3CB

My mind-frame has had a theme for the past few months. You could say I’ve been pre-occupied with what people think and how their thoughts and opinions might (not) affect me. So somewhere in the midst of that, I bumped this article that says men hate women with short hair. Or rather, men hate short hair on women. The article was very well written and had me in stitches with gems like:

Women are quick to encourage other women to cut their hair by telling them how “cute” it is. While I’m no scientist, I’m convinced this is some deep, genetic programming at work, one that forces women—who compete with one another on a physical level on a daily basis—to encourage any behavior that might eliminate competitors in the dating pool.

The plaudits a Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, or Anne Hathaway receive when they cut their hair off—from people who have no business commenting on the attractiveness of women, like gay men—creates a copycat cycle that increases the trend geometrically.

I laughed especially hard about gay men not being qualified to comment on what is attractive in a woman. I’ve never thought of it like that. The assumption is gay men are fashionable and astute. It never occurred to me that a person who isn’t attracted to women might not exactly know what makes a woman attractive.

The funny thing is that I’ve been accused of the same thing. I’ve had several encounters with men where I pointed out a woman I thought was hot and they dismissed my suggestion completely. Other times, they go all ga-ga over some woman that I think looks perfectly ordinary.

Two things. First, yes, I’m that girl, the one guys talk to about the hotness of other girls. It’s like they don’t know I’m female! *frustrated sigh* Second, the women I think are attractive are petite – ideally five feet – and have hourglass figures. A-line figures are hot too – that’s the tiny waist and voluptuous hips – the so-called Rwandese figure. For me, curvy is hot, especially if the girl is flatter around the tummy region.

Now, let’s take the example of two hot girls. I’ve polled 15 different men, and they all agree that these girls are off the charts. They’re both petite. One is on the slimmer side – she has the body of a gymnast and loves to party. The other one is shy, a bit more chubby, but she loves to dance. I asked the guys why these girls were rated so highly and they said, “It’s the way she moves. Makes it look like she’d know what to in bed.” Oh. I see. I’d have put it down to their bubbly nature (and affinity for selfies) but hey, what do I know?

In town, I sometimes stare at women that I think are attractive. They have doe eyes and picture perfect faces, or tiny portable bodies with beautiful coca-cola curves. Or they might be a bit larger with hips that couldn’t possibly lie. Some have perfectly rounded breasts that don’t jiggle when they walk – lord knows how. I keep wanting to stop them and ask them where they buy their bras!   

I look at them and think wow, I wish I looked more like that. Then as an experiment, I look around to see how many men are staring at these visions of beauty. And every single time I do this experiment, there is no man drooling over my picture-perfect girl. Not one! Are they all blind? At some point, I had to admit that maybe what I think is attractive in a woman isn’t necessarily the same thing men admire.

I pointed this out to a good male friend, and he sneered and said, “But you girls make the rules. You decide which girl is hot and we all agree. You all envy the prettiest girl in your group and act with deference or spite towards her – sometimes both. So we follow your cues and all hit on her.” Yeah, not according to my experiment you don’t.

Anyway, back to the matter of short hair. For a long time, it was assumed that I was making a statement by wearing purple dreadlocks. I wasn’t by the way, I just like purple and the idea of never combing my hair. Now that I have a short afro (which I unfortunately have to comb) it’s once again assumed that I’m either making a statement or following a fad. Again, it was an accidental hairdo, and I’m keeping until I decide what to do next.

The article about girls with short hair being damaged assumes two things [which the writer seems to genuinely believe]. (a) Men love long hair on women, period. (b) Women with short hair have some inherent problem, which is what prompted them to cut their hair. It doesn’t even cross his mind that a girl might just like the short-haired look.

A feminist might argue from the point of, “I’m not made for your pleasure. My hair isn’t intended to make you happy. It’s on my head after all.” A landmark forum leader took the opposite view. “You choose what you wear, but it’s your partner that has to look at you all day. You pass a mirror maybe three or four times a day. The rest of the time, it’s them that have to watch you. So maybe they should have a say in how you look.” By extension, I suppose society should have a hand in dictating fashion, yes?

The writer argues from the basic angle that men dislike short hair and that girls with short hair get hit on less. I don’t fully agree with that, because I’m getting lots more compliments since I went afro. Of course that might be because my previous hairdo involved purple dreadlocks, but not all the compliments are from guys that know me, so it’s not necessarily a before-after kind of thing. Plus, natural afros are currently in vogue in this part of the world, so maybe we’ve taught the guys that TWAs (teeny weeny afros – and yes, I do burst into helpless giggles every time I hear that abbreviation) are attractive. Oh yeah, there’s also this …

Granted a lot of older women wear their hair short(er than they did in their youth), even in the west. And I have my doubts that these First Ladies are part of the Shea Butter Gang. They probably just wash and comb (with a bean comb muhahaha) without all the 69 products, tools, accessories and processes the average modern-day-naturalista uses. Currently, my hair looks a lot like theirs *pointing up there* … except it takes half an hour daily to get that way. Which for me is 30 minutes too long, because I previously had dreads and hadn’t combed my hair in 15 years. Le sigh.

I don’t know about guys liking my new look. The guys at work say it’s gorgeous, but a lot of women in our industry are wearing their hair this way, so either the guys have acclimatised  or we’ve trained them really well, muhahahaha. My father and brothers just say I look different. They refuse to commit on whether different is good or bad … but then they didn’t like my previous hairdo either so that’s nothing new.

Strangers in the street seem to be staring more, which could be as much a sign of pleasure as distaste. I’ve received some open compliments from strange men – emphasis on the strange – but that might be because short afros are less intimidating than purple dreads. Overall, I think the afro has been received positively. Still…

 Just because you have enough left-over attractiveness to remain bangable after cutting off your hair doesn’t mean you wouldn’t look better with it back on.

Le ouch!

Speaking for myself, the article didn’t offend me so much as amuse me, and it still does. It did make me think about what men find attractive, and how much women hurt themselves trying to be hotter when all we’re doing is enhancing features that men might not even notice. And it makes me wonder – what’s more important – being attractive to guys, or being attractive to yourself? Does it matter if a girl walks around feeling absolutely beautiful even if men disagree so much that not a single man is hitting in her? ION…

♫ All of me ♫ John Legend ♫

There’s an episode of 7th Heaven where Matt has a bit of an … episode … about girlfriends past. It happens on Valentines’ Day or something. He’s sitting there thinking about why he’s alone, so he ends up visiting all his exes to find out exactly why he broke up with them. I do that sometimes. I look back at the guys in my life and try to analyse what went wrong.

Because I’m such an over-thinker, I generally have clear, distinctive answers to my musings. There’s only one ex I would willingly go back to, and sometimes I still wonder why he left. Plus, we’re still on good terms, so every once in a while we have a nice, friendly chat.

He’s seeing someone else now, and I’m genuinely happy for them. She’s the complete opposite of me, the kind of girl I sometimes want to be. Looking at her, I see why he left me. She’s everything I never was, everything I tried to be for him. He used to say I moulded myself into him, changed myself to suit him.

You see, he had a very clear idea of what his dream girl was like, and when he first asked me out, he said he was surprised that he had fallen for me at all. I was so not dream-girl material. I spent the entire relationship worrying that he would find the girl of his dreams and that I could never really make him happy. I weaved between trying to be her and berating myself for not quite making it.

In the end, he picked someone who could be that kind of girl effortlessly, even though we’d been apart for two years before he met her. Of course she has flaws (and of course I see those flaws quite clearly). But he loves her good points more.

Sometimes I wonder if he ever thinks of me, or misses me, if there are traits in me that he wishes she possessed. After all, we had stuff in common that she doesn’t get. She’s not much of a reader, for example. I first met him in a virtual library, and she doesn’t seem to enjoy books very much.

I asked him about it once. I was re-reading the book he bought me on my birthday, and asked him what he was reading at the time. He said he doesn’t read much these days. His girl prefers movies, so they have season tickets to their equivalent of IMAX. I wondered (inside my head) if he missed reading, and whether – by extension – he missed me. But I respect his new relationship, so I’d never ever ask that question out loud.

It made me wonder about cheating. There will always be a certain quality, memory, hobby you share with your ex that your current doesn’t quite understand. Or maybe you meet someone new that shares the one hobby your current partner detests. If you were to indulge that particular longing, it could be very easy to have that passion for  minute, or an hour, or a night. I guess you just have to choose not to indulge it.

So I look at this ex now, at the person he becomes when he’s with her, a person I never saw when we were together. I wonder if that person was inside him all along, itching to be let out, or whether he has changed to suit her just like I changed to suit him. I wonder if being with me restricted him from ‘being himself’ or whether I was so caught up in my vision of him that I simply didn’t notice those things about him.

I wonder if I could love the person that he is now, the person he has become because of her, and whether this new person could ever love a girl like me. Probably not, or he would still be with me. That’s why people should never play ‘what if’. It’s a pointless, hurtful, extremely dangerous game. Also, Happy-Month-After-Valentines-Day.

♫ Broken Wings ♫ Alter Bridge ♫

I had surgery a while back, which meant I couldn’t wear jeans. I’m not really girly person, but to avoid hurting my wound, I wore dresses and skirts for a week. And because I’m … well … me … I wore all my dresses with matching sneakers. I was aware it wasn’t very kosher, but I pretended not to care, and most people pretended not to notice.

On the fourth day of dresses, a workmate stopped me in the corridor. She pointed out my dress was very lovely, but that I was wearing the wrong shoes. I laughed it off and made some witty comment. But I did wonder about it. If I can wear jeans with heels, then who exactly decided dresses must be worn with girly shoes? I mean it’s only fabric and leather, so it shouldn’t really matter what goes with what.

Fashion is ‘dictated’ when a famous person wears something and everyone else copies the look. I’m sure if Angelina Jolie showed up on the catwalk in gunias, it would become the next big thing. So who says if I wear something different that thing is wrong? I mean if everyone jumped off a building, chopped off their middle finger, or walked around naked, that wouldn’t make it a smart thing to do.

[Un]fortunately, the world doesn’t function like that. ‘Logic’ states that if 90% of people agree with something, then that thing is right. Sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be 90%. Sometimes it’s only 5%, or 3%, or even 1%, as long as that 1% has power or ‘moral authority’. That’s why in many parts of the world, it’s still ‘wrong’ to be gay, female, or even black.

Fashion is always a tricky thing. But if someone felt confident enough to leave the house looking a certain way, you can do a lot of damage by making them doubt their choices. The damage is worse when the person has no option to go back and change, so they have to walk around all day feeling self-conscious and awful. It isn’t just about wearing the wrong shoes. It can be about a woman who felt attractive in the morning, but after some pointless catcall, she finds herself wondering if what she’s wearing is ‘wrong’, or if she’s asking for abuse.

I’m not trying to be a fashion misfit here. I’m just saying opinion is relative, everyone has their own, and as long as you’re not hurting anyone, you shouldn’t be made to feel ‘wrong’ just because you think the sky is green and grass is blue. And even if you have the best intentions, or you don’t really mean it, or you don’t know any better, you shouldn’t make other people feel wrong. It’s not about being rebellious or hypersensitive. It’s about wearing someone else’s shoes. Before you say something [stupid], stop and think. Just take a moment to notice how you’d feel if that other person was you.

♫ Say goodbye ♫ Skillet ♫