Tonite as I was sweeping the floor, a thought started developing in my head (or, "flew into my funnel", you might say) regarding a topic occasionally discussed or debated between me and Austin: The length of my hair.
Thruout my developing years (Junior high to the very beginning of college), I had very long hair. My hair was strongly linked to my identity--in fact, perhaps it was the other way around. My days lived and died by the quality of my hair. If it was pulled back in anyway, I felt overly-exposed. And though I toyed with the ideas of cutting it or even coloring it, I always came back to the feeling that that would be a major change of who I was.
But when I got to college, I finally had the opportunity and courage to make a break with the past. I felt I could confidently portray my personality without the curtain of strawberry blonde locks I had always clung to. So by the end of my first month in school, I had cut my hair to chin-length. This was such a drastic change, I didn't even tell my mother. (She ended up finding out in nearly the most indirect route possible--an old friend from Ohio who happened to be visiting Utah told her mom who now lived in Florida but who happened to be visiting Ohio that she had seen me with short hair. And then our moms met up and she told her.) My mom was devastated and said she NEEDED a picture, because she didn't know how to visulise me anymore. However, the picture quickly reassured her, and by the time I came home for Christmas, she was on board with me for an even shorter haircut the following semester.
So for my entire college career, my hair fluctuated in length, but always above my chin. I went from SUPER short (like, butch short--too short, really) to bobbed, but always short. And when I have the opportunity to look at pictures from that era, I always think fondly of those days and those hair styles.
When I met my husband, I was sporting a super-sassy pixie cut. I loved it. He did not. The first conversation he had about me upon spotting me in church one day went as follows:
Austin: Who's that? I've never seen her before.
Dave: That's Erynn. She's been here the whole semester.
Austin: She's really cute. Her hair's not my favorite...
Dave: Who are YOU to tell her how to wear her hair? (Dave is an artist, and is fiercely loyal to self-expression.)
Austin: I'm not telling HER how to wear her hair. I'm telling YOU what I THINK of her hair.
He never told me he DIDN'T like my hair. He has always just encouraged me to grow it long. And so, 5 1/2 years later, I have hair that nearly reaches my mid-back--just like I did in high school. I'm not going to lie to you, it is pretty. I do still believe I have nice hair. And I do love many things about it. I never had dolls or sisters with hair to play with, so doing my hair is actually fun most of the time--when I have the time. But I also really REALLY loved that short, funky hair that, in some ways, defined me in college. (Hmm, side note. I guess I still feel defined by my hair. But at least I stopped feeling like I was hiding behind it.)
SO, back to our debates on hair length. He says that long hair is sexy and feminine. Short hair might be cute and funky, but not especially feminine. The last time we discussed it, he compared his opinion about how I wear my hair to my opinion about whether he should have a beard or not. He grew a tremendous beard the winter after Carson was born. It was amazing. And grizzly. And I appreciated it at the time. But I was definitely ready for it to be gone when he finally shaved it off. (I'm going to neglect the obvious counter argument that a beard is extremely masculine, and if the goal is to stay aligned with our gender-roles, I should actually find the beard attractive.) I would probably never PREFER that he grew it back again, but I wouldn't object if he did. Experimentation is fun, even if I do prefer him clean-shaven. So that's how he says he feels about short hair. He doesn't object, but he doesn't prefer it. To which I wanted to say, "Yeah, but a beard is kinda gross. And my short hair is really cute."
And here's where I get back to my original point. Why is it that we, as women, feel justified in telling our husbands what is or isn't attractive about their appearance? But we are utterly offended at the hint of a suggestion that something might be unappealing or "not the best"? (Am I alone in believing that's how most of us behave?) And I decided that it's this: I think that, on some level, we believe that men's preferences must be based--if not strictly, then heavily--on the sex drive. And we believe that our preferences are based on something much more objective and platonic. Style? Beauty? Aesthetics? Who knows. But not sex. And so of COURSE our opinions should be more highly regarded.
That is the thought that occurred to me tonite as I was sweeping the floor. Is this actually true? Is it a good thing for opinions to be hormonally driven? Are WE right? Or are they? Or do we somehow balance each other out?
(You can definitely tell a difference in personality from these pictures, tho. Carson was way more mellow than Cora has turned out to be so far. Both good, just different.)
