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?
I like ladybutts –> all men like ladybutts –> evolution gift-wrapped women for male pleasure with extra front ladybutts.
Phew, that was a lot of sciencing for one day. I am just pooped.
Hm, I thought I’d put in a link to a picture of someone in traditional makeup and white teeth, for comparison, but it’s gone…well, youall can try googling ‘geisha makeup smile’ to see a few, to see what I mean.
Regarding evo psych and sociobiology, there’s an article I read a few years ago that had a really interesting take on the subject. I think it was in Smithsonian magazine, but I can’t be sure. (Bear with me as I paraphrase half-remembered findings from a field with which I have no academic experience; I realize this is the same thing Roosh is doing– please forgive me)
The article detailed the findings of one evolutionary psychologist (or maybe she was an anthropologist?) who had taken it upon herself to find concrete evidence related to several common evo psych hypotheses– slender women are universally attractive, rape is evolutionarily advantageous, etc. Since we don’t have time machines (quit slacking, physicists!), it’s tough to study these claims directly. The researcher tackled the issue by interviewing small hunter-gatherer societies who live in remote locations– not a perfect analogue for how our ancestors lived millions of years ago, but the closest we have in the modern world. She asked them about their lives and studied their social structures.
What she found was that, from an evolutionary perspective, lots of those popular assumptions don’t hold up. In such a small community, it’s hard to keep anything secret, so when rapes happened, everybody knew about them. The men who committed rape did not increase their chances of passing on their genes– they were more often killed by the victim’s family members or driven out of the group, and offspring conceived via rape were usually terminated or abandoned. The researcher also found that men who are considered to be good stepfathers wound up fathering more children than the men who disdained their stepkids, poking some holes in the evo psych theory that stepdads have no incentive to nurture kids who don’t share their genes.
Again and again, she observed that behaviors touted as advantageous by evolutionary psychologists actually lowered people’s chances to pass on their genes in real life. She challenged the assumptions of evo psych by using evo psych. Man, it was such a cool article. Does this sound familiar to anybody? It would be great if I could find a link to it!
I wonder what GirlWritesWhat thinks about this.
Really, what is it with sexist men and long hair on women? I grew up in a church that expected a woman to have long hair, a symbol of her husband’s authority over her.
My wife has just been sectioned under the mental health act for alcohol abuse and self harm and been taken to hospital by the police, I’m alone with two kids and scared worried and terrified about what will happen to her she’s so down and unhappy
Autosoma, I’m so sorry, I wish you and your family good luck and good doctors at this time. Hugs if you want them.
Oh, autosoma, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.
Hugs Autosoma. I hope she’ll be all right.
Thank you all I just want to go to her give her a cuddle and tell her it will be OK, sorry I co-opted this thread but I couldn’t think if a nicer group of people who would be understanding. I’m so scared for her and she’s in the shitest hospital in London
Autosoma: So sorry to hear about that! That must be very scary. I hope she will be OK.
You and your family are a lot more important that stupid Roosh and his assfax, autosoma. I say post away if it helps at all.
that=than. I can’t English tonight.
ee, autosoma, that sounds terrible, for her, for you and for the kids.
Um, I hope this isn’t presumptuous (or gratuitiously useless, cos you’ve thought of it already, of course you probably have) here be a link I hope are of some use to you
https://www.rethink.org/carers-family-friends – for you, there are lots of mental health act links out there but I don’t know which ones would help best
Hugs
Autosoma, I’ll be sending best wishes your way.
That sounds terrifying.
Oh Autosoma, I’m so sorry for you, your children and her to have to suffer through this. Hopefully this will be the bottom that all of you will have to exprerience and that things will improve in the future, bit by bit.
autosama: See if you can find any charitable groups in your area that can help with the childcare. Best wishes for you all.
Huh. I wonder if he’s using this as an excuse for the post where he refused to trim his eyelashes and nasal hair?
Thanks again to all of you, she’s on the mend and fingers crossed things will become better
Like Michelle Duggar? Or those fundie-Mormon polygamists? They believe the same things regarding women’s hair…and it’s downright creepy, in the latter case, to see how all the women and girls, regardless of age, not only wear the same dress style, but the same basic hairdo, too. I imagine it must be terribly monotonous for them.
Okay, I have had short hair, and I have also had problems with depression and self-harm, and the two things are really not alike at all. In any way. What the actual fuck. (Also, I had waist-length hair when I was at my most depressed and unstable! It’s almost as if the two things are completely fucking unrelated!)
autosoma, I really hope things keep getting better for you and your wife and family, and that she starts to feel better soon.
I’m glad things are looking up a little, autosoma. Hope you can all get some rest tonight – I know that it’s late in the UK.
*sends good vibes across the Atlantic.*
“the needs of men who want to mate with fertile women”
Again.
“needs of men who want”
Wat. And you don’t see the flaw in your arguments? Need and want are not synonymous, for fuck sake.
It makes me SICK how these people twist everything evolutionary scientists say a thousand times. You can’t just take sentences like this and conveniently ignore the complexity of the topic. My professors would want to have a word with him. Will nobody take internet access away from this guy? No?
Autosoma,
Sending good thoughts over the pond (I’m in US). I recently went through a very long lasting dark depression, unlike anything I had before. My husband was very loving, supportive and helped pick up the slack with our 2 kids. I felt so guilty for putting him through that and “subjecting” my children to it (I would always say). He never made me feel bad about it. I guess my point is husbands like you are awesome and appreciated. Chin up, this is temporary, I promise.
I’m so new here, but short hair on women is my thing and I could write pages on it, but short version – I cut my hair short when I’m actually feeling my most beautiful and my sexiest and my most mentally healthy. Why? Because then I have nothing to hide behind, I don’t feel like I need the shorthand of “long hair = beautiful” because I am beautiful regardless, I don’t feel like I need to hide, and because short hair takes so much effort especially when it’s curly and ethnic and when I feel mentally healthy I feel deserving of that effort. So I wear my hair short as a badge of all the things he says I shouldn’t be feeling.
And like, obvs, that’s not the case for everyone, and it shouldn’t be because HELLO women are individuals and have individual thoughts and feelings, but I think it’s HILARIOUS that he used Ginny Goodwin as an example, because she has talked a lot about how much better she feels with short hair and how she felt like long hair was such a prop or a tool for her, and she hates the Snow White wig on OUAT partly because of the weight but also because UGH LONG HAIR SHE FORGOT SHE HATED IT ON HER. Someone above said the character of MM had short hair, and that’s only partly true. What it was is that Ginny Goodwin wrote into her contract that they wouldn’t make her grow her hair out, because she felt like her pixie cut was such a part of her identity and felt more like herself with it short, that she didn’t want to grow it out. That’s awesome, yo.