new thread
Hello Everyone,
For new people growing their hair, you should resist what I call facism, it is this form of manipulaiton, that colleagues, friends, and self-styled fashion experts use to say that your hair doesn't suit your face.
Only you will see, by looking in the mirror that your hair suits your face. I will give an example of a colleague at work who says that my hair doesn't do my face a favor: That is that if I had shorter hair, my blue eyes would stand out more, and that visual attention is on the hair, and not on my face.
For f... sake, my hair is PART of my face, and I am satisfied with it.
I think that if one were to follow the rule that hair has to suit one's face, very few people would have long hair, or at best can leave their hair loose.
I coined the term "hair facism" (like fascism without the s) to define the mentality where to have long hair, one has to have the face that goes with it.
You will see, that in "mop" movies, some well known actors have styles that keep their hair out of their faces. In 1998, the movie "The Man in the Iron Mask" stars Leonardo di Caprio as Louis XIV, and he had hair extensions, and never his hair blew in the wind, and it looked "perfect". It wasn't a wig, since Louis Xiv started to wear wigs later in his life like the 1660's, and the movie is set in the 1650's. The near-mullet style shown in "The Man in the Iron Mask" made Leonardo's face stand out for the audience, and was not historically accurate.
A hairstylist that is a hair facist, may give you a "long hairstyle", that is layered, and is high maintenance, requiring you to spend your hard earned bucks on frequent salon visits, and products....
Just being natural is less expensive, and being less fussy, can make life easyer.
The fashion industry is there for your money, and make you fuss about the slightest nearly unnoticeable "defect"
Have a nice day,
Georges in Montreal.
There are certain things that most people are fascinated with. One is that people have to be one sex or the other - people are driven to classify every human they see immediately into one or the other of the sexes. Another item of fascination is the face - people tell each other apart by the face and also extract emotion from the face. Those two items are the two primary ways that people tell people apart. They are how we CLASSIFY others. Our hair, our clothing, our race - these are other ways we classify people, and people are somewhat fascinated by those, too. On the other hand, no one uses eye color or size of the hands to classify someone, so they care little about either.
Besides wanting to get a clear image on items used for classification, most people also don't want mixed messages in the image they get. Disdain that some people have for mixed-race marriages and for transgenders is rooted in that.
Hair is a part of the body that, unlike "size of the fingers", is used to identify people to some extent. Animals use hair to a greater degree than humans do, and researchers have recently found that hair, like the face, in the human brain is processed in a different place than are general images, probably a matter that came down from our ancestral roots. "Telling what sex someone is" is also a special skill. The human brain gets very emotionally involved with how these images appear on others, and of course, how they appear on ourselves.
So you want to talk about hair and the face, TOGETHER....
Well, they ARE driven to SEE the face. Only a few fetishists would prefer to see everyone looking like "Cousin It". But the other comments we get are also just invoking a way we classify people. We also hear we look "old", we look "like a kid", to "grow up", we look "like a girl", we look "like a hippie", etc. - and age, sex, and social groups are means of classification. Few tell us our long hair makes us look "weak" to irritate us, for example, because that is not a usual means of classifying people into groups.
So people do want to see the face, and LONG hair on men in particular carries a strong message of classification, because most people see longhaired men as being in a separate social group to some degree. That is why we even have a word for MEN with long hair, "longhairs". When you consider that long hair and the face are both emotionally charged images to begin with, and that they are adjacent to each other with the possibility that long hair can HIDE the face, one would expect that the interplay between hair and the face would evoke emotional responses.
Producers do this because they know most people are fascinated by the face. Even cartoon characters are drawn with very indefinite bodies compared to the detail given to their faces. Artists may lop off a finger but never an eye. Movies and TV shows cut from one scene to another mainly showing the face over and over, while showing little of the rest of the actors. This is very irritating, and very much noticed, by someone such as myself who cannot process face images - it is much tougher to tell people apart in a show than in real life, because in real life the whole body can be seen and it is not chopped up repeatedly. There is CONTINUITY that directors destroy in favor of showing the face over and over.
"Face-ism" is rampant. People design cars to look like they have faces. People would squish a cochroach but not a puppy, because they can empathize with the puppy's FACE. If people want a tank engine to appear human, they draw a face on it. They may also stick a pink bow on an ob ject if it is female. (Oops, there's the other main way of classfying, sneaking in! ...when in the real world, inanimate objects don't have a sex in the first place.)
With long hair, we mostly encounter people wanting us to get rid of it or hide it, but especially to get it where it is not seen along with, or heaven forbid in front of, the face. Cut it off, pull it back into a tail, don't let it get so long it covers the ears or touches the collar. If it touches the collar it might end up in FRONT of your shoulders, and Lord, it would be SEEN there.
To my eye, that goes beyond "face-ism". It is "anti-hair-ism".
For those of us who consider our hair to be part of our identity, whether that be our individual identity, our social group identity, or both, we WANT it to be SEEN. Long hair is not to be hidden, it is to be CELEBRATED!
Proudly flyin' the freak flag,
Bill
I get what you mean, although I've not had much trouble with facism myself. What you defined there can be seen in lots of other stuff, daily.
I often find myself being angry because someone has had the silly idea of thinking that they could decide what my opinion is on certain things. It's often very small things, but I notice them.
Like with birthdays. To me, they don't mean anything. It's not like someone has achieved something that you need to congratulate them on. The general public has decided that I need to be happy on that day or that I should like birthdays. I don't. Period. Why can't people leave me alone on that day?
That's just one example, but it's the same kind of behaviour that is the root of facism: People having the audacity to think they know what's best for you - and even wanting you to comply with their vision.
Thanks for the great post, Georges.
I have experienced comments like the one you mentioned. I have been told either that I look older with long hair or that long hair does not suit my face. (Indirectly, people have said that long hair is OK for OTHER guys but not myself, implyng that my facial type is not suitable for long hair)
I have learned to simply ignore these comments, and actually get fewer of these comments, since I ignore them. Frankly, I prefer the way I look with long hair.
David
Don't listen to those people, David. You suit long hair much better than short hair. (which is the way it turns out for most guys, in my opinion)
Thanks for the compliments!
I agree that most everyone looks better with long hair. After all, having long hair is the natural way to have it, it was given to us for a reason.
David
I've been told i look ''gay'' with how i have my hair now and it's not even long yet. Maybe it's the awkward phase starting.
Well, when your hair does get long, those types of comments will be illogical. The dominant hair trend among gay guys is very short.
Hello Everyone
try Hair naziism :))
It is just as bad :))
very well written=)
a.
but your telling people who like fussy hair their wrong...? I like to take time on my hair, I like going to the salon. Just because you don't doesn't make it wrong.
Paul
It's an interesting topic. I've been told a lot that my hair suits my face, and some say they don't think longhair looks good on men in general but looks good on me, and such so I can't really relate to how it feels for someone to single out particular features and say they don't match my hair. I've never had negative comments about my hair except from my mom years ago, but she just accepts it now. Otherwise, I haven't dealt with the onslaught of comments other people on this board have faced.