I love that we're having massive haircut discourse again. Where "love" means "loathe and abhor and if you ever wonder why the women in your life see sexism everywhere? This. Is. Why."
But this isn't just a sexist conversation, it's a classist one--I'm seeing a lot of "of course her haircut cost that much, it has to, can you IMAGINE getting a $20 haircut? Ew, gross." And we need to stop that.
I have a very elaborate, very high-maintenance dye job. If I paid for my hair styling, it would be about $500 a time, assuming I didn't tip (like an asshole). I don't pay for it, because my sister is a beautician.
And yes, we have a "pay for art" policy in this house, and my hair IS art, but I put her through beauty school/still pay for her cellphone/provided her with room and board the whole time. Her student loan is doing my hair for free until one of us is dead.
Prior to acquiring a sister who understood the complicated chemistry of hair, it was Supercuts and bathroom haircuts with a pair of hair scissors we'd acquired at the flea market. Because personal grooming is expensive, and we were all broke.
I hate having my hair done. It's lengthy and boring and everything smells like bleach and misery and I have to take like six showers to get all the chemicals out of my hair.
So why do I do it? Simple: because when I started dyeing my hair ridiculous fantasy colors, I started being treated better and as more of a professional.
The "fantasy colors" thing is probably semi-unique to being in a creative industry, but dyeing and maintaining my hair means I'm hitting a level of performative femininity that the patriarchy (yes, the patriarchy) requires from women and not from men.
Every time I'm up for a Hugo, I buy a new dress. If my weight has changed at all, I buy new shapewear. I buy new accessories. I'm not unique. And while I technically do have a choice, it's a shitty one.
If I, as a female-presenting individual, do not clearly Make An Effort, I show up on blog posts and Instagram as "ungrateful" and "lazy" and once, memorably, "overrated." My work and my talent are directly equated with my appearance.
For a woman, an award nomination costs between $200 and $1,000 dollars, basically non-negotiable. And so much of it is unconscious! If I don't wear mascara at an event, people talk about how tired I look.
I know men who've worn the same suit to ten Hugo ceremonies, or have shown up in jeans and T-shirts, and not gotten the flack I've seen women get for showing a little bit of back fat.
Our hair is policed the same way, and that's as a science fiction author. A politician is going to get it far more severely.
Also classist: acting like a good stylist doesn't deserve reasonable compensation for their labor. When sister does my hair, it's a four-hour process involving math, chemistry, and a lot of physical labor.
One mistake and my hair is fried, or bright pink, or falling off my head.
She's torn muscles in her shoulders doing eight-hour dye jobs on clients who wanted things even more elaborate than I do. (For proof, check her insta: elbowdeepinhair.)
She went to a trade school and paid a lot of money to learn how to do hair the way she does. It's an art and a craft, and if anything, her prices are shamefully low, because she already has to charge what the market will bear.
If you're going to demand that women meet an unbalanced and arbitrary standard of personal grooming--and changing that on a societal level would take at least a decade and wouldn't change what we're paying now, in addition...
...to putting a lot of hard-working people out of their jobs--then the least you can do is not try to shame us when we choose to fairly compensate the people (often women) who do the work to make us look that way.
My male peers are considered well-groomed and making an effort when they brush their hair. I need four hours of bleach and a mascara wand in my eye. It is what it is. As long as that's true, cut the mockery.
As an addendum: all my male friends in science fiction benefit from these unbalanced standards, but some of them are aware of it. As long as they're not the ones doing the enforcing, I don't blame them, any more than I blame myself and the other ladies for dyeing our hair.
Society is terrible, but it's where we all live, and they don't choose to benefit from the bad parts any more than I choose to suffer from them. Awareness and resistance matter more.
This is a very binary thread in part because I can't speak to the experiences of non-binary individuals. I've known several transwomen who were shocked and appalled when their hair was suddenly being policed as belonging to a woman, and their salon bills skyrocketed.
