a magic wand for making life better.

It doesn't make someone become a happier, more confident, better person. There's definitely the societal notion that weight loss makes a person healthier (an often blatantly untrue generalization), but the interesting thing about this and many other commercials is that they don't even mention health when trying to market weight loss to women. So the question then becomes why is losing weight, even if it's a choice that has nothing to do with health, considered to be a good thing by default?
 

I think that a lot of it comes back to the fact that society expects women to be objects of beauty and sexual desirability for (heterosexual) men. Women are taught that their worth as a human being is inherently linked to their sexual desirability, and the current final word in beauty is being skinny. Women are inundated with messages that thin is beautiful, and since we've been taught that beauty defines us as people, that means that being 'fat' is something that makes you less of a person, and being 'thin' makes you a better person.

These messages about the inherent benefit of weight loss are, of course, everywhere. The hosts of celebrity gossip shows ask actresses what diet they're currently on with no doubt as to whether they are indeed dieting; because no woman in the public eye could possibly consider not striving to be 'beautiful', and no woman striving to be beautiful could eat with no regard for becoming/remaining thin, right? All the time, in TV fiction, in ads, in reality shows, we see people complimenting women on their weight loss, with the inherent assumption that the woman in question wanted to lose weight and is happy about her weight loss. No one ever considers whether the weight loss was intentional, whether her previous weight was healthy and suited to her, whether the weight loss might be caused by stress or illness. A simple congratulations seems to be all that's needed, and the woman in question is, of course, flattered (not upset that people are scrutinizing her weight and making judgements based on it, which is how I'd feel if someone tried to congratulate me on losing weight). And so we see, once again, that the attitude has nothing to do with health and everything to do with societal beauty standards. The woman is skinnier, and therefore prettier, and therefore it is a good thing.

Weight loss is just one more way of stripping women of choices regarding their own bodies, one more way to shame and control them, and one that's not only emotionally damaging but also incredibly physically damaging.

It took me awhile to realize why I found this particular ad so disturbing. There are the obvious issues of selling weight loss to women as a way to improve their lives, but I see that a lot in advertising. What really got to me was the imagery of the scale reading confidence, joy, zest. This commercial literally defines the entire character of a woman by a single number: her weight. And that is just fucking disturbing.