![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricNot times I wish I didn't have this particular boyfriend (well, there are those too, particularly over such contentious issues as whether or not I can be trusted to order food in French), but any boyfriend.
Today, for instance, it took me quite some time to convince a barber that I really did want a buzz cut. This was negotiated in English, in which the barber was fluent, so language wasn't the problem. No, he just didn't believe a white woman* was really serious about wanting all her hair chopped off (note: I had less than an inch of growth on my scalp when I walked in there). He started with #3 clippers and insisted on working down from there rather than going straight to #1.
Eventually he cottoned on that I was serious, and I liked my hair almost non-existent. At that point, he said to me:
"Does your boyfriend like it, what you've done to your hair?"
It's times like that, I wish I didn't have a boyfriend. 'Don't have one, don't care' would be a pretty good response (but it might get me a lecture on what The Men Like, too).
The best snappy answer would be one involving the words "my girlfriend likes it just fine".
Questions like that would annoy me were I straight, of course. But I'm not, and every time I get asked them I feel stuck, because given a few different turns of chance, the snappy lesbian comeback could've been mine. "My boyfriend has long enough hair for two of us", while a good answer in itself, isn't fixing the fact that some guy with a hairdressing qualification has utterly failed to consider that unusual hairstyles might also go with statistically unusual sexual orientations.
It's a feminist problem, naturally: the assumption that all or most women's lives and choices hang on a male partner's life and opinion. But there's also assumed heterosexuality. Denying the existence of the boyfriend would be a lie, but I feel like I'm somehow lying by admitting to having a boyfriend, as well.
The same thing happens when one is single, too. All possible answers to 'do you have a boyfriend' become lies on some level. "No, I don't (but even if I were dating it might not be a man, except also it might be, aaargh, let's not even start)". About the ONLY time when, as a bi lady, I've felt like I was honestly answering that question, was when the answer was "No, but my girlfriend..." (And then only if the conversation participants had met prior boyfriends.**)
In other news, I hear today is Bi Visibility Day.
And my boyfriend's punishment for his part in the heteropatriarchy shall be that he must clipper my head, or at least find me a cheap barber near his abode.
~
*He acknowledged, slightly sadly, that he has given close crops to many African women. He was nappy-haired himself, with a rather cute crop of coils 1-2 inches long.
** Of the two lies, I'd rather be taken for a lesbian. It feels to me as if the assumptions people make based on 'interested in women' are more accurate w/r/to me than those based on presumed heterosexuality. Or it's homophobic stereotypes, which I don't wish to disown or evade just because I happen to date men too.
Today, for instance, it took me quite some time to convince a barber that I really did want a buzz cut. This was negotiated in English, in which the barber was fluent, so language wasn't the problem. No, he just didn't believe a white woman* was really serious about wanting all her hair chopped off (note: I had less than an inch of growth on my scalp when I walked in there). He started with #3 clippers and insisted on working down from there rather than going straight to #1.
Eventually he cottoned on that I was serious, and I liked my hair almost non-existent. At that point, he said to me:
"Does your boyfriend like it, what you've done to your hair?"
It's times like that, I wish I didn't have a boyfriend. 'Don't have one, don't care' would be a pretty good response (but it might get me a lecture on what The Men Like, too).
The best snappy answer would be one involving the words "my girlfriend likes it just fine".
Questions like that would annoy me were I straight, of course. But I'm not, and every time I get asked them I feel stuck, because given a few different turns of chance, the snappy lesbian comeback could've been mine. "My boyfriend has long enough hair for two of us", while a good answer in itself, isn't fixing the fact that some guy with a hairdressing qualification has utterly failed to consider that unusual hairstyles might also go with statistically unusual sexual orientations.
It's a feminist problem, naturally: the assumption that all or most women's lives and choices hang on a male partner's life and opinion. But there's also assumed heterosexuality. Denying the existence of the boyfriend would be a lie, but I feel like I'm somehow lying by admitting to having a boyfriend, as well.
The same thing happens when one is single, too. All possible answers to 'do you have a boyfriend' become lies on some level. "No, I don't (but even if I were dating it might not be a man, except also it might be, aaargh, let's not even start)". About the ONLY time when, as a bi lady, I've felt like I was honestly answering that question, was when the answer was "No, but my girlfriend..." (And then only if the conversation participants had met prior boyfriends.**)
In other news, I hear today is Bi Visibility Day.
And my boyfriend's punishment for his part in the heteropatriarchy shall be that he must clipper my head, or at least find me a cheap barber near his abode.
~
*He acknowledged, slightly sadly, that he has given close crops to many African women. He was nappy-haired himself, with a rather cute crop of coils 1-2 inches long.
** Of the two lies, I'd rather be taken for a lesbian. It feels to me as if the assumptions people make based on 'interested in women' are more accurate w/r/to me than those based on presumed heterosexuality. Or it's homophobic stereotypes, which I don't wish to disown or evade just because I happen to date men too.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-23 06:54 pm (UTC)This year, a bunch of my mom's friends were asking why I got my hair cut, did he like my hair, blah blah blah. The number of them who were hurt or angry or just still didn't understand when I told them makes me angry. It's my hair. He's not the boss of me. I'm doing it for my own health and comfort and I like this style.
Half a year later, it doesn't make me as angry (I guess because they aren't in front of me.) but it does make me sad that apparently massive migraines wouldn't be enough for them to cut their hair, because of their menfolk.
But I'm snappy and sarcastic all the time when I get asked stupid sexist questions, so yeah. My default response to the questions is, "Why the hell would that matter?" Just the state of having a boyfriend is annoying, sadly.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 10:50 am (UTC)... which says worrying things about their opinions of their menfolk.
I suppose you could turn the question back: wouldn't your husband rather you without migraines?
Or be lewd and announce he gets a compensatory blowjob for every haircut.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-23 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 03:01 am (UTC)