Why I love my hair short – even though I’ve now stumbled into a culture war
In those unseasonably warm lockdown weeks of spring 2020 many of us were reborn. Knitters, banana bread bakers, kettlebell swingers; everyone was trying something new.
A friend grew a moustache, a real 1980s Ford Sierra driving Dad-tache, that he has sported ever since. And I had all my hair cut off.
Cooped up in a shared house with three guys, it was hard to resist a turn in the garden chair attended by the household’s designated barber (a role played by my now-husband).
Shaving your girlfriend’s head when you don’t have a clue what you’re doing may seem rash. But we both had a sneaking suspicion that I might suit the radical style.
Ten years earlier, a colleague at a magazine – who had been a youth in the 80s when people knew about self-expression – had said: “You’d look great with short hair.” I felt too self-conscious to follow the advice at the time. Getting a crop was something reserved for saucer-eyed Bambis; the Mias and Audreys of the world.
In lockdown, though, the rules no longer applied.
“I’ve set you free,” became the irritating refrain of my husband. Annoying because it was true. Cutting off all my hair turned out to be the best thing I’d ever done.
Suddenly I could do headstands whenever I wanted, I didn’t wake up in the morning with a problem that needed immediate fixing, I never had to scrabble about for a hair bobble, and I just felt a little bit cooler. As someone who has always looked a decade younger than their biological age, finally I looked less Pollyanna. My chances of ever getting into a German techno club greatly increased.
The only drawback was that I’d stumbled inadvertently into an ongoing culture war. As the likes of JK Rowling quite rightly highlighted that biological sex is immutable, battle-lines were forming and friendly fire was rife. The race to defend womanhood seemed to also shrink its parameters. Was I a boy? Readers asked in the comments below articles that contained pictures of me. They were enquiring not entirely in good faith. Many writers refuse to read the comments, but I’ve always had a thick skin and it was illuminating to see how short hair seemed to make me a candidate for being transgender or gay.
An actress friend agrees that we have an association with short hair and lesbians: “I had a pixie crop in my 20s. Suddenly I was invisible to 90 per cent of men and got put up for lots of gay roles,” she says. A fellow actress friend did the same and ended up making a career out of fitting into a tick-box stereotype of casting directors, despite the fact she wasn’t gay at all.
In November, Strictly Come Dancing pro Lauren Oakley took to X (formerly Twitter) after she received a deluge of comments about her hair. The dancer, who usually sports a cropped hairstyle, wore a wig during the Halloween-themed live show to perform with newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murphy. As a result she received a wave of unsolicited advice telling her she “should” grow her hair out.
Oakley responded saying: “Alllll the comments on my long hair last week saying I ‘should’ have long hair. I’m good thanks. Girls don’t have to have long hair to feel pretty. Boys don’t have to have short hair to feel handsome. Nobody has to be a certain way! Just make yourself happy.”
Meanwhile in December Eve Gilles was chosen by judges as Miss France 2024. It was the first time someone with a short, pixie haircut won the beauty contest. “We’re used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look with short hair,” she said upon winning the title. “No one should dictate who you are... every woman is different, we’re all unique.”
Many men online did not agree: “We’re still lucky she doesn’t have a beard,” read one ridiculous French tweet.
I hold my hand up and admit that I’ve been mistaken for a “lad” once or twice since I got my hair cut short, but I’ve always chosen to see the pantomime perspective on such mistakes of identity.
Television hair stylist Michael Douglas has been cutting hair for 30 years and agrees that short hair is still seen as something shocking for a young woman to have.
“Hair is seen as a symbol of health, vitality and fertility even,” he says. “Somehow men see that through hair. I think some women obviously use their hair to attract friends and relationships.”
That so many older women over 60 have short hair he thinks is due to the menopause when hair type can suddenly change: “Women have to learn all over again how to style it and I think a lot just give up and cut it short.”
However, short hair styles have always been an option for young women. Douglas remembers the fever for the short-style Demi Moore wore in the smash-hit Ghost back in 1990: “And it happened again when Keira Knightley cut her hair short, and when Victoria Beckham got the ‘pob’.”
Nowadays, though, he’s lucky if he gets asked to do a short cut once a year.
But now, he says, we’re living more than ever in an age where people are afraid to experiment. “It seems weirdly like the most conservative period we’ve lived through.”
Most of his customers want a balayage, soft waves and a sweepy fringe. It’s a style that he thinks looks striking and unusual on clients of his in their 70s and 80s: “but on someone in their thirties, she just looks like everybody else.”
He’s become so bored by the hair conformity that often he will approach a woman in the supermarket if she’s sporting something a little bit more adventurous, and compliment her.
“I want them to know. Good on them for doing something different.”
There’s a short hairstyle for everyone, says Douglas: “My feeling is it’s the bits you leave on and not the bits you cut off that make it right for you.”
The main worry, he finds, is that people fear they will look too masculine.
“There are three simple ways you can feminise short hair; by leaving a bit on in front of the ear, or at the nape of your neck. The other thing is the fringe, you can cut that really short and it goes super feminine where you’d think it would have the opposite effect.”
I confess that going to a barber has been the only way I can afford to maintain such short hair, at roughly a third of the price of a hairdresser. It’s why I’ve sacrificed some of the femininity that I might have got from a trained women’s hairdresser.
“One of the key differences when you cut men and women’s hair is that you generally cut men’s hair with a square shape, whereas with women you cut parallel to the shape of the head. That gives it a softer, feminine look,” explains Douglas.
So far I’ve always found going into a men’s barbers (where many women also work) entirely welcoming.
I’ve grown to actually prefer the boyish look. At a petite 5ft 4in I’m so obviously a girl that it’s fun to play with the juxtaposition. And I don’t particularly want to look like Sharon Osborne, with the sort of acceptably feminine short-do given to older women.
A thick slick of lipstick and a trowel full of foundation might satisfy those who aren’t sure of my womanly credentials, but that wouldn’t be me.
My short hair suits my personality, which my husband thinks is too impish (or impudent more like) to have ever made sense in retrospect with my inoffensive, lank, long locks.
I’ve also found that now more people double-take me on the street, just as I turn 40 and I’m married and should be becoming invisible, guys seem to notice me more.
Douglas agrees that it’s easier to stand out with short hair: “It’s easier to look more interesting and individual, because so few people have got it.”
The only drawback is that somehow I’ve been swept up into the gender ideology debate.
Interestingly Douglas has also been the recipient of the same sort of conservatism, because his hair is longer than most men’s. He would quite like to cut it short again, but his girlfriend, the television presenter Davina McCall, won’t let him.
“She says, ‘You look so good with long hair, keep it for another year’.” At the same time, he gets lots of comments online about how messy and long his hair is. “I’m in the role reversal of your situation in many ways. There is a sense that society controls a lot of these trends and because it can be upsetting to be criticised by society we often stay in a safe place.”
Of course there are plenty of people who don’t care what society thinks about them: “It’s very nice to see that. That, in itself, is very attractive I think,” says Douglas.
While never say never, I certainly won’t be growing my hair long again anytime soon. With short hair, there are no bad hair days; just ask Boris Johnson. Messy can be made into a virtue as long as it’s accessorised with a Devil May Care attitude.