The war of short-haired women against dudes and their pants feelings continues. Indeed, it’s gotten so bad that pickup artist/rape legalization proponent Roosh V is calling for state intervention.
In a blog post today, Mr. V cites a passage in an Evo Psych textbook suggesting that men tend to prefer long hair on women because healthy hair is an indication of good health and diet, and therefore of “higher reproductive value” in women.
And if cutting off this hair is displeasing to the boners of dudes like Roosh, well, it must mean that women who wear their hair short are, quite literally, mentally ill. No, really; that’s what he thinks. (Emphasis mine.)
If a woman cuts her hair to a short length, or shaves it outright in a Skrillex haircut, we can now confidently say that she is making herself appear less fertile, less beautiful, and less healthy. A woman cutting off healthy hair is one step away from literal cutting of her skin with a sharp object, because both behaviors denote a likely mental illness where the woman presents herself to society as more damaged than her genetic condition would indicate, suggesting that she has suffered environmental damage that has reduced her overall fitness.
Or maybe she prefers short hair because it’s easier to manage? Or because she thinks short hair looks cute? Nah, couldn’t be. She’s clearly a danger , not only to Roosh’s boner but to herself!
She must be monitored by state authorities so she doesn’t continue to hurt herself.
Roosh posts pictures of women he thinks have committed “self-harm” by cutting their hair short, thus transforming themselves from sexy ladies to hideous short-haired monsters.
Really? I’m pretty sure that all this proves is that Roosh has such a hard-on for long hair that he’s unable to see straight. To my eyes, and I suspect a lot of others, these two women — actresses Ginnifer Goodwin and Keira Knightly — look fine with long hair, and fine with short hair. (I actually prefer their short-haired looks, but, you know what? It’s really none of my business.)
But Roosh not only sees short-haired women as an affront to his manhood; he also sees them as a threat to Western Civilization itself.
What should we think when deluded women are actively encouraged by society to harm themselves by cutting their hair instead of growing it out and looking beautiful? One that doesn’t care about the fertility of its women and, in turn, the needs of men who want to mate with fertile women. Unless there is something within a society that promotes beauty in the form of long hair, we have little choice but to conclude that it is sick, grotesque, and sterile.
Roosh goes on to argue that art should reject such cultural sickness and celebrate the fertility of young women.
Oh, wait, that was Hitler.
Setting aside Roosh’s creepy, quasi-fascist obsession with female fertility, I do have a couple of questions for Roosh and the Evo Psych crowd in general:
What about infertile women with long hair? There are lots of women, cis and trans, who can’t do that whole pregnancy thing; many of them have long hair. Would Roosh lock them up for false advertising? (Actually, never mind; I’m sure he would, though probably not without hitting on them first.)
And what about short-haired men? Like Roosh and his pals, many evolutionary psychologists find it difficult to think beyond conventional gender stereotypes. All the studies listed in the Evo Psych textbook Roosh sites revolve around women and their hair, never men and their hair, even though the same reproductive logic would apply to them as well. Poor diet can reduce sperm count and cause infertility.
So why isn’t long hair on men “preferred across cultures” the way that long hair on women tends to be? Why isn’t Roosh calling for short-haired men (like himself) to be confined to the psych ward?
Could it be — possibly, maybe, sort of? — that there’s more to love and lust than what’s in our genes, or in Roosh’s jeans?
Penny – He’s been going through a mid-life crisis as of late and has been lamenting that there are no women virtuous and pure enough for a walk down the aisle.
Really.
To be fair to Roosh (I can’t believe I am saying this) he does wipe his posterior, but only because women have a weird aversion to men who smell or have dirty teeth, do not bathe etc. Poor Roosh has to cope with Femi-hygenie-nazis who oppress him by deciding on their own hairstyle, dress code, taste in men, beliefs and lifestyle.
Every time I see the name Roosh I am reminded of Zelda Windwaker and the game within it where the attendant says “Sploosh!”
He can’t be serious. Total page bait.
You know what I get a kick out of? Men who lament about short hair on women but whose wife/girlfriend has short hair because she doesn’t give a fuck about his opinion and just rolls her eyes and does what she wants. My in-laws are an example of this. And my paternal grandparents. Just love it.
Is Roosh looking to get every woman he ‘bangs’ pregnant? If he’s just a PUA looking to help other men ‘PU’, what’s with his focus on the ‘needs of men who want to mate with fertile women’? Is Roosh secretly an impregnation fetishist? Physical beauty and signs of health are not necessarily indications of fertility, so either Roosh is simply an ignorant fuck using faux evo-psych to shame women who betray what he perceives as their duty to his boner, or there’s something he’s not telling us about how much he values female fertility.
Evo-psych: the favorite pseudoscience of misogynist assholes. There’s as much science to Doosh’s claims as there is to astrology.
I once had long hair. It looked fine, but it took time to style and I wanted a change.
Today my hair is silky, shiny and shaved to a 2 everywhere by on top. It looks fab-U-lous. It’s fun. It’s easy. I can style it a variety of ways and dye it any color without worrying about breakage. (I’m just going to cut it off anyway.) I love it. One reason I love it? No more back of the neck sweat in the summer! Yay!
Another: It repels Dooshbags. Hooray!
When I had short hair, I didn’t even need to brush it. It was amazing. Hopefully I’ll be getting that back in next month. 😀
Hi, been lurking for ages haven’t commented before. I just wanted to say, as someone who studies psychology, that it isn’t the fault of evo psych that these nutters have taken on a few cherry picked sentences and are trying to use them to mean a bunch of crazy things. Evo psych doesn’t say how society should be now. It has absolutely nothing to say about how people should behave. All it says is why things may be the way they are. I doubt any evolutionary psychologist would advocate for a society based on these kind of principles, the beauty of humans is that we rise above some of the ingrained natures that we have. Please don’t hate on a whole discipline because of these idiots who don’t understand what they’re talking about.
I’ve been wondering if I should cut my long hair to chin length sometime soon. I think now I definitely will!
Don’t the Roosh approved defcock 5 countries tend to be predominantly Muslim countries where women cover their hair rather than show off their fertility? This dumbass can’t even agree with himself about what he wants society to be like.
I looooooove when Evopsych types equate “long” with “healthy looking” with “pretty”. I have what amounts to a massive Jewfro that looked like a thick, lush, healthy Yield sign until I chopped it into what looks like — surprise surprise — an appealing haircut. I just wanted a change, but I get hit on about 10000X more now that the hair is cut (although that could also be because I have a young face, and the short har stops me looking like I am in high school).
If the ability to grow long hair is all about advertising fertility/health, then you’d think that long, lush locks wouldn’t develop until adolescence. Dimorphism appears in lots of other species (harp seals, for instance – they’re white when young, and turn brown as they mature) so if hair is simply a signal of mating fitness and nothing more, why wouldn’t humans have evolved the same way? Why are children able to grow their hair long? Wouldn’t that be a waste of precious resources for a still-growing body?
It’s absurd to argue that there’s a single correct length of hair that is evolutionarily “natural” for both men and women. At certain periods the aristocracy shaved their heads, at other times they wore it long. For men, historically, shorn hair often signalled a prisoner, slave, or monk – a tool that was used to enforce obedience, humility, and discipline (and control lice). Given that, you’d think women would also be demanding long hair on men because evopsych bla bla proof of mating availability bla bloo blee. But no.
Also, the “health to spare” theory that Roosh cites should encourage woman to bob their hair. If someone is attractive to begin with, then doing things which jeopardize that attractiveness (shaving the head, wearing opposite-gender clothing, actresses playing serial killers) will make them even more alluring. They have so much sexiness to spare, they can withstand the “hit” to their attractiveness. Thus, Kiera Knightly.
Guys like Roosh hate short hair on women because it signals liberation and self-determination. Short hair means a conscious choice has been made to cut off the hair, and Roosh can’t stand the idea that women should be allowed to choose to do anything.
He’s also afraid that if someone sees him walking down the street holding hands with a short-haired woman, she might be mistaken for a guy. So many of these PUAs go for what social convention/other dudebros tell them is hot, not necessarily what they themselves find hot.
Well, my mom had short hair before she came to Canada, and before she met my dad. Yet they still got married just three months after they met, AND managed to have six of us. So, Roosh, you’ll have to pardon me if I think you’re full of shit.
And now, BRB…gonna go borrow my dad’s buzzcutter.
I certainly hope that’s the case. But I’ve run across a lot of this sort of nonsense from people who are big names in the field. The textbook Roosh is quoting is by David Buss, who AFAIK is a very big name in the field. Is there are newer generation of evo psych people challenging this stuff?
Okay. Twice now I’ve donated a bunch of hair to people who make wigs for kids going through chemo or hair-loss-causing diseases.
I’m not saying it’s an Act of Great Sacrifice that I did for selfless reasons – it’s a nice way to get a free haircut if you do it during a hair-drive thing – but how is that NOT stereotypically motherly/feminine or whatever?
The other time I got a free haircut, it was one Roosh would not have liked! And it was awesome! I kind of did look like Skrillex for two weeks. I wrote about it here: http://blather.newdream.net/red/i/i_got_a_dadaist_haircut.html
Anything that avoids attracting dudes like Roosh is by far the healthiest choice.
Speaking from experience only, I took an Intro to Psych course with a prof who introduced the class to EvoPsych. Generally, he took a practical approach to psychology (he wasn’t a Freudian, to say the least) and his other big thing was Cognitive Therapy. But when it came to gender, even not-yet-feminist, non-scientist me thought his explanation of “why men do this, and women do the other thing” was WAY too simplistic.
For example, he said men cheat because they want more sex partners, and women because they want a higher-value partner or better provider. And men get upset with their women partners for cheating because of the sex, while women get upset with their men partners for the emotional connections they have with other women.
So yeah. This part stuck out to me, because the rest of what he taught seemed nuanced and reasonable.
So sorry but the sheer numbers of men who have left pregnant partners, encouraged abortion, claimed the baby wasn’t theirs, tried to get out of child support, and just plain wasn’t all that excited about the new arrival makes Roosh and his evo-psych rationalizations about men giving a damn about fertility when jonesing for sex a joke.
Any man that invested in their partner’s appearance to the extent of lying to maintain control of it isn’t worth having. Although, personally, I wouldn’t give the time of day to anyone trying to turn me into their porn fantasy. At least, not unless they were planning on turning into mine.
proxieme, midlife crisis…. Dear (insert preferred deity/philosophy etc here)… I probably shouldn’t be laughing this hard, but I can’t help it.
I advertise my health and fertility by flaunting my lush, silky leg hair.
OK, I did cut my (very long below waist length) hair after I was ill.
Because I was out of my mind for several days and it got so tangled it had to be cut.
So possibly you have to be well to maintain long hair ?
Yeah, long hair was horrible in hot weather, but in the winter, it made a wonderfully warm ‘cloak’.
Man, the Maasai would really mess with Roosh’s head.
So, long hair is a symbol for health and fertility, does that mean that they will protest against women shaving their legs next?
I think there used to be some places where husbands legally owned their wives’ hair.
Also, some scientists have a bad habit of looking at the world through a, frankly, patriarchal lens. For example, there’s a theory that women developed breasts as an extra butt to lure in men. No, really. Evolution decided that women’s bodies should cater to men’s sexual pleasure.
Then someone suggested that, hey, breasts are like they are because it’s easier for human infants to nurse with their given nose shape. Also, breasts aren’t sexualized in all cultures.
Oh, and trying to explain why women have orgasms? It’s a side effect of men having them, like men having nipples because women need them.
Except, the muscle contractions of the female orgasm actually help the sperm on their merry journey to the egg. And if women weren’t supposed to orgasm, what is the clitoris for? So the “nature only cares about one orgasm” thing is pretty much bullshit.
And don’t even get me started on the application of (patriarchal) human sex and gender norms being applied to nonhuman animals. It’s a train wreck.
Honestly, I’m not convinced nonhuman animals even have gender. But various species have more than two “morphs” or variations among sexes anyway, so our culture’s socially imposed gender binary can’t fit.
Vivien
One big problem with Evo-psych at the moment is that there is very little self policing. It’s a new science, and one that is very attractive to people with agendas beyond simple science. It basically gives an air of legitimacy to people who want to prove that “men gonna men” or women are less than men… or whatever sex differences study they decide to do (the HBD types are starting to look for a foothold, too). And nobody is really watching out for these agendas. This can be due to not wanting to make evo-psych as a whole look bad.
Another problem is lack of funding… This allows the third problem which is poor scientific practices. Very limited variety of individuals used in studies (mostly from rich western countries, and those mostly from the universities of the studies as well). This is a huge failing for something that’s supposed to prove evolved traits of humanity as a whole independent of culture. The flaws in assorted methods are also downplayed because it might look bad for the science. So they downplay both flaws and the agendas, and the downplaying of flaws allows those with agendas not even have to worry about trying to be actually scientific.