I love short hair.  I love it.  The longest my hair ever grew was halfway to my elbows in the 8th grade.  Then I chopped it all off Sarah McLachlan style and never looked back.  (Unnecessarily self-disclosure: I am currently rocking the faux-hawk/pompadour and loving it.)

But where are all the other short haired ladies?  I just finished watching Roswell (old school adolescent-based dramas available on Netflix instant make my life… lazier) and was seriously bummed when Maria’s funky short do turned into the perfect long golden curls of tv-land.  Ana on The O.C. had the cute little pixie thing goin’, but then she got the axe because Summer was just that much “cuter” or something.  And I can’t even think of any other examples from current tv shows in which a short haired lady isn’t somebody’s soccer mom.  Hell, even the soccer moms have long hair.

Emma Watson says no.  And I say rock on.

Yes, our dear Hermione Granger has gone pixie on us, and she looks gorgeous.  Here’s what she has to say:

“I’ve wanted to do this since I was about 16, so as soon as I had the chance I was like, ‘Right. This is it.’ Oh my God, it was the most liberating thing! The stylist just grabbed the back of my hair and took a whole ponytail of hair out. It felt amazing. I love it.”

My first super-short haircut was amazing.  But I didn’t feel like that at the time.  I wanted short hair, I got short hair, I proceeded to wear a bandanna Bret Michael’s style all summer long until I came to terms with the haircut that made thin, flat-chested me “look like a boy.”  Except I didn’t look like a boy, I still looked like me.  Who ever decided that short hair was “masculine” anyway?  It’s hair.  I still have moments when I worry that short hair makes me look “old” or “mannish” or whatever tropes the beauty industry tells me I need to cower in fear of.  But most of the time I feel cool, I’m happy that I spend less than 5 minutes on my hair out of the shower, and I look hot.

Angelina Jolie and her little rockstar Shiloh know where it’s at, too:

“I have a very strong-willed four-year-old girl who tells me what she wants to wear and I let her be who she is. I think people think kids should be a certain way, but I feel they should wear what they feel like wearing and they should express themselves. Shiloh cried one night and said, ‘Please cut my hair off. I don’t want to have long hair.’ I’m not going to leave it long just because somebody thinks I should.”

“I feel like I have a responsibility to my community and other young girls to help redefine what it looks like to be a woman. I don’t believe in men’s wear or women’s wear, I just like what I like. And I think we should just be respected for being an individual…. I’ve been in Vogue, now, and different publications, which is cool, because I think that it just shows a different perspective of how women can dress.”

- Janelle Monae

If you haven’t checked Janelle Monae out yet, I recommend that you start here.  Quote from i09.

I guess the answer to the question I proposed a couple of days ago (“Anyone else having a rough body image week/month/year?”) is a resounding “yes.”  The bad news is that it sucks to feel like crap about the body that you inhabit, and this is something that the majority of women experience from time to time at best, and most of the time, well, most of the time.  The good news is that we have platforms where we can talk about our feelings, experiences, and the culture that puts these ideas in our heads.

Here are a few more posts from the last few days on body image.

Being a Comfortable “Other” [fbomb]

Renowned scientists and doctors agree that low self-esteem, poor body image, depression, perfectionism, and rigid thinking patterns can lead to anorexia in adolescent girls. All of these are things that can come from viewing negative images of women in the media. Studies have shown that even a small exposure to these types of images can cause immediate drops in self-esteem, positive body images, and happiness. Rigid thinking patters can come in the form of stereotypes that girls feel the need to conform to, and the idea of perfectionism collides with the idea of the “perfect” body.

My Day As An Anti-Feminist (Role) Model [the ms. education of shelby knox]

After I got to New York and into feminist activism, I gained a perspective on beauty that eased my body hatred a bit. I realized that what’s ugly in one culture is desirable in another and vice versa and that this constant pressure –- applied to women by the media, our friends, our family, random strangers on the street and online -– to be unnaturally thin is another form of sexism that at best hobbles women by making us spend unnatural amounts of time concerned with our appearance and at worst, kills.

Lady Gaga fascinates me.  She makes me think.  I often find myself wanting to defend her, to whom I’m not sure.  I think she puts me on edge, makes me wonder why she does what she does, and I always come up with a self-satisfying answer.  Take her fashion statements for example.  They’re often… weird, to say the least.  They are revealing, bizarre, and often unattractive or even kind of hideous.  She does not dress like we typically expect our pop star/sex icons to dress.  And in an avant-garde, art club/theater kid misfit kind of way, that’s cool.  But I think it’s more than an angsty rebellion.  Lady Gaga’s fashion choices often make statements about how our society dictates female beauty.

Lady Gaga is thin, white, blonde, hairless…  She’s got the body of the pop star/sex icons of the last decade (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, P!NK, Fergie, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, Gwen Stefani… you know the mold), so she’s not scoring major points by presenting us with a new body type.  But what she does with that body is unusual.

Exhibit A: Body Shape

Despite having that “perfect” bod, Lady Gaga frequently distorts the way we see her body, using sharp angles, increasingly large shoulderpads, and poufs or wings to accentuate her hips.  Each of these things in moderation have been considered attractive/fashionable at one point or another, but the extremes to which she takes them have a distracting effect, creating a mismatched, unnatural body shape.

Read the rest of this entry »

Feministing had a great visual representation yesterday of the changes over time in beloved childhood characters.  I couldn’t think of any other characters to expand on, but I thought that the sexualization of these characters when it comes to costumes was worth noting.

Strawberry Shortcake

And so it begins.  It’s not like Strawberry Shortcake was lacking in the cuteness department, however her raggedy look apparently just didn’t cut it in these modern times.  Everything about her was neatened up, and her vibrant reds were subdued into girly pinks.  She became taller and thinner with flowing hair, big eyelashes, and modern clothes.  However, her traditional look is maintained in the adult costume (nothing like a sexy apron to compliment that too-short-for-your-stockings skirt, eh ladies?), which hypersexualizes the cartoon cutie.  Because costumes aren’t for playing with your identity, they’re for playing sexy.

Rainbow Brite

Unlike her traditional counterpart, Rainbow Brite is a girl from the future (check out her sweet moon-boots!).  However, just like Strawberry, Rainbow has gone through “the transformation.”  Her legs got longer, face got older, hair was made to flow more gracefully, and her waist was narrowed.  And, of course, in costume form her skirt was shortened even further, her wand became a phallic symbol to hold near the face with and moon-boots were traded for tall socks and stilettos.  This is not the future I hope to visit.  For more on Rainbow Brite’s makeover, check out this post at Feministe.

Dora the Explorer and that all time favorite, Barbie, after the jump.

As a woman who shaves her legs about four times per year, I can appreciate this:

Rock that leg hair with pride and joy!  This is what Golden Globe Award winning actresses look like.  Hells to the yeah.

Screw the snark, TMZ, real women wear their own fur.

Edit: Feministing posted this before I did, but after I had already written it, dang!  Check out their criticism of media’s focus (and criticism) of women’s bodies.  Clearly this is a problem, and has always been, and sadly probably always will be.  However, seeing such a beautiful, talented woman assuredly showing off a follicle taboo is a little empowering because it says “hey social expectations, you don’t dictate what goes on in my shower,” which is a message that all of us could use a little more of.  Rock it, Mo’Nique.

Panty predicament?  Fear not.  Cosmo’s got your back (lower back, if you know what I mean).

Classy.  Because not only do I need a magazine to tell me which undergarments to wear, I need them to be named after the underwear of children of the opposite sex, and I need them to make my butt look like someone else‘s butt. The article begins:

A little more than 10 years ago… wearing a thin strip of fabric between your butt cheeks was considered daringly sexy.

Are we supposed to pretend that Cosmo didn’t tell us that thongs were “daringly sexy?”  The article goes on about the history of the thong and other “man-melting undies” – which might actually be interesting if it was about women’s fashion for women’s sakes, and not just as lures for mates.

But, that’s why I subscribe to Bitch and Bust and not Cosmo.  Thanks Jezebel!

5:00 Edit: The timeline of underwear at the bottom reminded me of this:

I have fallen in love with Lady Gaga over the past month, and this post from Jukebox Heroines on the feminist themes in her music was too awesome not to share.  If you are interested in cross-posting or guest-posting at feministhemes.com, please contact me with your ideas at misswizzle@feministhemes.com.

Lady Gaga – The Fame (2008) on (Streamline/Konlive/Cherrytree/Interscope)

Part 1:

Oh snap. Yes, I just said it. Lady Gaga’s music is feminist. Why do I say such things? Because I can back it up. And because I love her music, videos, and persona. She is the reason I have actually started to listen to pop music again. So, let me tell you about feminist music….

Why do I say that her music is feminist? Whether or not she herself claims to be a feminist, her work criticizes gender, sexuality, the body, pop culture’s representations of women, and the nature of power. This in itself is a feminist act. Now, feminism, I guess we must define in some form, considering most representations of it are: man hater, bra burner, lesbian, ugly, want power over men, bitchy, hate children…..not true. Feminism is the political and social movement for women’s social, political, and economic equality. In that social part lies music, and Lady Gaga knows exactly what she is up against in the music industry. Feminist Music therefore, can be made by anyone, male/female/trans, as long as it fulfills the goals of fighting for equality and justice based on gender.

How does she present feminist ideas? I will give you a few examples. Read the rest of this entry »

Although I never expected to fall for Gaga, I must say that she has won me over somehow.  I’m not the only one who is somewhat mystified by just how she charms us, but the following quotes are a window into what pushed me over the edge.

1. She’s a strong individual, and she wants you to be, too.

“When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves… I know my greatness is individual. And I want every woman to be able to say that.”

2. She knows who she is and is proud of it.

“There is never a moment that you see me that I’m not working towards something creatively. For me, it’s very simple: I’m not going to allow you to portray me in a way that is your idea of what you think I am. I know who I am and — praise the Lord! — I’m a real artist. Why is this a bad thing?”

3. She’s an outspoken ally of the LGBT community (who spoke at a Washington rally) and is open about her own sexuality as well.

“I don’t think being gay or being bisexual or being sexually free is anything that should be hidden. Everybody has a right to their secrecy, of course, but I don’t feel particularly shy about it. It is who I am.”

4. She’s known for her fashion choices, but she really knows how to accessorize.

“I think we must all remember that the ultimate accessory is the condom.”

6 more reasons to go gaga for Gaga after the jump

Yesterday in one of my graduate level classes we had a guest speaker who shared with us some of his experiences and thoughts about being a crossdresser.  He reported that he spent 95% of his time as a man and didn’t have a “chip on [his] shoulder” about the questions we asked him or the pronouns we used to refer to him, so despite his being dressed as a woman yesterday I’ll be referring to this individual as “him.”  Although he gave us the disclaimer that we could ask anything, I still wasn’t comfortable asking everything I wanted to or voicing some things I was struggling to understand, but I figured this was as good a place as any to work through my thoughts.

I was born female and identify as female, and I view that as a privilege.  I don’t know what it’s like to be born in the wrong body, but I believe it can and does happen, and I believe it can and does make life harder for many people.  I also understand that there are individuals who are drawn to crossdressing who have no feelings of wanting to be the other gender, but simply like the way it feels or the way they look when they experiment with gender atypical attire.  But something wasn’t sitting right with me today.

Our guest speaker kept repeating, as he showed us pictures of 50s housewives doing chores in dresses and heels, “doesn’t that look like fun!?”  Maybe.  But not to me.  And the idea that this was once an expectation for women but is now seen as kitchy, cute, and “fun” rubs me the wrong way.  Women have worked long and hard to have the option to get out of that role, and “fun” kind of belittles that struggle.  I was also getting bogged down in privilege-tied guilt that its acceptable for me as a woman to dress in “male” clothing and the reverse isn’t true for men. I firmly believe that rigid gender roles cut both ways and hurt both women and men, too.  It sucks that men can’t dress how they want, and our speaker was right in stating that it’s not fair.  But it’s a little more complicated than that. More thoughts after the jump.