Hair, personality and gender

[ssk7882]

Boy.  So much for the internet, great leveller of humanity, eh?  Now 
everyone knows exactly what we all look like.

Ah well.  I will content myself with the comforting suspicion that at 
least half of us are just making it all up.  ;-)


On Hair:

Tabouli wrote:

> Ah! For some reason, I've *always* pictured you (Elkins) with long 
> hair! Is it brown and somewhat wavy as well?

Cindy chimed in:

> Funny. I got a pretty strong brown vibe on Elkins as well. I'm 
> not getting the curly/wavy vibe, though, because short wavy hair 
> has been known to drive people crazy by getting all poofy at the 
> wrong time. I don't think Elkins would have risked it. 
> Elkins?

Alas!  I may pass for leggy, but it seems that even on the internet, 
I'll never succeed in masquerading as a blond.  Do gentlemen really 
prefer them?  Do they *really* have more fun?  These questions, it 
seems, will forever go unanswered, for none but the Elect may peer 
behind the veil to catch a glimpse of the Sacred Mysteries of 
Blondness.

My hair was indeed brown, once upon a time.  Then, for quite a long 
time, it was a very dark aubergine which looked black in dim 
lighting, but which was a lovely rich purple whenever I stepped out 
into the sun.

All that, however, was before I turned twenty-one, which was when the 
premature greying gene kicked into action.  

Boy, was *that* ever a surprise!  I stood staring at myself in the 
mirror in utter bewilderment, going: "What?  But, but, but, but...but 
*no one* in my family has *ever* gone grey this young!  Has my life 
really been that stressful?  Or was it all that injudicious hair 
dying that caused this to happen?"

Then I slapped myself on the forehead, suddenly remembering that I 
was adopted.

Ah, the joys of the genetic lottery!  There's just no way of knowing 
what might lie behind door number three.  Makes life one wacky 
surprise after another.

But as for the straight/wavy issue, you two can split the pot on that 
one.  My hair is straight (indeed, some might even call it "lank") 
until it reaches somewhere right below my shoulders.  Then, 
inexplicably, it goes all wavy.  (Yeah.  I *know* that it's 
supposed to work the other way around.  I've never understood that 
either.)  So indeed, when it was short it was very very straight, but 
now that it's long, it is wavy.  

Or was, anyway.  These days, thanks to the greying thing, it's sort 
of...neither.  White hairs are wiry, and they tend stick out at these 
weird crimped angles, so the overall impression is more one of frizzy 
grizzledness, I think, than of anything else.  

Suits me fine, really: I've chosen to embrace my outer hag.  I seem 
to be growing quite a bit of a beard, too.  Bring it all on, say I!  
And bring me some small and terrified children to eat, while you're 
at it!


On Personality and Gender:

Tabouli wrote:

> In terms of socialisation, though, girls and boys are raised *so* 
> differently, and get *such* different messages about how they're 
> expected to behave, I think gender and personality are inevitably 
> going to be related (though not, I imagine, in a way which would 
> show up on an HP quiz!).  I don't mean to say that men *can't* 
> exhibit stereotypically "female" behaviour and vice versa, it's 
> more that men and women are having their behaviour measured on 
> gender-specific scales.  The sort of behaviour which might be 
> acceptable for a woman could easily be unacceptably far from the 
> norm in a man, and vice versa.  

No arguments here, although I would like to point out that you've got 
two separate dynamics operating here simultaneously: how gender 
expectations and upbringing affect ones actual behavior; and how ones 
actual behavior is then interpreted and classified by others based on 
ones physical sex.  Not that they're unrelated at *all,* of course, 
but they are slightly different phenomena.  

The visible signs of sex difference encourage other people to fixate 
on gender-appropriate behaviors and tastes, while ignoring or 
glossing over the gender-inappropriate ones.  Women have to be quite
masculine, and men quite feminine, to register as psychologically 
androgynous in face-to-face interactions.  This is, of course, part 
of the reason that it is so easy to masquerade as the opposite sex on 
the internet.  Most people are really not all that strongly gender-
aligned; they appear far more so in person, because we are trained to 
read them that way.

How others determine ones gender classification can also be highly 
context-dependent.  The lone woman in an all-male milieu, for 
example, is likely to be interpreted as far more
stereotypically "feminine" than she would be in a mixed group.  A man 
participating in a primarily woman-centered discussion of feminism
or gender issues, on the other hand, is likely to have his masculine 
traits not only fixated upon by other members of the group, but also 
deliberately pointed out to him.  Even if the individuals in question 
are really quite androgynous, they will not be interpreted as such 
within those milieu.

Physical appearance also plays a significant role.  The more obvious
individuals' secondary sex characteristics are, the more likely they
are to be gender typed in face-to-face interactions.  Women with 
large breasts, wide hips, or conventional good looks are more likely 
to be perceived as feminine; men with pronounced musculature, 
relatively coarse features, or heavy hair growth are more likely to 
be perceived as masculine.  Such people may, of course, actually *be* 
displaying less androgyny in their beliefs and their body language, 
thanks to upbringing and expectation, but even if they are not, they 
will still be perceived that way.


-- Elkins, who has noticed that she uses far more qualifiers and
waffle-words and other stereotypically feminine verbal tics 
("quite," "so," "rather," and so forth) in her writing on those 
boards where she's acknowledged her physical sex than she does on 
those where she keeps mum about whether she's a man or a woman -- and 
who now finds herself wondering which of the two is her "real" 
writing style...