Short Shrift

I loved this article. Especially the comments section. And it got me thinking on the subject of short-versus-long-hair for women.

I’ll leave out my thoughts on Emma Watson, because they’re irrelevant (although, for the record and as a devoted Harry Potter fan, I think she’s both much, much prettier than I ever imagined Hermione being, and distinctly less pretty than she’s widely given credit for. To use the tiresome language of the manosphere, I imagined Hermione as a 5, Emma’s an 8, and she gets written about like she’s a 10.)

From the ultra-predictable female comments, long hair is a form of female oppression to rival foot-binding, while short hair is a gesture of liberation and sexual equality.

Freeing you from the vicious dictatorship of conventional femininity, and giving you the time to invent that cure for cancer or become Foreign Secretary.

Although, judging from a fair few short-haired women I know - who have notably yet to invent a cure for cancer or become Foreign Secretary – it’s actually just freed them up to spend more time watching crap telly and down the pub.

Which, don’t get me wrong, isn’t such a bad thing at all.

But as to whether it’s morally or intellectually superior to spending the extra hour with a hairdryer, some Philip Kingsley spray and the trusty old GHDs… the jury’s out.

Furthermore, I’ve never met a normal man who doesn’t prefer long hair on a woman.

And I’ve certainly never been out with a man who wouldn’t react to his other half coming home with an unexpected Eton crop much as his other half would react to him coming home saying he’d just spent his entire Christmas bonus in Spearmint Rhino.

As with so many things, the short-hair-loving men appear to exist solely in a magical parallel universe I’ve never been to.

Where I like to think they can live in happy harmony with the men who honestly don’t notice cellulite and the men who actually prefer a woman to have a bit of meat on her and the magic dancing unicorns with pixies riding on their backs.

But for once, I’m actually quite pleased I don’t meet men like this.

Show me a man who genuinely prefers the pixie crop to the glossy high-volume supermodelly mega-mane in real life.

Who finds the post-haircut Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby more sexually desirable than Raquel Welch in 10,000 BC.

Who finds Carey Mulligan more sexually desirable than Megan Fox.

And I’ll show you a man who’s one traumatic event and two bottles of wine away from trying to suck his best friend’s cock.

A man who’s so far in that closet he’s off for tea and Turkish delight with Jadis, Queen of Narnia.

Closet cases aside, it looks like some of the male long-hair-haters are the same kind of freaks who hate women wearing make-up – and are motivated by a deep-rooted misogyny that’s much, much scarier, sicker, angrier, darker and more virulent than your basic Nuts-mag sexism.

(There’s too much to say on this subject to touch on briefly, and it probably deserves a post in its own right. But I firmly believe that sexists and misogynists are two very different creatures - who may look a bit alike on the surface, but don’t be fooled. Sexists love brightly coloured lipstick, acrylic nails, ladette culture, casual sex and girls snogging girls in nightclubs. Misogynists hate, fear, obsess over and revile all of the above. Sexists secretly dream of a world where all women have to wear a miniskirt. Misogynists secretly dream of a world where all women have to wear a burka.)

Sexists inevitably and generically hate short hair on a woman. When it comes to misogynists, however, the jury’s out, and some of them actually prefer it.

Quite apart from these few warped and eerie specimens, the other men on the pro-short-hair side of the debate are mostly the dim-as-a-forty-watt-bulb numpties who say blithely ‘if a woman’s got a pretty enough face, she’ll look fantastic with short hair.’

Without ever realizing they might just as well be saying ‘If a woman’s got a pretty enough face, she’ll look fantastic with a large spot on her chin.’

I mean, it’s true as far as it goes. But it doesn’t mean that cultivating large spots on one’s chin is, in any way, shape or form, a good look.

Helen of Troy may have looked extraordinarily beautiful with an urchin-style crop.

But I guarantee you she would have looked a whole lot more extraordinarily beautiful with a great big fuck-off glossy Cindy-Crawford-style blow dry.

This, off the record, is my personal definition of a crap trend that anyone with half a brain should avoid like the bloody plague; ‘anyone who looks good in it will look much, much better in practically anything else you can possibly imagine.’

(See also: kitten heels, harem pants, novelty false eyelashes, yeti boots and black lipstick.)

There’s a good reason why Miss World contestants don’t have their hair cut very short.

And why female Nazi collaborators in newly-liberated France did.

In terms of female attractiveness, very short hair is definitively and emphatically Not A Good Thing.

Reminiscent of mental patients and lipstick-less lesbians and Jodie Foster in The Accused.

And concentration camps.

And cancer.

If these associations turn you on - tell your psychiatrist, but don’t tell me.

The only woman I’ve ever seen who looked really, genuinely super-hot with very short hair
was Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta - when she’s supposed to be in prison, but she isn’t really, and it’s V doing it all along. (And the diary she finds behind that stone in her cell is a fake, which is bloody ridiculous when you think of it, as there’s no way V could have possibly known for sure she was going to find it – and if she hadn’t found it, that would have been two or three weeks’ worth of writing straight down the bog.

(But then again, what can you expect from a film so fucking stupid that its secret mad-lone-rebel’s hideaway resembles a cross between Roman Abramovitch’s London pad and the Library Bar in the Lanesborough. Because of course, when our lone masked hero was single-handedly stealing priceless art treasures from the dark subterranean corners of London and squirreling them away in his makeshift concealed cellar, he was actually aided by a vanful of burly removal men and the entire fucking production team from Changing Rooms.

(But I digress, forgive me. Back to Natalie Portman’s haircut.)

Natalie Portman looked fabulous with an almost-shaved head, but this may have been helped by the following factors. Number one, she’s one of the most stunningly beautiful actresses in Hollywood to start off with. Number two, she was perfectly lit and photographed in a haunting, atmospheric, bleak-yet-deceptively-flattering light.

And number three – if you knew your Nars from your elbow - it was blindingly obvious that her bruised and vulnerable yet haunting make-up-free beauty was the sort of bruised and vulnerable yet haunting make-up-free beauty you can only achieve by spending two and a half hours under the hands and brushes of a highly skilled make-up artist.

And despite all this, she still didn’t look anywhere near as good as she’d looked with long hair in the first place.

The prosecution rests.

I prefer long hair, anyway.

Any thoughts?

J x