Pixie cuts have been around since the 1950s, but as of 2010 the trend has been rapidly popularized among young women. The pixie cut trend, in its simplest form, consists of girls chopping off their hair for a cut that is closely cropped on the back and sides of the head, with longer pieces of hair in the front.
Changing a physical feature, like her hair, can be the first step a girl takes toward changing other aspects of her life. A girl may get a pixie cut for many reasons, such as going through a tough time in her life, feeling bored or no longer confident in her appearance, or simply because it compliments the shape of her face.
There are some people, however, who have negative opinions on the popular pixie cut trend.
Roger Sterling Jr, of the website “Total Frat Move” claims, “If there are acceptable times for a lady to have short hair, it is at the two extremes of her life. My grandma has short hair and it fits her. My 1-year-old cousin does, too, and that’s fine. The difference between them and you is that they have no one to impress. If you’re in the female sweet spot, between the ages of 18 and 28, you certainly do.”
The problem with Sterling’s claim is that he writes with the assumption that he is the one girls need to impress. He does not approach the topic considering that there are males in the world who are still attracted to a woman of 18 to 28 even with short hair.
There is even the fact to be considered that most women who cut their hair short are not doing so to impress the male population. Some of these women, like myself, do not focus solely on getting attention from males, especially from men who dismiss an entire group of women on one aspect of their physical appearance.
Other women who don the haircut do not want any male attention at all, because they are not attracted to men. The fact that a lot of women who are not heterosexual have pixie cuts has lead to the stereotype that any woman that cuts her hair short is trying to be “butch,” as in she is attempting to assimilate her own physical appearance to that of a man.
For some women, this information is true, but for many women, even some of the ones who are not heterosexual, this assumption is false and offensive. The roles are almost never seen reversed too. A man with long hair has far less encounters with people assuming he is not heterosexual, or telling him he is trying to imitate the appearance of a woman.
Even if a woman is, in fact, not heterosexual and has a short haircut so that she can achieve a “butch” appearance, it is disrespectful to assume what a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity is based on a single physical feature. Of course, not all people make this assumption, but it is shocking how even much older, mature people are stooping to this level.
“I had journalists asking me if this meant I was coming out, if I was a lesbian now,” said actress and women’s rights activist, Emma Watson on cutting off most of her hair.
The majority of journalists have at least a four-year college education, yet they still feel the need to make superficially based assumptions, belittling a woman even as powerful and influential as Emma Watson down to her haircut.
As for these people who judge a woman by their hair, who consider anything shorter than modern a bob to be unacceptable or “butch”, they can go ahead and stick to long-haired women. That is, if those long-haired women are still attracted to them once they discover their sexist and shallow ideology.
