Hairy hijinks, personality permutations, Don't Boys Cry?

[Tabouli]

[before I start my hijinks, a quick note to storm: good to hear you're feeling better.  I was sending positive vibes up the Hume (Australian highway reference) to you.  How was the Mardi Gras?  Never been, though I (quite accidentally, though fortuitously) was in Amsterdam for the 1998 Gay Games, where they had a parade of floats down the main canal!  I have some very lurid photographs...]

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.<

Hahaa!  *Two* of my favorite philias (well, you can have phobias, why not philias?  (Philiae?)), hair *and* colour, in holy unity!  A fine thing, this OT list.  Wise indeed, this Elkins.  However...

...fie!  Since when have only the Elect had access to the Sacred Mysteries of Blondness?  Non-blondes worldwide (some as far afield and unlikely as Greece and Japan) have been sampling the joys of artificially induced Blondness for centuries!  Of course, some may argue that only those whose hair emerges blond from the root should gain entry to the sanctum, but nonetheless.  A genuinely golden-haired globe-trotting friend of mine returned last year from a stint in Japan with the amused news that black Japanese locks are no longer any obstacle to the blonde bombshell look, and indeed the Look of the Season seemed to be blonde hair, six inch platforms, fake tan and white eyeshadow... (mine not to fathom the ways of Japanese street fashion).

However!  Perhaps we exotic dark damsels and riotous redheads and beautiful brunettes cannot sample the fruits of true fair hair *first* hand, but by jingo we can pump second-hand information out of our flaxen sisters!  Aren't there any other sinister social scientists out there who do this sort of thing?  (Mary Ann?)  Whenever I meet someone who has sampled from both the Blonde and the Non-Blonde Barrel, I am swift to manoevre the conversation around to What Difference It Makes.  I've also interrogated many a straight man on the subject.  The answers are remarkably consistent... it's not precisely that blondes have more fun, or are *necessarily* preferable (though a few male interviewees went a little wistful here), it's that they stand out because their hair catches the light, and hence get a lot more immediate attention from men.

(This is in predominantly WASP countries, of course... in countries where the populace is almost 100% naturally dark, blondes are routinely mobbed, hassled and pursued.  In Greece, for example, I observed that the local men were ignoring simply stunning local brunettes in favour of what to me appeared to be very plain blonde tourists.  Being me, I asked some Greek men about this, wondering if it was just a "northern tourists of loose morals unlike good local girls" stereotype, and they replied that there was an element of this, but it was more that Greek think blonde hair is beautiful and unusual and a blonde foreign woman is the ultimate trophy).

There was also some evidence of buying into the dumb blonde stereotype celebrated in a thousand blonde jokes.  My most helpful informants in this department were two natural blondes, one a pale, pretty team leader in a call centre where I worked for a grim year (Welcome to Telstra Paging, this is Tabouli, your pager number please....  AARRRGH), one a brilliant but scarily temperamental woman who taught me Japanese for a year or so.

The first informant had done the full tricolour: she'd dyed it dark brown *and* red as well as living most of her life as a natural light blonde.  Being rather stunning, she attracted men in all her incarnations, but noticed definite differences.  Blondes, she said, definitely *do* have more fun.  Heads turn when you're blonde in a way they don't when your hair's dark, because your hair stands out.  You attract men looking for fun, and they expect you to be flirty and ditzy and bubbly, and easy to seduce; if you make an intelligent comment they don't know how to cope with it.  OTOH, when I was dark, they seemed to expect more intelligence from me; I attracted a different type of men, more intellectual, looking for an interesting conversation rather than just someone to flirt with.  As a redhead it changed again... I attracted men five or ten or even more years older than me looking for a fight.  (?)

I wouldn't have dared to quiz the second informant in this way (if I caught her in the wrong mood she'd've bitten my head off), but on one of her friendly days, she volunteered some information which spoke volumes.  Ever since I'd met her, her long, heavily sprayed and styled hair had been an obviously dyed jet black (rather Gothic against her pale eyes and skin, which I'm sure wasn't the effect she was aiming at).  That day in class, one of my fellow students had dyed her black Chinese hair a sort of burgundy colour.  After class, my teacher had one of her warm chatty moments, and commented to me that it was nice to see this girl (she was 15 or so) getting a bit more confidence in herself and dyeing her hair.  I mused that this was an interesting idea (hair dye=confidence?) and daringly asked whether her own black hair was linked to confidence, what colour is it naturally?  She laughed triumphantly, said she got the roots done every fortnight (!), so I wouldn't be able to tell, but it was absolutely crucial to dye it, because she was a natural blonde.  But what's wrong with that?  I asked, mystified.  Oh, no-one takes you seriously if you're a blonde, she said, in almost haughty, offended tones, implying I was being facetious to imply there could be any other reason.  (??)

My.  (OK, so that Japanese teacher was a seriously strange woman in many ways, but nonetheless).  So, everyone, come clean, come clean.  Any thoughts on hair colour?  Have you dyed your hair and met with dramatically different reactions?  Do you have any associations with particular hair colours?

Elkins:
> 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.<

Strangely enough, my mental image of you has always been of your back!  Whenever I read your posts, I get a picture of a back, dressed in a blouse made of a sort of shiny fabric, shaking with laughter, and with long wavy brown hair spilling down it.  (don't ask me why...)

Elkins:
> 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.  <

Ah, but that was what I was trying to say by adding:

"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.  And as anyone who's been marginalised knows, it affects the personality a lot."

That is, even if you accept that predispositions to certain behaviours and attitudes are distributed evenly across people of both genders, this does not mean a man born with a particular set of predispositions will develop the same personality as a woman growing up with an identical set.  Not at all.  This is because of the two "dynamics" you mention: gender socialisation and the influence of this on how already-socialised people interpret a person's behaviour.

Imagine a little girl who cries easily when her feelings are hurt.  She might be considered annoyingly sooky by some, but in general people are likely to be tolerant and comforting: she's a bit on the weepy side of the accepted female norm, but not too far: obviously she's just gentle and sensitive.  Then imagine a little boy who cries just as easily for the same reasons.  Are people likely to react in the same way?  Even if his well-meaning parents or teachers strive to give him the message that it's OK for boys to cry, there are *sure* to be some influences in his life which tell him otherwise - the other children in his class, the television.  He is a lot further than the little girl from the accepted norm for his gender, and this is bound to cause him grief.  Boys are "meant" to be tough.  What a pathetic sissy, what a wimp, what a wuss, what a snivelling Mummy's boy!  Be a man, my son!

I'm not saying it's a good thing (which it certainly isn't), but aren't these two children likely to develop very different personalities and behaviour?  The girl will probably grow up feeling that expressing herself through tears when she's upset is OK, and will probably continue to do so, considering herself sensitive and gentle; the boy will learn that expressing himself through tears opens him up to social ridicule and will struggle to control them, considering himself weak and pathetic.

This particular issue has always haunted me.  I have never, ever seen my father cry, not even at his father's funeral; my brother boasted to me that he hadn't cried since he was 13, *except* when my grandfather died (he confessed grudgingly, hastening to add that it was only a few tears alone in his room).  I, on the other hand, am soggy as a wet tissue.  And terribly, terribly susceptible to a man in tears.  Too much so, I sometimes think.  Maybe I need to borrow a leaf from the Tough Book of Sin D.C. ...

Tabouli.


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