Yesterday my roommate sent me a link to an egregious article on TotalFratMove.com titled “ Why Girls Should Not Cut Their Hair Short”- cue the feminist outrage. This article contains numerous reasons for why girls should not cut their hair because, naturally, our sole mission in life is to be pretty.
The wonderfully educated author behind this article, RogerSterlingJr, begins this piece by coining short hair as the “frat swoop”. Yes, it is true readers, fraternities are the only place short hair is allowed and appreciated. Our lord douchebag then continues to highlight one of his main arguments: if celebrity women cannot “rock” short hair, then why the hell do the rest of us peasant women think we can?! He lists Jennifer Lawrence’s, a woman “you’d only bang if she lost ten pounds”, new haircut as an example for she really “should have cut her dessert instead”. I found this particular example incredibly hurtful because 1.) I LOVE Jennifer Lawrence, and 2.) It highlights the huge misconception many people possess on what a “healthy” female body looks like.
Due to Photoshop and airbrushing, female models are created to look like perfect androids with bodies that don’t exist without the help of a computer. This example also highlights the innate problem behind female objectification. Since women are consistently portrayed as objects in almost every facet of mass media, it is gives men, and women, the freedom to make disparaging remarks about a woman’s body.
RogerSterlingJr, the “educated” author of this blog post, makes another winning argument by stating that short hair only exemplifies a woman’s ugly features. Here’s the literal quote for full effect:
“Maybe we take for granted your impeccable sense of style, flawless skin tone, or professionally whitened and straightened teeth, but trust me, if you dress like a moron, if you’re covered in acne, or if you’re chewing on glass, we pick it up immediately. If I even have an opinion on girl hairstyles, by default, it means that the hairstyle either has to be terrible or on Adriana Lima.”
This is a classic example of male privilege and the real effects sexual objectification has on society’s perceptions of women. I will never understand how some guys are generally offended when women do not dress nicely or put makeup on. Women do not have to be pretty, we do not owe it to society. It is not our job to be consistently aesthetically pleasing to EVERY guy.
One of my old guy friends made this abundantly clear to me when he told me carte blanche: “ you know you’d look a lot prettier if you colored in your eyebrows”. I was initially shocked and hurt by his remark because it made me feel ashamed. I felt so ashamed that the next day I went to Sephora to buy eyebrow pencil because I was embarrassed by my light eyebrows and felt this urgent need to cover up this supposed flaw of mine. Articles similar to this one truly worry me because I have to wonder how many individuals feel the same was as RogerSterlingJr and what that could mean for young women. How do we combat opinions such as these to show that women, are not just objects and we can cut our hair however we damn well please!
ShoutOut! James Madison University 
Wow! These male perspectives really surprise me. Not in the misogynistic way- because I sadly expected that- but in the detailed beauty expectations that I have always felt is mostly enforced by women due to patriarchal influences. Like, I feel like my girlfriends would say things about my eyebrows before my guy friends. The hair thing though has always been a point of tension for me because I know so many guys who only like long hair on women. It is almost like if a women chooses “masculine” aspects in her physical appearance it devalues her female status. UGH.
PS- Agreed, Jennifer Lawrence is a perfect human being.
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