July 8, 2013 • 32 mins
When actress Mary Pickford cut off her long hair in 1928, the haircut made The New York Times front page. Since short hair is still shocking today, Caroline and Cristen examine the sociocultural meanings of close-cropped women.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From house top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And this is another listener requested
topic and a great topic that it is, women and
(00:24):
short hair and the associations that we make about that
and a long time ago, way back when, years ago now,
which is crazy to think about. Molly and I did
a podcast on women's head hair in general, but short
hair is such a specific thing and it has such
(00:44):
specific connotations for women. Yeah, it has that hair has
a lot of baggage for being as short as it is.
Short hair has a lot of baggage and messaging behind it.
And we actually got a note from Kindall, a listener.
She's eighteen, and she actually got some really terrible reactions
from her family about her short hair and even her
(01:05):
desire to have short hair in the first place. Yeah,
she wrote to us on Facebook and she said, I
cut mine into a short pixie cut last year and
was immediately faced with backlash froom, both of my parents.
My mom kept telling me that boys don't like girls
with short hair, and my dad kept telling me that
I looked too much like a boy. Him. Then after
I told my mom I was a lesbian, she told
(01:25):
me to not buy into stereotypes with my hair. She
just can't believe that I actually prefer it this way.
Why is it such a big deal culturally when women
cut their hair? And why? Indeed, there are a lot
of reasons. It's it's pretty, it's pretty multifaceted. Um. But
it's funny because you could kind of go in this
(01:47):
circular the cycle of of spiraling arguments as to the
male gaze, the patriarchy, men's view of femininity, women's views
of femininity, when you talk about short hair because it's like, well,
I'm gonna cut my hair because it's, you know, against
what males perceive as sexually attractive. Well, but then but
(02:10):
then you're just responding to that, and so like, I
feel like you could go on and on, We could
go on and on, but first let's start though, with celebrities.
We don't talk a lot about celebs on stuff Mom
never told you, but with this issue of short hair
on women. Celebrities who have cut their hair super short,
(02:30):
especially like pixie cut style, and the reaction that they've
gotten are such good illustrations of what we're talking about.
When we talk about that baggage that can come along
with short hair. Yeah. One who is written about over
and over again, and her story has actually been reported
incorrectly quite a bit is Mi a Pharaoh. And it
(02:52):
was reported a lot that Vidal Sassoon was the one
who originally cut her hair off for Rosemary's Baby, not
so she cut her hair herself. Yeah, she said she
did it on the set of Peyton Place using finger
nail scissors. And if you look at pictures of that
pixie cut, it's totally believable because it is it's so
(03:14):
completely choppy. And and that finally came to light only
recently when the New York Times misreported that it was
Dalsa Soon and she wrote the nicest letter in correcting
or no, I think her cousin or so it was
her daughter in law wrote in correcting them. And then
she wrote a follow up letter just being like, yeah,
that's right, it was me. Yeah. And it was funny
(03:34):
because Hollywood legend had it that Frank Sinatra divorced her
because he was so horrified at her super short hair.
And she wrote in the letter, I intend no disrespect
to Mr Sasson, but he had nothing to do with
my haircut. Neither I can assure you did my divorce
from Frank Sinatra have to do with my haircut, right
that he actually liked it. And Vidal sas Soon did
(03:56):
cut her hair, but it was part of a publicity
stunt and her hair was an inch and a half
long and he cut he cut it to like an
inch or something like that, just just for the cameras well,
speaking of men who do like the short haircut, that
brings us more current with Michelle Williams, who told L
magazine once that quote straight ment across the board do
(04:18):
not like this hair. And she's rocked a pretty short
pixie cut for a few years now, and supposedly she
keeps it in memorium of Heath Ledger, who she said
was the only straight man who has ever really liked
that haircut on her. Yeah, and she has recently actually
started growing it out again. But she's like, she's so
(04:39):
freaking cute. She's like the cutest thing I've ever seen,
and so she is so good at growing it out.
I feel like anybody else there, there's that awkward in
between growing out stage. But she just looks freaking adorable.
And some women have no awkward in the stage. I
I am jealous. I am jealous because I used to
have short hair, not that short, but yeah, I've never
(05:00):
gone that short before. But my sister, who looks a
lot like me in the face that we have totally
different face structures, is currently doing the the Anne Hathaway
lame is cut and it looks great on her. I
have a flat spot on my head, and I think
that I think that for that reason, to pixie cut
(05:21):
would look like your parents didn't roll you over enough
when you were a baby. I don't know what happened,
but I'm just saying this noggin is not pixie cut ready,
I you know what, My skull is so freaking bumpy.
But also I don't know. I don't think I have
the face for it. I mean they say that like
if you if you like the way you look with
your hair pulled back, you will like the way you
look with short, short hair. But I I tend to
(05:43):
like pull pieces of hair out when my hair is up,
just so that my round cheeks don't stand way out. Yeah,
I think it's definitely a face structure by face structure
kind of thing. Um, But of course there have been
plenty of other celebrities who have done this and pulled
it off and looked great doing it. There's Natalie Portman
(06:04):
and Hathaway we mentioned you recently did the severe cut.
For like miss halle Berry, who's had the short cut
for a long time back in the day. We've got
Twitty Eaty Sedgewick who had a very iconic haircut. Shirley
McLain in the fifties for her Hollywood debut or real
a less debut in The Trouble with Harry, which came
(06:24):
out in nineteen fifty five, she has a short haircut,
and similar to that in n seven we have Jean
Seeberg in Joan of arc And for all the hubbub
that that Mia Pharaoh caused with her short hair, and
all of the back and forth about who did it,
did she do it? Why did she do it? You know,
that's just an illustration of how short hair on women
has always stirred the pot. It's always stirred stuff up,
(06:48):
especially if we go to the bob, which is not
necessarily as short as the pixie cut. But that is
a radical departure in the nineteen tens and twenties from
the popular Gibson Girl aesthetic, which we've talked about on
the podcast. You know that long flowing hair and that
s shaped silhouette. Yeah, we found um an article talking
(07:09):
about to Bob or Not to Bob, interviewing dancer Irene Castle,
who cut her hair into the bob and it kind
of helps set off the fashion wave at the time,
and she was basically writing the article to try to
calm people down. But she also notes that there are
some disadvantages to having a bob, as you can imagine
(07:32):
because you talk how they're There are so few ways
to dress short hair that one is practically limited departing
all the side or in the middle. And then can
one grow old and gray still with short hair? Gray
hair is charming short, but during the in between years,
will it not seem a bit kittenish and not quite dignified? Indeed,
you do a mean mid Atlantic old school accent. Kristen Gonger,
(07:56):
thank you, thank you. Yeah. She she actually an initially
cut her hair off at boarding school so that she
could go swimming and not appear to have been frolicking,
and she cut it off again a few years later
for the convenience aspect when she was going into the
hospital to get an appendeck to me, But I mean
when she was at boarding school that grew u out
into a lot of trouble, not necessarily just because she
(08:18):
cut her hair, but because all around her girls were
falling like dominoes, because the minute she cut her hair,
and she writes about it, she's like, oh yeah, basically
they all copied me and came to school with short hair.
It wasn't my fault that iron Castle was quite sassy.
Um well, in n I would argue that we have
the first public fallout over a celebrity chopping her hair off,
(08:41):
and it's Mary Pickford, who was a major silent film star.
She was called America's sweetheart, and she had these classic
long curls and in her mom Charlotte died of breast cancer,
and she was so devastated that she cut her curls
off in of journalists, kind of like the whole run.
(09:02):
It reminds me of the whole Britnie Spears thing in
two thousand seven. But it was such a huge deal.
It made the front page of the New York Times. Wow,
So I think that maybe, I mean, I mean, that's
happening in nine and in two thousand seven, speaking Britney spears,
we have the same like, you know what's happening. It's
signaling a crisis if a girl is cutting off of
(09:23):
her and it's funny because I mean that's not what
short hair always means obviously, but there is definite connotation.
I mean a lot of people, a lot of women
do go run to the salon after a bad breakup
and get a new hairstyle. I mean, there was a
writer for l who in April she wrote about her
experience getting a pixie cut after a bad breakup and
(09:45):
just the terrible reaction, terrible reaction she got from male
colleagues who were, she said, openly perplexed by it and
just we're very She got a chilly reception, whereas the
women who saw her were incredibly supportive. Yeah. In a
post over at Bitch magazine talking about reactions against Miley
(10:06):
Cyrus more recently getting her haircut and just kind of
itemizing all of the other female celebrities who have gotten
a quote unquote creepy backlash to their more severe haircuts,
the writer says it's quote rooted in a retrograde notion
that says that cutting your hair short makes you somehow
less of a woman, right, there's an assumption that you're
(10:26):
a lesbian or like Brittany, that you're mentally ill and
acting out, and I just can't believe that those are
the two choices, Like, well, I'm making an assumption about you,
and you obviously are one or the other. And that
writer at Bitch says that having short hair nowadays almost
makes you subversive but ever confident. Miley Cyrus and Emma
(10:48):
Watson have responded with grace and confidence, and I mean
they were very eloquent and they were like this is me,
you know, like they were both kind of perplexed by
the attention that their haircuts as as famous women in
the media, right, regardless of your sexual orientation. It's I mean,
it's funny that that's it's so loaded that we immediately
(11:12):
think that it must mean something deeper about a person
than maybe just wanting to change up your style. Miley
Cyrus actually said years ago in an interview that she
wanted to cut her hair off someday, and I'm assuming
that probably once she was out of her contract with
Disney and was no longer hand in Montana, And could
you know, fool around with her her image experiment a bit.
(11:34):
She got her hair off, all right, Yeah, and Mary
Elizabeth Williams wrote about this over at Salon in August,
and she was kind of a little teeny tanny voice
of reason amid all of this gnashing of teeth, all
this yelling about Miley Cyrus cutting her hair off. I mean,
because people were worried. They were like her fiance couldn't
possibly like it. She's pulling a Brittany, She's lost a dare. Oh,
(11:56):
it's so shocking. But Miley's response was, you know, I
have actually never felt more me in my whole life.
And so, responding to all this craziness, Williams writes that
long hair represents femininity and vulnerability and sex. It's princesses
and mermaids and porn stars. Short hair, on the other hand, says,
if you think I'm gorgeous, great, but this isn't about you,
(12:18):
pal who scary. Yeah. Writing in an article for l
magazine about her own experience cutting her hair off and
the tipid responses from particularly heterosexual men around her, Joanna
Cox talked to a psychologist at the University of Pex
and Hungary who would perform a study in which images
of female faces were given varying links of hair and
(12:41):
then evaluated by men on their attractiveness, and the psychologist
told her that longer hair had a significant positive effect
on the rating of a woman's attractiveness, whereas shorter styles
did not. And then in a follow up Cox talked
to Jenna Pinkett, who is the author of Do Gentle
and Really Prefer Blondes, and she said hair is a
(13:02):
track record of your health as a woman. It takes
years to grow long, thick hair, and kind of along
those same lines, there are these long standing associations between
the length of a woman's hair and her fertility, her health,
whether or not you know she she is a fertile
woman ready to have babies and then put them in
(13:23):
her hair and put the babies, yes, where the babies
like Barrett's baby Burrett Or used the hair as a
d I y baby born. That's absolutely right and like that. Unfortunately,
I will never be able to have a hair biorn
because I just have naturally fine hair. I mean, I
don't think it's because I'm less healthy. I've always had
(13:45):
fine hair. In fact, when I was a baby, my
mother Okay, so I lied, I have got really sure hair.
One my mother cut my hair off, like all of it,
because she thought that by cutting it continuing to cut it,
it would make get grow in thicker. Oh dear, so
no matter how much pink she put me. And everybody
(14:05):
was like, well, that's like you a little boy i've
ever seen. Thanks for the compliment, but I'm a girl.
Oh that's that's so fascinating though, that the length of
the hair possibly holds a greater social currency than the
whole pink or blue thing, right, which, oh gosh, I
wish I could remember this. Somebody remind me what this is.
But I was reading this thing where this this writer
(14:27):
said the same thing, like she dressed her little girl
in pinks and polka dots and bows and like every
possible stereotypically girly baby thing ever, and everybody still was like,
is your little boy having fun at the pool? And
she's like, well, it's it's a pink fully bathing suit.
Are you kidding me? Well? And speaking of babies, on
the flip side of that, we found a study talking
(14:48):
about how infants detected the difference between and I'm summarizing
largely here, but they were able to detect a difference
between male and female faces when the women had long hair.
Am I saying that correctly? Yeah, I mean I think
I think it's that faces in general had more sway
(15:09):
over the baby's perceptions than things like hair, you know,
and and closed it. But the study, that particular study
did say that clothes and hair both played a part,
but it was actually more about faces. But the whole
point of it was to say that from a very
very very young age, as young as nine months to
a year, babies already have categories for people who look
(15:31):
a certain way, whether you look like mommy or whether
you look like daddy. And as we grow up and
develop these associations with women in long hair versus women
with short hair. Autumn Whitefield Madrano, who writes over at
The Beheld and also had this piece on short hair
cross posted at Jezebel, cited religious and cultural mores that
(15:53):
have surrounded women's hair, which go back centuries, which have
reinforced these ideas that long hair equals feminine, short shorter
hair is masculine. I mean clearly through you know, if
we look back at the history of women's hairstyles, different
things have come in and out of vogue, but over time,
(16:13):
the longstanding thing has been that long hair is associated
with femininity and maturity, especially as we have evolved so
that we don't have, say, for anymore to signal that
we're mature adults, women have long hair, right. And Autumn
also said over at Jezebel in November that, you know,
she thinks it's kind of a crop that all straight
(16:36):
men hate short hair. You know, she says that we're
painting with too broad of a brush there, because she said,
a lot of men believe they prefer long hair, but
they don't actually care that much. She actually, at age four,
cut off all of her beautiful long hair and ended
up getting a ton of compliments, not just from people
she knew, but from strangers as well. And she said
(16:57):
exactly what we pointed out before. She said that if
men prefer long hair, it's often because it's hard not
to prefer what we've been told is attractive. And for
that reason, she says that the whole short hair thing
is an excellent example of culturally imposed beauty norms. Of
how this, you know, we have an idea that if
we cut our hair off, that it's just going to
(17:17):
be the end of the world, even though it's probably
gonna grow buck right. I mean, even Anne Hathaway, who
looks beautiful with her short hair and her you know,
those big eyes, like she's just gorgeous. Even she said
that she had like a mental breakdown when they were
cutting her hair off. Hair hair is very emotional, Whereas
I wonder for guys who have grown their hair out
(17:38):
really long if there would be a similar emotional response
like that. Well, I mean, I guess not, because they
would be swinging back into their more mascule and gendered
norm of having shorter, closer cropped hair. But I guess
I could also depend on what you think you are
signaling to society. Like if you are like a metal
(18:01):
dude and so you've grown out your long black hair
in the metal community like selling out, you're you're doing it.
You're fitting in with your brows. So like if you
cut your hair, maybe you're like you're afraid that you're
gonna be the man. Well, and I do know a
guy who his hair is probably just above his shoulders,
or at least it used to be. He went through
(18:23):
a bit of a breakup next time I saw him
close cropped hair looks great. But the first time I
saw that haircut, I'm not gonna lie. I thought that's
a breakup haircut? Yeah? Hello, did we not just say that? Yeah,
Like totally, there's something. There's something about hair, and I'm
not sure what the connection is here that is so emotional,
(18:44):
Like why, I mean, you're you're you're you're going through
a breakup. You're getting rid of someone who's been next
to you for however long, and so it's like you're
just shedding the baggage. But thinking about all of the
positive reactions that he's gotten to his hair, even from
other like guy friends liked, dude, that it really looks great,
(19:08):
and that was a horrible impression of all men. I
don't don't mean to that that's what guy sound like,
But he's gotten so many compliments. If I went through
a break up and shaved my head, it would be
just the opposite. I would have people flocking to me saying, oh, honey, yeah,
where you need a time out? Yeah? Where do we
(19:29):
need to take you? Do you need a care basket? Well?
I mean, hair length definitely sends a message. There was
a two thousand six study in the Review of Psychology
that got men to rate photos of women heterosexual mentor
rate photos of women with the long hair. Male raiders
said that women with long hair were determined, intelligent, independent,
and healthy. But when they looked at pictures of short
(19:52):
haired women, it's not that they thought the opposite, they
just rated them differently. So the mail raiders said that
women with the short hair were honest, ring, emotional, and feminine.
What this is so confusing? Yeah, because then in April
two thousand eight, there was a study published in the
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology that looked at skin tone, hair length,
(20:13):
and hair color and confirmed the hair length only had
a weak effect in terms of people's ratings of attractiveness.
But caveat with that study finding it was based on
line drawings of people. We're not talking about actual interactions necessarily. Well,
so that actually drives with a two thousand four study
out of Hungry that found that short hair and hair
(20:33):
in a bun had little effect on attractiveness. Okay, no
big deal, whereas long and medium hair actually had a
large effect. So you might see a woman and be like, oh,
she's got short hair, whatever, she's cute, whereas if you
see a woman with long flowing luxuries. Here you're like ghul,
you're doing the like cartoon eyeballs out of your head. Well,
and speaking of qu this is just off the top
of my head, I feel like for descriptors in terms
(20:54):
of women with super short hair versus women with long hair,
super short hairs cute, whereas women with a long flowing locks,
well that's ravishing. You know. It's like, oh, I don't know,
it's it's It's interesting how even linguistically we will tend
to categorize it differently, and even with these studies. But
I would like to see, is the nuances of short
(21:15):
hair if you show people pictures of someone with shoulder
length versus a bob that comes to your jawline versus
that pixie cut, whether maybe it's something more about the
pixie cut. Well, they did a study kind of like
that that looked at intelligence perception of intelligence. Yale professor
Marianne la France did this study that showed the same
(21:36):
face with different hairstyles, everything from bald to long curly locks.
And guess what hairstyle was viewed as the most intelligent?
Which one the bald lady a woman with no hair whatsoever.
So like the shortest crop you could say was perceived
as the most intelligent. But let's look at what that means.
(21:58):
La France said, longer hair for women's something about some
aspects of femininity. And once you're talking about increased femininity perceived,
i Q plummet not fantastic. So we're not talking about
attractiveness in this study necessarily, But they're just saying like
they looked at the picture of the woman with no
hair and they were like, she's gonna win a Nobel prize. Yeah,
(22:19):
because she doesn't give a hoot about how she looks
because she has no hair, So she must be putting
all of her brain juice into algorithms, right, And I
mean it does have a lot to say about personality too.
In a Journal of Applied Psychology study November, raiders looked
at women with various hair lengths and thought that the
women with the longest hair had decreased forcefulness as far
(22:41):
as personality goes. So there is a view that like,
I guess, if you're confident enough to rock that short hair,
I mean you must be like you're you're rocking it,
you mean business. Um. Well, we mentioned sexual orientation briefly
at the top of the podcast. And while I feel
like in a way, the taboos you could say against
(23:02):
super short hair can be kind of restrictive, but when
it comes to sexual orientation, short hair can also have
its own restrictions. We found two papers. These were only
papers that we could find looking at hair length and
sexual orientation, because there is that stereotype of lesbians with
short hair. And in fact, one of the titles of
(23:25):
the papers from the Journal of Lesbian Studies from is
called the Myth of the short Haired Lesbian, and it's
by Dvora Zipkin, and in it she talked to seven
white lesbians about having long hair. All of them have
long hair, and they said that by not cutting their
hair that they had experienced not being taken seriously as lesbians,
(23:47):
that because they did not kind of violate that feminine
norm that they were perceived often as heterosexual or bisexual
or trying to pass as straight, that they weren't, that
they weren't somehow following through all the way with their
sexual orientation, right. I mean, I actually saw this with
(24:09):
some acquaintances back in the day. One of the women
and the couple had short hair, and you could call
her like a stereotypical lesbian. You know, she had the
short hair and she dressed in a very masculine way.
But her girlfriend like never changed her look from high
school basically, like she still had that long, flowing hair
and the pink lip gloss and all that stuff. And
(24:30):
there was there was that kind of perception of, you know,
from people who encountered them, that like, ah, well, maybe
she's just she's just experimenting or she you know, like
it wasn't they didn't take the relationship between these two
women seriously. Yeah, And along those lines, the point that
Zipken raises in her paper is that if we tell
lesbians that they have to cut their hair to signal
(24:53):
that they are lesbians, aren't we just reacting to some
male standard of beauty. Let's not make assumptions about women
bay on hair length. Yeah, I mean across the board. Yes,
let's not make assumptions about anyone, I mean based on
hair length. Although, of course then we get into conversations
about if you look at different religions and what hair
link signals, and if we go to different parts of
(25:15):
the world, what hair link signals. I'm just more talking
about in terms of the sexual orientation piece. Of this
um and also in the Journal of Lesbian Studies in
there was a paper more of a personal essay from
Ellen Samuel's called even my Hair Won't Grow Straight, and
she basically talked about how, uh, after she came out,
(25:36):
she did have short hair, but everybody just wanted her.
I guess in a way that as her family really
didn't want to accept the fact that she was gay,
they were also really, really really wanting her to grow
her hair out. Yeah, And she said that she just
you know, made the decision one day to grow her
hair back out, and people around her viewed that as
(25:58):
a return to you know, quote unquote normal femininity, like oh,
thank god, she's going out of that phase, you know.
And it's like, well, no, she's just made a personal
decision to grow her hair out. And I wonder, I mean,
both of these papers came out, and so that's what
fourteen years ago. Now that's crazy to think about, but
I do wonder those since both of those papers came
(26:21):
out fourteen years ago, whether maybe our notions have changed.
But I still I don't know. I don't think they
have all that much, especially if you think about Miley
Cyrus not so long ago. Shaving the sides of her
head and people saying, well, she can't really be engaged
to William Helm's Helm's worth because she's got to be
a lesbian. Look at how closer hair is to her head. Yeah,
(26:42):
no handsome man would love a woman with short hair.
That's just ridiculous. Yeah, and for this, I do you know,
obviously want to hear from women with short hair and
guys out there, straight, gay, whomever. What do you think
about women with short or does it signal something different?
(27:04):
I mean, talking to women I know who had short hair,
a lot of times, it does come from a place
of like, no, I just want to do this. It
is there's a bit of impulse to it and determination
because you are you know, it is outside of the
norm to do something. Yeah, I remember, I mean you
know how hard middle school is. Well, I had a friend.
(27:25):
I had a friend who got a pixie cut in
eighth grade. I mean, granted she was like, you know,
nine feet tall and slender and you know, gorgeous and everything,
but like, that's crazy to go against such norms at
such a young age. I feel like that's such a
tough period to go through that everybody kind of wants
to blend in and be the same. I mean, I
(27:47):
think it speaks to something in her personality. You know,
she just stands out anyway. She's a very confident girl.
But like, hey, I mean I think if you want
to rocket rocket, like I don't think it would look
good on me, but you know, if if you like it. Yeah,
And I wish we had been able to offer some
deeper academic insight into it, But a lot of the
(28:08):
studies on hair length are very general, like the ones
that we talked about, where it's like short, medium, along
what do you like? Oh long? And I feel like
there's so much more though in there. But in terms
of the our our panic over celebrities cutting off their hair,
I was very intrigued to find that story about Mary
(28:28):
Pickford's nineteen New York Times cover story on her cutting
her locks. Yeah. Well, so as for Kendall who wrote
into us about her short hair. You know, do you
think out of this we've we've helped, you know, I
hope we've helped and given a little perspective. And I'm
really sorry to hear that your parents had such a
negative freaking reaction to your hair cut. Yeah. Sometimes you know,
(28:52):
what Caroline, Terence just don't understand. You just don't understand.
So with that, short haired ladies, send us your emails
or your Facebook messages or your tweets. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send letters. You
can message us on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of messages to
(29:12):
share with you. But first we're gonna take a quick
break and then we'll get right back. And now back
to our letters. Well, we've got a couple of letters
here about our episode on women's colleges, and I would
have one here from Rachel and she writes, you had
a small error that I'd like to correct. I'm a
student at Hillsdale College and the school is located in Michigan.
(29:34):
Founded in eighty four, Hillsdale was the first school in
the United States to prohibit its charter discrimination based on race, religion,
or sex. We have welcomed great defenders of equality like
Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas and our strong supporters
of equality and freedom. We continue to have gender, sex,
and race blind admissions today. It was very exciting to
(29:56):
hear about my own school and a podcast I listened
to so frequently, So thanks for listening, Rachel, and my
dad would be so happy. My dad is a Hillsdale
Uh yeah, still supports the school, still gets the alumni magazine.
Oh it's that is meetto Chatter, Van from Birmingham, Michigan.
What there we go talking to truth bumb Okay. Here's
(30:18):
a letter from Emma. She's a new listener, Kristen, and
she said, I wanted to thank you. I attend Wellesley College,
but I never heard about some of the things you mentioned,
despite my mother being an alumna. It was very interesting.
I wanted to say that I faced some of that
prejudice when I announced in my high school classmates that
I was going to Wellesley. They thought I was nuts.
(30:39):
They wanted to know why I didn't choose Barvard or Yale,
of one or one of the other ivy leagues. I
told them what I knew, like the stats on women
from women's colleges leading the US and breaking the glass feeling.
But I wish I'd been able to tell them what
I just learned. If only my mother really had told
me these things, I'd have a better comeback. She said,
and also high five pointing out that we're not all
(31:01):
awkward lesbians. In fact, I don't think I know a
single awkward lesbian. I hate that stereotype. And thanks for
mentioning that we can take classes at other schools. I'm
going to be taking a class at in my te
next semester, and I've had boys in my class before.
I've had plenty of opportunities to meet guys. I don't
regret going to Wealthley. It was the best decision of
my life. So thank you, Emma, She says she's in
(31:24):
the class of Alright, go go college listener. Yeah, thanks
for writing, and again, if you want to write to us,
you can send us an email at mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com. You can send us a message on
Facebook where at Facebook dot com slash stuff Mom never
told You'd be sure to like us while you're at it,
and follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast. And
(31:47):
we're on Tumbler as well. It's stuff Mom Never told
you duc Tumbler dot com. And don't forget during the
week that you can watch us as well every Monday, Wednesday,
Friday coming at you with new stuff on YouTube to
YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom never told you and
don't forget to subscribe for more on this and thousands
(32:08):
of other topics. Doesn't how stuff works. Dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From house top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And this is another listener requested
topic and a great topic that it is, women and
(00:24):
short hair and the associations that we make about that
and a long time ago, way back when, years ago now,
which is crazy to think about. Molly and I did
a podcast on women's head hair in general, but short
hair is such a specific thing and it has such
(00:44):
specific connotations for women. Yeah, it has that hair has
a lot of baggage for being as short as it is.
Short hair has a lot of baggage and messaging behind it.
And we actually got a note from Kindall, a listener.
She's eighteen, and she actually got some really terrible reactions
from her family about her short hair and even her
(01:05):
desire to have short hair in the first place. Yeah,
she wrote to us on Facebook and she said, I
cut mine into a short pixie cut last year and
was immediately faced with backlash froom, both of my parents.
My mom kept telling me that boys don't like girls
with short hair, and my dad kept telling me that
I looked too much like a boy. Him. Then after
I told my mom I was a lesbian, she told
(01:25):
me to not buy into stereotypes with my hair. She
just can't believe that I actually prefer it this way.
Why is it such a big deal culturally when women
cut their hair? And why? Indeed, there are a lot
of reasons. It's it's pretty, it's pretty multifaceted. Um. But
it's funny because you could kind of go in this
(01:47):
circular the cycle of of spiraling arguments as to the
male gaze, the patriarchy, men's view of femininity, women's views
of femininity, when you talk about short hair because it's like, well,
I'm gonna cut my hair because it's, you know, against
what males perceive as sexually attractive. Well, but then but
(02:10):
then you're just responding to that, and so like, I
feel like you could go on and on, We could
go on and on, but first let's start though, with celebrities.
We don't talk a lot about celebs on stuff Mom
never told you, but with this issue of short hair
on women. Celebrities who have cut their hair super short,
(02:30):
especially like pixie cut style, and the reaction that they've
gotten are such good illustrations of what we're talking about.
When we talk about that baggage that can come along
with short hair. Yeah. One who is written about over
and over again, and her story has actually been reported
incorrectly quite a bit is Mi a Pharaoh. And it
(02:52):
was reported a lot that Vidal Sassoon was the one
who originally cut her hair off for Rosemary's Baby, not
so she cut her hair herself. Yeah, she said she
did it on the set of Peyton Place using finger
nail scissors. And if you look at pictures of that
pixie cut, it's totally believable because it is it's so
(03:14):
completely choppy. And and that finally came to light only
recently when the New York Times misreported that it was
Dalsa Soon and she wrote the nicest letter in correcting
or no, I think her cousin or so it was
her daughter in law wrote in correcting them. And then
she wrote a follow up letter just being like, yeah,
that's right, it was me. Yeah. And it was funny
(03:34):
because Hollywood legend had it that Frank Sinatra divorced her
because he was so horrified at her super short hair.
And she wrote in the letter, I intend no disrespect
to Mr Sasson, but he had nothing to do with
my haircut. Neither I can assure you did my divorce
from Frank Sinatra have to do with my haircut, right
that he actually liked it. And Vidal sas Soon did
(03:56):
cut her hair, but it was part of a publicity
stunt and her hair was an inch and a half
long and he cut he cut it to like an
inch or something like that, just just for the cameras well,
speaking of men who do like the short haircut, that
brings us more current with Michelle Williams, who told L
magazine once that quote straight ment across the board do
(04:18):
not like this hair. And she's rocked a pretty short
pixie cut for a few years now, and supposedly she
keeps it in memorium of Heath Ledger, who she said
was the only straight man who has ever really liked
that haircut on her. Yeah, and she has recently actually
started growing it out again. But she's like, she's so
(04:39):
freaking cute. She's like the cutest thing I've ever seen,
and so she is so good at growing it out.
I feel like anybody else there, there's that awkward in
between growing out stage. But she just looks freaking adorable.
And some women have no awkward in the stage. I
I am jealous. I am jealous because I used to
have short hair, not that short, but yeah, I've never
(05:00):
gone that short before. But my sister, who looks a
lot like me in the face that we have totally
different face structures, is currently doing the the Anne Hathaway
lame is cut and it looks great on her. I
have a flat spot on my head, and I think
that I think that for that reason, to pixie cut
(05:21):
would look like your parents didn't roll you over enough
when you were a baby. I don't know what happened,
but I'm just saying this noggin is not pixie cut ready,
I you know what, My skull is so freaking bumpy.
But also I don't know. I don't think I have
the face for it. I mean they say that like
if you if you like the way you look with
your hair pulled back, you will like the way you
look with short, short hair. But I I tend to
(05:43):
like pull pieces of hair out when my hair is up,
just so that my round cheeks don't stand way out. Yeah,
I think it's definitely a face structure by face structure
kind of thing. Um, But of course there have been
plenty of other celebrities who have done this and pulled
it off and looked great doing it. There's Natalie Portman
(06:04):
and Hathaway we mentioned you recently did the severe cut.
For like miss halle Berry, who's had the short cut
for a long time back in the day. We've got
Twitty Eaty Sedgewick who had a very iconic haircut. Shirley
McLain in the fifties for her Hollywood debut or real
a less debut in The Trouble with Harry, which came
(06:24):
out in nineteen fifty five, she has a short haircut,
and similar to that in n seven we have Jean
Seeberg in Joan of arc And for all the hubbub
that that Mia Pharaoh caused with her short hair, and
all of the back and forth about who did it,
did she do it? Why did she do it? You know,
that's just an illustration of how short hair on women
has always stirred the pot. It's always stirred stuff up,
(06:48):
especially if we go to the bob, which is not
necessarily as short as the pixie cut. But that is
a radical departure in the nineteen tens and twenties from
the popular Gibson Girl aesthetic, which we've talked about on
the podcast. You know that long flowing hair and that
s shaped silhouette. Yeah, we found um an article talking
(07:09):
about to Bob or Not to Bob, interviewing dancer Irene Castle,
who cut her hair into the bob and it kind
of helps set off the fashion wave at the time,
and she was basically writing the article to try to
calm people down. But she also notes that there are
some disadvantages to having a bob, as you can imagine
(07:32):
because you talk how they're There are so few ways
to dress short hair that one is practically limited departing
all the side or in the middle. And then can
one grow old and gray still with short hair? Gray
hair is charming short, but during the in between years,
will it not seem a bit kittenish and not quite dignified? Indeed,
you do a mean mid Atlantic old school accent. Kristen Gonger,
(07:56):
thank you, thank you. Yeah. She she actually an initially
cut her hair off at boarding school so that she
could go swimming and not appear to have been frolicking,
and she cut it off again a few years later
for the convenience aspect when she was going into the
hospital to get an appendeck to me, But I mean
when she was at boarding school that grew u out
into a lot of trouble, not necessarily just because she
(08:18):
cut her hair, but because all around her girls were
falling like dominoes, because the minute she cut her hair,
and she writes about it, she's like, oh yeah, basically
they all copied me and came to school with short hair.
It wasn't my fault that iron Castle was quite sassy.
Um well, in n I would argue that we have
the first public fallout over a celebrity chopping her hair off,
(08:41):
and it's Mary Pickford, who was a major silent film star.
She was called America's sweetheart, and she had these classic
long curls and in her mom Charlotte died of breast cancer,
and she was so devastated that she cut her curls
off in of journalists, kind of like the whole run.
(09:02):
It reminds me of the whole Britnie Spears thing in
two thousand seven. But it was such a huge deal.
It made the front page of the New York Times. Wow,
So I think that maybe, I mean, I mean, that's
happening in nine and in two thousand seven, speaking Britney spears,
we have the same like, you know what's happening. It's
signaling a crisis if a girl is cutting off of
(09:23):
her and it's funny because I mean that's not what
short hair always means obviously, but there is definite connotation.
I mean a lot of people, a lot of women
do go run to the salon after a bad breakup
and get a new hairstyle. I mean, there was a
writer for l who in April she wrote about her
experience getting a pixie cut after a bad breakup and
(09:45):
just the terrible reaction, terrible reaction she got from male
colleagues who were, she said, openly perplexed by it and
just we're very She got a chilly reception, whereas the
women who saw her were incredibly supportive. Yeah. In a
post over at Bitch magazine talking about reactions against Miley
(10:06):
Cyrus more recently getting her haircut and just kind of
itemizing all of the other female celebrities who have gotten
a quote unquote creepy backlash to their more severe haircuts,
the writer says it's quote rooted in a retrograde notion
that says that cutting your hair short makes you somehow
less of a woman, right, there's an assumption that you're
(10:26):
a lesbian or like Brittany, that you're mentally ill and
acting out, and I just can't believe that those are
the two choices, Like, well, I'm making an assumption about you,
and you obviously are one or the other. And that
writer at Bitch says that having short hair nowadays almost
makes you subversive but ever confident. Miley Cyrus and Emma
(10:48):
Watson have responded with grace and confidence, and I mean
they were very eloquent and they were like this is me,
you know, like they were both kind of perplexed by
the attention that their haircuts as as famous women in
the media, right, regardless of your sexual orientation. It's I mean,
it's funny that that's it's so loaded that we immediately
(11:12):
think that it must mean something deeper about a person
than maybe just wanting to change up your style. Miley
Cyrus actually said years ago in an interview that she
wanted to cut her hair off someday, and I'm assuming
that probably once she was out of her contract with
Disney and was no longer hand in Montana, And could
you know, fool around with her her image experiment a bit.
(11:34):
She got her hair off, all right, Yeah, and Mary
Elizabeth Williams wrote about this over at Salon in August,
and she was kind of a little teeny tanny voice
of reason amid all of this gnashing of teeth, all
this yelling about Miley Cyrus cutting her hair off. I mean,
because people were worried. They were like her fiance couldn't
possibly like it. She's pulling a Brittany, She's lost a dare. Oh,
(11:56):
it's so shocking. But Miley's response was, you know, I
have actually never felt more me in my whole life.
And so, responding to all this craziness, Williams writes that
long hair represents femininity and vulnerability and sex. It's princesses
and mermaids and porn stars. Short hair, on the other hand, says,
if you think I'm gorgeous, great, but this isn't about you,
(12:18):
pal who scary. Yeah. Writing in an article for l
magazine about her own experience cutting her hair off and
the tipid responses from particularly heterosexual men around her, Joanna
Cox talked to a psychologist at the University of Pex
and Hungary who would perform a study in which images
of female faces were given varying links of hair and
(12:41):
then evaluated by men on their attractiveness, and the psychologist
told her that longer hair had a significant positive effect
on the rating of a woman's attractiveness, whereas shorter styles
did not. And then in a follow up Cox talked
to Jenna Pinkett, who is the author of Do Gentle
and Really Prefer Blondes, and she said hair is a
(13:02):
track record of your health as a woman. It takes
years to grow long, thick hair, and kind of along
those same lines, there are these long standing associations between
the length of a woman's hair and her fertility, her health,
whether or not you know she she is a fertile
woman ready to have babies and then put them in
(13:23):
her hair and put the babies, yes, where the babies
like Barrett's baby Burrett Or used the hair as a
d I y baby born. That's absolutely right and like that. Unfortunately,
I will never be able to have a hair biorn
because I just have naturally fine hair. I mean, I
don't think it's because I'm less healthy. I've always had
(13:45):
fine hair. In fact, when I was a baby, my
mother Okay, so I lied, I have got really sure hair.
One my mother cut my hair off, like all of it,
because she thought that by cutting it continuing to cut it,
it would make get grow in thicker. Oh dear, so
no matter how much pink she put me. And everybody
(14:05):
was like, well, that's like you a little boy i've
ever seen. Thanks for the compliment, but I'm a girl.
Oh that's that's so fascinating though, that the length of
the hair possibly holds a greater social currency than the
whole pink or blue thing, right, which, oh gosh, I
wish I could remember this. Somebody remind me what this is.
But I was reading this thing where this this writer
(14:27):
said the same thing, like she dressed her little girl
in pinks and polka dots and bows and like every
possible stereotypically girly baby thing ever, and everybody still was like,
is your little boy having fun at the pool? And
she's like, well, it's it's a pink fully bathing suit.
Are you kidding me? Well? And speaking of babies, on
the flip side of that, we found a study talking
(14:48):
about how infants detected the difference between and I'm summarizing
largely here, but they were able to detect a difference
between male and female faces when the women had long hair.
Am I saying that correctly? Yeah, I mean I think
I think it's that faces in general had more sway
(15:09):
over the baby's perceptions than things like hair, you know,
and and closed it. But the study, that particular study
did say that clothes and hair both played a part,
but it was actually more about faces. But the whole
point of it was to say that from a very
very very young age, as young as nine months to
a year, babies already have categories for people who look
(15:31):
a certain way, whether you look like mommy or whether
you look like daddy. And as we grow up and
develop these associations with women in long hair versus women
with short hair. Autumn Whitefield Madrano, who writes over at
The Beheld and also had this piece on short hair
cross posted at Jezebel, cited religious and cultural mores that
(15:53):
have surrounded women's hair, which go back centuries, which have
reinforced these ideas that long hair equals feminine, short shorter
hair is masculine. I mean clearly through you know, if
we look back at the history of women's hairstyles, different
things have come in and out of vogue, but over time,
(16:13):
the longstanding thing has been that long hair is associated
with femininity and maturity, especially as we have evolved so
that we don't have, say, for anymore to signal that
we're mature adults, women have long hair, right. And Autumn
also said over at Jezebel in November that, you know,
she thinks it's kind of a crop that all straight
(16:36):
men hate short hair. You know, she says that we're
painting with too broad of a brush there, because she said,
a lot of men believe they prefer long hair, but
they don't actually care that much. She actually, at age four,
cut off all of her beautiful long hair and ended
up getting a ton of compliments, not just from people
she knew, but from strangers as well. And she said
(16:57):
exactly what we pointed out before. She said that if
men prefer long hair, it's often because it's hard not
to prefer what we've been told is attractive. And for
that reason, she says that the whole short hair thing
is an excellent example of culturally imposed beauty norms. Of
how this, you know, we have an idea that if
we cut our hair off, that it's just going to
(17:17):
be the end of the world, even though it's probably
gonna grow buck right. I mean, even Anne Hathaway, who
looks beautiful with her short hair and her you know,
those big eyes, like she's just gorgeous. Even she said
that she had like a mental breakdown when they were
cutting her hair off. Hair hair is very emotional, Whereas
I wonder for guys who have grown their hair out
(17:38):
really long if there would be a similar emotional response
like that. Well, I mean, I guess not, because they
would be swinging back into their more mascule and gendered
norm of having shorter, closer cropped hair. But I guess
I could also depend on what you think you are
signaling to society. Like if you are like a metal
(18:01):
dude and so you've grown out your long black hair
in the metal community like selling out, you're you're doing it.
You're fitting in with your brows. So like if you
cut your hair, maybe you're like you're afraid that you're
gonna be the man. Well, and I do know a
guy who his hair is probably just above his shoulders,
or at least it used to be. He went through
(18:23):
a bit of a breakup next time I saw him
close cropped hair looks great. But the first time I
saw that haircut, I'm not gonna lie. I thought that's
a breakup haircut? Yeah? Hello, did we not just say that? Yeah,
Like totally, there's something. There's something about hair, and I'm
not sure what the connection is here that is so emotional,
(18:44):
Like why, I mean, you're you're you're you're going through
a breakup. You're getting rid of someone who's been next
to you for however long, and so it's like you're
just shedding the baggage. But thinking about all of the
positive reactions that he's gotten to his hair, even from
other like guy friends liked, dude, that it really looks great,
(19:08):
and that was a horrible impression of all men. I
don't don't mean to that that's what guy sound like,
But he's gotten so many compliments. If I went through
a break up and shaved my head, it would be
just the opposite. I would have people flocking to me saying, oh, honey, yeah,
where you need a time out? Yeah? Where do we
(19:29):
need to take you? Do you need a care basket? Well?
I mean, hair length definitely sends a message. There was
a two thousand six study in the Review of Psychology
that got men to rate photos of women heterosexual mentor
rate photos of women with the long hair. Male raiders
said that women with long hair were determined, intelligent, independent,
and healthy. But when they looked at pictures of short
(19:52):
haired women, it's not that they thought the opposite, they
just rated them differently. So the mail raiders said that
women with the short hair were honest, ring, emotional, and feminine.
What this is so confusing? Yeah, because then in April
two thousand eight, there was a study published in the
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology that looked at skin tone, hair length,
(20:13):
and hair color and confirmed the hair length only had
a weak effect in terms of people's ratings of attractiveness.
But caveat with that study finding it was based on
line drawings of people. We're not talking about actual interactions necessarily. Well,
so that actually drives with a two thousand four study
out of Hungry that found that short hair and hair
(20:33):
in a bun had little effect on attractiveness. Okay, no
big deal, whereas long and medium hair actually had a
large effect. So you might see a woman and be like, oh,
she's got short hair, whatever, she's cute, whereas if you
see a woman with long flowing luxuries. Here you're like ghul,
you're doing the like cartoon eyeballs out of your head. Well,
and speaking of qu this is just off the top
of my head, I feel like for descriptors in terms
(20:54):
of women with super short hair versus women with long hair,
super short hairs cute, whereas women with a long flowing locks,
well that's ravishing. You know. It's like, oh, I don't know,
it's it's It's interesting how even linguistically we will tend
to categorize it differently, and even with these studies. But
I would like to see, is the nuances of short
(21:15):
hair if you show people pictures of someone with shoulder
length versus a bob that comes to your jawline versus
that pixie cut, whether maybe it's something more about the
pixie cut. Well, they did a study kind of like
that that looked at intelligence perception of intelligence. Yale professor
Marianne la France did this study that showed the same
(21:36):
face with different hairstyles, everything from bald to long curly locks.
And guess what hairstyle was viewed as the most intelligent?
Which one the bald lady a woman with no hair whatsoever.
So like the shortest crop you could say was perceived
as the most intelligent. But let's look at what that means.
(21:58):
La France said, longer hair for women's something about some
aspects of femininity. And once you're talking about increased femininity perceived,
i Q plummet not fantastic. So we're not talking about
attractiveness in this study necessarily, But they're just saying like
they looked at the picture of the woman with no
hair and they were like, she's gonna win a Nobel prize. Yeah,
(22:19):
because she doesn't give a hoot about how she looks
because she has no hair, So she must be putting
all of her brain juice into algorithms, right, And I
mean it does have a lot to say about personality too.
In a Journal of Applied Psychology study November, raiders looked
at women with various hair lengths and thought that the
women with the longest hair had decreased forcefulness as far
(22:41):
as personality goes. So there is a view that like,
I guess, if you're confident enough to rock that short hair,
I mean you must be like you're you're rocking it,
you mean business. Um. Well, we mentioned sexual orientation briefly
at the top of the podcast. And while I feel
like in a way, the taboos you could say against
(23:02):
super short hair can be kind of restrictive, but when
it comes to sexual orientation, short hair can also have
its own restrictions. We found two papers. These were only
papers that we could find looking at hair length and
sexual orientation, because there is that stereotype of lesbians with
short hair. And in fact, one of the titles of
(23:25):
the papers from the Journal of Lesbian Studies from is
called the Myth of the short Haired Lesbian, and it's
by Dvora Zipkin, and in it she talked to seven
white lesbians about having long hair. All of them have
long hair, and they said that by not cutting their
hair that they had experienced not being taken seriously as lesbians,
(23:47):
that because they did not kind of violate that feminine
norm that they were perceived often as heterosexual or bisexual
or trying to pass as straight, that they weren't, that
they weren't somehow following through all the way with their
sexual orientation, right. I mean, I actually saw this with
(24:09):
some acquaintances back in the day. One of the women
and the couple had short hair, and you could call
her like a stereotypical lesbian. You know, she had the
short hair and she dressed in a very masculine way.
But her girlfriend like never changed her look from high
school basically, like she still had that long, flowing hair
and the pink lip gloss and all that stuff. And
(24:30):
there was there was that kind of perception of, you know,
from people who encountered them, that like, ah, well, maybe
she's just she's just experimenting or she you know, like
it wasn't they didn't take the relationship between these two
women seriously. Yeah, And along those lines, the point that
Zipken raises in her paper is that if we tell
lesbians that they have to cut their hair to signal
(24:53):
that they are lesbians, aren't we just reacting to some
male standard of beauty. Let's not make assumptions about women
bay on hair length. Yeah, I mean across the board. Yes,
let's not make assumptions about anyone, I mean based on
hair length. Although, of course then we get into conversations
about if you look at different religions and what hair
link signals, and if we go to different parts of
(25:15):
the world, what hair link signals. I'm just more talking
about in terms of the sexual orientation piece. Of this
um and also in the Journal of Lesbian Studies in
there was a paper more of a personal essay from
Ellen Samuel's called even my Hair Won't Grow Straight, and
she basically talked about how, uh, after she came out,
(25:36):
she did have short hair, but everybody just wanted her.
I guess in a way that as her family really
didn't want to accept the fact that she was gay,
they were also really, really really wanting her to grow
her hair out. Yeah, And she said that she just
you know, made the decision one day to grow her
hair back out, and people around her viewed that as
(25:58):
a return to you know, quote unquote normal femininity, like oh,
thank god, she's going out of that phase, you know.
And it's like, well, no, she's just made a personal
decision to grow her hair out. And I wonder, I mean,
both of these papers came out, and so that's what
fourteen years ago. Now that's crazy to think about, but
I do wonder those since both of those papers came
(26:21):
out fourteen years ago, whether maybe our notions have changed.
But I still I don't know. I don't think they
have all that much, especially if you think about Miley
Cyrus not so long ago. Shaving the sides of her
head and people saying, well, she can't really be engaged
to William Helm's Helm's worth because she's got to be
a lesbian. Look at how closer hair is to her head. Yeah,
(26:42):
no handsome man would love a woman with short hair.
That's just ridiculous. Yeah, and for this, I do you know,
obviously want to hear from women with short hair and
guys out there, straight, gay, whomever. What do you think
about women with short or does it signal something different?
(27:04):
I mean, talking to women I know who had short hair,
a lot of times, it does come from a place
of like, no, I just want to do this. It
is there's a bit of impulse to it and determination
because you are you know, it is outside of the
norm to do something. Yeah, I remember, I mean you
know how hard middle school is. Well, I had a friend.
(27:25):
I had a friend who got a pixie cut in
eighth grade. I mean, granted she was like, you know,
nine feet tall and slender and you know, gorgeous and everything,
but like, that's crazy to go against such norms at
such a young age. I feel like that's such a
tough period to go through that everybody kind of wants
to blend in and be the same. I mean, I
(27:47):
think it speaks to something in her personality. You know,
she just stands out anyway. She's a very confident girl.
But like, hey, I mean I think if you want
to rocket rocket, like I don't think it would look
good on me, but you know, if if you like it. Yeah,
And I wish we had been able to offer some
deeper academic insight into it, But a lot of the
(28:08):
studies on hair length are very general, like the ones
that we talked about, where it's like short, medium, along
what do you like? Oh long? And I feel like
there's so much more though in there. But in terms
of the our our panic over celebrities cutting off their hair,
I was very intrigued to find that story about Mary
(28:28):
Pickford's nineteen New York Times cover story on her cutting
her locks. Yeah. Well, so as for Kendall who wrote
into us about her short hair. You know, do you
think out of this we've we've helped, you know, I
hope we've helped and given a little perspective. And I'm
really sorry to hear that your parents had such a
negative freaking reaction to your hair cut. Yeah. Sometimes you know,
(28:52):
what Caroline, Terence just don't understand. You just don't understand.
So with that, short haired ladies, send us your emails
or your Facebook messages or your tweets. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send letters. You
can message us on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of messages to
(29:12):
share with you. But first we're gonna take a quick
break and then we'll get right back. And now back
to our letters. Well, we've got a couple of letters
here about our episode on women's colleges, and I would
have one here from Rachel and she writes, you had
a small error that I'd like to correct. I'm a
student at Hillsdale College and the school is located in Michigan.
(29:34):
Founded in eighty four, Hillsdale was the first school in
the United States to prohibit its charter discrimination based on race, religion,
or sex. We have welcomed great defenders of equality like
Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas and our strong supporters
of equality and freedom. We continue to have gender, sex,
and race blind admissions today. It was very exciting to
(29:56):
hear about my own school and a podcast I listened
to so frequently, So thanks for listening, Rachel, and my
dad would be so happy. My dad is a Hillsdale
Uh yeah, still supports the school, still gets the alumni magazine.
Oh it's that is meetto Chatter, Van from Birmingham, Michigan.
What there we go talking to truth bumb Okay. Here's
(30:18):
a letter from Emma. She's a new listener, Kristen, and
she said, I wanted to thank you. I attend Wellesley College,
but I never heard about some of the things you mentioned,
despite my mother being an alumna. It was very interesting.
I wanted to say that I faced some of that
prejudice when I announced in my high school classmates that
I was going to Wellesley. They thought I was nuts.
(30:39):
They wanted to know why I didn't choose Barvard or Yale,
of one or one of the other ivy leagues. I
told them what I knew, like the stats on women
from women's colleges leading the US and breaking the glass feeling.
But I wish I'd been able to tell them what
I just learned. If only my mother really had told
me these things, I'd have a better comeback. She said,
and also high five pointing out that we're not all
(31:01):
awkward lesbians. In fact, I don't think I know a
single awkward lesbian. I hate that stereotype. And thanks for
mentioning that we can take classes at other schools. I'm
going to be taking a class at in my te
next semester, and I've had boys in my class before.
I've had plenty of opportunities to meet guys. I don't
regret going to Wealthley. It was the best decision of
my life. So thank you, Emma, She says she's in
(31:24):
the class of Alright, go go college listener. Yeah, thanks
for writing, and again, if you want to write to us,
you can send us an email at mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com. You can send us a message on
Facebook where at Facebook dot com slash stuff Mom never
told You'd be sure to like us while you're at it,
and follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast. And
(31:47):
we're on Tumbler as well. It's stuff Mom Never told
you duc Tumbler dot com. And don't forget during the
week that you can watch us as well every Monday, Wednesday,
Friday coming at you with new stuff on YouTube to
YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom never told you and
don't forget to subscribe for more on this and thousands
(32:08):
of other topics. Doesn't how stuff works. Dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.