“I always liked short hair. When I was in kindergarten, I really wanted to have a Mikado. My mother was very much against it, because a little girl should have beautiful long hair. I begged her for months until she softened. So happy.” 24-year-old Denisa, who has been cutting her hair for three years now.
He adds, “It doesn’t have any specific message, it’s mainly about aesthetic value. Maybe I feel different in it, especially from an aesthetic point of view. But that’s a small factor.”
Lucy, a 25-year-old photographer, sees her hair as an important sign of her personality. “Maybe it’s a little different, which is what I’ve always been drawn to. But mostly, it’s me and I feel a little more feminine than long hair,” says Lucy, whose short hair is often in two waves. The first lasted from 13 to 18 years, and the second began three years ago. And it was the insensitive comments that made her go back to long hair for a few years.
Short hair takes you out of the game
Examples of such comments were given by Denisa: “People ask me if I’m a lesbian based solely on the length of my hair. And it makes me angry. Not because I have a problem with people who think that, but because I find it stupid to infer sexual orientation based on superficial information.” According to her, the worst comparisons are with boyish looks and sexual innuendos in the style of “Is this why your partner grabs you during sex?” and comments that men prefer women with long hair and that she kicks the game out with her hairstyle.
Lucy admits that such comments robbed her of her self-confidence. She was single for a long time and I constantly got questions around her if she liked girls and how she was doing. I wondered if her short hair was the “reason” she hadn’t dated anyone. “Today, in hindsight, I can say that the reason I went back to long hair less than two years ago was precisely because of the harsh and insensitive comments,” says the young photographer. Since her return to short hair two years ago, she hasn’t faced inappropriate comments. “Maybe it’s because I’ve changed the group of people and I’m moving into an artistic field where no one is commenting on this,” she says.
Hairstyles have a symbolic function
Neither Lucia nor Denis thought their short hair could convey any meaning until those around them confronted it. “I don’t get it at all. Short hair always gets some stupid comments, like a complicated tag with a bunch of meaning behind it. I realize that for some women, but there’s also a group of women out there who cut their hair short because they like it and not They have such a sharply coded ideology.”
According to ethnologist, science journalist, and author of Hair History Martin Rechlik, hairstyles have a huge symbolic function. “After the first eye contact, they become the most perceptive component of people’s initial communication,” he says. It refers to many things such as gender, age, status, or affiliation to social groups. He adds: “Their coverage means, for example, religious affiliation, historically also marriage and the like. Nowadays, when we are influenced by many influences and live in a postmodern society, they can also ‘read’ other people’s hairstyles badly.”
According to him, the inappropriate comments stemmed from social stereotypes. “Even in the 1980s and 1990s, it was rare in Euro-American society for a woman from the general population to cut her hair very short. Let’s remember the public shock caused by singer Sinéad O’Connor in 1987 with her bare hair cut,” he said of a specific example.
According to Rechlik, a woman without long hair is not seen as a “typical woman”. He believes that “this is likely the reason for the stupid questions of cited abusers or chauvinists who live in misleading boxes and prejudices.”
Both Denisa and Lucy emphasize that they feel more feminine in short hair. “I don’t associate my hair with some essence of femininity. I’m a woman, I feel that way, and cutting hair doesn’t change that in my case,” explains Denisa, who is finally starting to feel confident thanks to her. short hair. “I’ve never kept a single haircut as long as I have now,” she says. Lucy, in turn, adds that today it seems absurd to her that long hair for some time was evidence that she was “very girly.”
Cutting hair means shyness
Rychlík mentions two sets of historical events associated with the humiliation of women by cutting their long hair. One is the forcible cutting of women in Nazi concentration camps, and the other is the punishment of female collaborators with the Nazis. “It is no coincidence that the hair-cutting process in the camps was called Entwesung, or depersonalization, purification. It was a traumatic experience for them, complete dehumanization, because they could not imagine themselves without styling their hair,” the surviving women recall, reports and recalls Research. Historian Marta Kosova, who survived Theresien and Auschwitz.
“After the war I conducted a survey on this topic and found that a quarter of the sixty survivors lost the feeling of being women after their arrival in the concentration camp. Precisely because of the loss of their attractive appearance and their hair,” says Rychlík. In turn, women accused of collaborating were publicly hacked and driven around the cities. “This is shown, for example, in Tornatore’s Maléna with the humiliated and humiliated Monica Bellucci. We have evidence of such disgrace from May-June 1945 in the Czech lands,” says Rychlík.
Men stop me in the street
However, Denisa and Lucy find that some men are attracted to their short hair. “Some men even stop me on the street and tell me how good I look and that they prefer women with short hair. There are also many profiles on the Internet where men only share pictures of women with short hair. Some call me, but I have become A bit perverted, even fetishistic.” The two young women also agree that they receive praise rather than silly remarks.
Rychlík adds that the legends of ancient authors such as Hérodotos, Strabo and Diodoros do mention the Amazons. “They fought and trained in the same way as men. So you can expect the same hair treatment, that is, in short. In the following traditions, they were seen as strong and distinguished,” he says.
Denisa concludes by saying that the neighborhood should spend less time commenting on the appearance of strangers. “I follow a rule that if it can be changed in a few minutes, like smudged mascara or weird hair pops, I’ll mention it. But if it’s things like hair length, color, weight, or clothing, I don’t comment. When it’s The other person is happy, why did I spoil it for him?
Video: Akhmedova: Women suffer from terror because of their appearance, but it is not our duty to please others (January 16, 2021)
Accepting your body is a lifelong process, and it is not my duty to look like the perfect beauty, I take responsibility for my body to be healthy. | Video: Daniela Dretnova
