Short hair belongs to men

Filed under: Gender, Humor
3 Comments

I was having dinner with a group of friends a couple months ago when I realized that, in a reversal of how things were among my friends five or six years ago, all the men at the table had short hair and all the women at the table had at least shoulder-length hair. One female friend of mine who's had very short hair as long as I've known her recently started growing it out; she realized she'd been sending the wrong orientation signals, which was frustrating to everyone.

But Kam got her braids chopped off a couple weeks back, and then Jenn got a haircut (which she inexplicably doesn't like), and then Mary Anne got her hair cut too, so maybe the trend is reversing again. While I like long hair just fine, I confess to being generally a little more fond of short hair (especially on women), though it does depend a lot on the person.

Anyway, the song "Don't Ever Bob Your Hair, Girls" just came on my iTunes mix, so I figured I should offer it as a belated warning to those of you of the female persuasion who are contemplating joining the short-hair trend:

Why do you bob your hair, girls?

It is an awful shame

To rob the head God gave you

And bear the flapper's name.

You've taken off your covering;

It is an awful sin.

Don't ever bob your hair, girls;

Short hair belongs to men.

A Digital Tradition mirror site has lyrics and music, only they're significantly different from the lyrics and music in the catchier Cross Country recording that I have. (I keep coming across Digital Tradition lyrics that are clearly wrong, and full of typos, but getting corrections made is apparently a very slow process. That's one of the things I love about Wikipedia: if there's a typo, you just go in and correct it. I wonder if Digital Tradition would be more accurate if it were turned into a wiki.)

One nice thing about Digital Tradition is the source notes, at least for some songs. I'm amused that this song turns out to have been written by someone named Blind Alfred Reed; maybe if he hadn't been blind, he'd have liked short hair on women better.

3 Responses to “Short hair belongs to men”

  1. Leah Bobet

    Hmm. I’m stil more partial to keeping my hair long (it’s down to about my waist), mostly because I can take a few pins and make long hair short, but I can’t make short hair long without a severe time delay.

    But I like the haircuts!

  2. Rebekah

    I completely disagree with your statement. I have extremely thick hair so whenever I try to grow it out it grows out instead of down. I look very cute with my short pixie cut and I’m proud to be one of the few. I believe that you should cut your hair the way you want to not the way others want you to.

  3. Jed

    (For those who read the previous version of this comment, I apologize for losing my temper.)

    It turns out that it’s easy to misunderstand this entry.

    Here’s a paraphrase of what I intended this entry to say:

    “I like short hair, especially on women, but of course everyone should wear their hair however they want. By the way, there’s an entertainingly old-fashioned song that says women shouldn’t have short hair–isn’t that funny?”

    Several commenters (including a couple whose comments I’ve deleted for being abusive) have posted comments to the effect that it’s bad and wrong of me to tell women not to cut their hair. Those commenters are either trolling (to get me to react so they can laugh at me for reacting) or misunderstanding me.

    But those comments annoy me disproportionately. So I’ve closed comments to this entry so I won’t have to read any more such comments.

    If you are someone who thinks that I believe women shouldn’t have short hair, I urge you to re-read this entry with the understanding that I do not in fact support the views espoused in the song lyrics; in fact, I strongly oppose those views. I was making a joke.

    I hope that settles this matter.

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