When I Got a Short Haircut

What did it mean for me to grow up female? One of the many points to consider are the beauty standards that women are held to in our society. For context: in my case, this is in Germany in western Europe around the turn of the millenium.

I am not out to shock people with my appearance. I don’t wear my hair like a punk, for example. Rather, I prefer to dress in such a way that I do not attract attention but feel comfortable at the same time.
But this attempt of just being comfortable and being myself sometimes led to humorous situations.
In the following posts, I will share some stories about what happened when not complying with socially accepted norms for gender expression.

Getting Short Hair
I experimented with varying hair lengths when growing up. Everything from shoulder-length hair–sometimes wearing my hair down and sometimes braided in a fancy way–to a shorter bob and also short hair.
But around the age of 22, I decided to cut my bob-length hair short. And since that time, I’ve stayed with short hair.

Much to my amusement, people would not recognize me anymore with short hair. I remember walking along the hallways in the university building back in 1992 with the new haircut and seeing fellow students walk toward me and then past me without greeting because I looked so different.

While before the Corona pandemic in 2020, the length of my hair was about 5 cm (around 2 inches), during the Corona lockdown in 2020-2022, it has become even shorter since I didn’t go to the hairdresser anymore. Instead, I tried whether someone from my family could just cut it with the electric hair clipper. And this worked and even felt good and looked good (at least to me).

Now my hair is around 2 cm (less than 1 inch) short. I get mixed reactions from other people about it. One of my female colleagues compliments me each time when I have a fresh short haircut. But when I visit my parents in Berlin, my dad doesn’t like my hair when it is too short and remarks that I look like a man now. I am older than 50 years. Strange that I still get comments from my parents regarding my physical appearance. But never mind. I like my short hair, and that is all that counts.

The Restroom Incident
When I had short hair, some people mistook me for a man. I remember one time back in 1992 (age 23) going into a public restroom at the airport in Berlin when a woman screamed at me with panic, “This is the women’s restroom!”

I smiled and said, “Yes, I know. I am a woman.”

Fortunately, she calmed down and let me enter.

Objections from My Boyfriend
My second boyfriend did not like my short hair. He said longer hair would be more attractive, and he frequently bemoaned the fact that I didn’t comply. Repeatedly, he tried to pressure me and said that it would be bad for our relationship if I didn’t have longer hair.

I remember one day, when we sat with his mother at their kitchen table, his mother chimed in, “Yes, as a woman, one must have long hair.” She wanted her son to be happy. I had to meet his expectations so that he could be happy.

He had first met me when I had a longer bob cut; so he knew what I looked like with longer hair. But I had cut my hair short before we entered into a relationship and not during our relationship. So, I thought he knew right from the beginning that I had short hair, and therefore, he should be able to deal with it and not try to change me all the time.

I didn’t give in to his pressure. As I have shared in a previous post, I ended that relationship eventually.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Lessons of Self-Love in Relationships

Life sent me many lessons about standing up for myself. And some of these lessons occurred in romantic relationships.

First Boyfriend

When I was with my first boyfriend around 1990, I was about 21 years old and got accepted into the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. They paid a moderate amount of money (the equivalent of about $80) each month which was labeled “money for books” but could also be spent any other way. It was a nice additional allowance. I was proud to have been accepted into the scholarship foundation and glad to have this additional amount of money.

But my boyfriend back then did not celebrate that success with me. Instead, he fumed angrily many times about how dare I accept such money even though my parents had enough income to support me. And I should think of poorer people, like him, who had had to take a student loan to be able to study at all—he was a PhD student at the time. He wanted me to feel guilty about accepting the money.

I understood his point about the social injustice. But that didn’t make me donate my scholarship money. I felt sad. I wanted him to celebrate this success with me. But he didn’t. He kept criticizing me.

It could have been just due to his anger about the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was because he was envious that I got a scholarship while he didn’t?

Besides the issue with the scholarhsip money, there were other things my first boyfriend criticized about me. My way of laughing (too childlike), that I still lived at home with my parents at age 21, my taste of music, and much more. However, I felt okay about the way I was, and I wasn’t going to change it.

Second Boyfriend

Fast forward, the relationship with my first boyfriend ended in 1992. Then I spent a year abroad in the US in 1992/93 and came back to Berlin for my doctoral dissertation. After my doctorate in 1996, I planned to look into company consulting as a job. And just to dip my toe into it and to check things out, I had a three-months internship with a consultancy coming up. I was excited about it and talked about it frequently. But then the guy who was my boyfriend at that time (and who was also a PhD student) let me know that he felt bad or put down if I talked about those exciting plans for my future. It was not that I put him down. Rather, he felt as if he did not get enough acknowledgement or recognition when I talked about my future plans and he didn’t get the main attention. And he suggested that I talk about it less so that he could feel better about himself.

Again, my reaction was like “What?!” Why was his self-confidence threatened just because I celebrated my successes? He was a successful PhD student–just like I was. No need to feel inferior. But, still, it bothered him that I talked about my upcoming internship.

Besides the issue with the consultancy internship, there were other things my second boyfriend kept criticizing about me–the issues were that my hair was too short, and my clothing style wasn’t sexy enough. And later, that my apartment was too small and that I had no car. And more. But again, I felt okay the way I was, and I wasn’t going to change it.

Lessons Learned

Regarding the misogynist part in both experiences, finding a romantic partner whose ego did not feel threatened by my career-related successes seemed difficult.

Besides the issue that I got constant criticism and that I couldn’t celebrate my achievements, both of these romantic relationships had several other red flags that showed me that we were incompatible.

Looking back, I see a pattern similar to the stories of sexual molestation where it took three incidents to get me to stand up for myself. In the relationships, it wasn’t about sexual molestations, but rather it was about constant nagging criticism of my beingness–a pattern of how bad does it need to get before I take a stand and say “Enough!” and set boundaries. While I failed this lesson in the first relationship–it was my boyfriend who left me–, in the second relationship, I was the one who broke up when I had enough (even though the side effects of that decision were kind of dramatic with my ex turning up at my door uninvited and threatening with suicide.)

Reflecting back on these stories, I see the odd dichotomy or contrast between how I was raised on the one hand, and, on the other hand, what life tried to teach me. I was brought up with the value that I had to avoid anything that could upset other people. Better not make waves and not stand up for myself. But life constantly threw me curves where it seemed to ask me, Do you really value keeping each other company and keeping the peace more than your self-love and self-respect? How bad does it need to get before you decide that you don’t want to be treated like a doormat?

Eventually, I found a new boyfriend. He let me be who I was. No more requirements to hide my achievements; no criticism of how I laughed, how I wore my hair, the way I dressed, what music I liked, or what books I read. I was free to be me. What a relief! Things were more harmonious than in the previous two relationships, and eventually, we got married.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

A Fellow Student’s View on Relationships

One of my fellow students at high school once said about one of our female teachers, “A while ago, there was this guy who wanted to marry her. He was so very successful at his job and had a high position. But when he wanted to marry her, she rejected him. Can you imagine that?” He shook his head in disbelief about how a woman could possibly dare to reject someone with a prestigious job.

That was another jaw-dropping moment for me. How did this fellow high school student–who was in the same generation as I was–think that a woman should select her partner based on his success in his job? Surely, there were some other factors that were also important for a romantic relationship. Why didn’t he see that?

I was completely flabbergasted about his point of view, but I didn’t say anything. I just made a mental note that, even in my generation, some men had weird viewpoints, and that it was probably best to stay clear of them when it came to dating.

The women in my generation were ready to go a more empowered path than our mothers had gone. But the men in my generation had yet to catch up with the new mindset.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

My Mother’s Dating Advice

Growing up female meant for me to stay clear of other people who wanted to commit physical transgressions against me (bullying or sexual molestations). It also meant choosing my own path careerwise, despite the well-meant advice from others to not study at all or become a teacher. Those were areas where I could be on my own. Meaning, I just had to do my thing and be strong enough to not give a damn about other people’s opinions.

But what about being myself and doing things my way in relationships? What if I was in situations where I wanted other people to like and appreciate me? Could I still be myself? Or would I have to compromise and put on a mask?

The next posts in this series will be about dating and romantic relationships.

Dating Advice from My Mother
I remember vividly how my mother gave me dating advice when I was a young adult woman.

“Don’t be just the good friend and buddy to your male peers. If you want to get married, you have to be more feminine and flirtatious,” she said.

“Why should I do that?”

“I am thinking of my friend [let’s call her Dora]. She was friends with so many guys. The men spent time with her, and they got along well. But only as ‘just friends’. And then, Dora complained to me, ‘They always end up marrying another woman. Because I am just the buddy friend. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.'”

It is important to note here that Dora eventually found a partner and married a good husband and father to their child. But still, my mother was feeling pity and compassion for her friend and was clearly concerned about me, worrying that I might end up with the same fate and be lonely. I understood that she acted from what was her definition of love.

I don’t know what made her think that I was always just the good friend to men. Maybe because my romantic interest in men started late (around age 21)?

And my mother didn’t expound on what it would look like to not act as a buddy friend to men but to be more romantic and flirtatious. So, I could only guess what that would entail. Give him plenty of praise and adoration and play weak and insecure in order to trigger the guy’s hero instinct? Or giggle in a girly way, flutter my eyelashes at him, and tilt my head–a gesture which would be subconsciously interpreted as a submissive signal? Or should I dress more femininely?

And even if I knew what “not just the buddy” would entail, would I be willing to do all these things even if I didn’t authentically feel like doing them?

I decided that I didn’t care to figure this out, and I wouldn’t even want to try to behave like that. My mom’s advice was well-meant, but I thought of it as nonsense. So, I filed it away in the mental box with the label “Weird Things Other Humans Said to Me; To Be Ignored. But Love Them Anyway.”

These days, there are guidelines and tips on the internet about how to trigger the hero instinct in men and make the relationship work. So, obviously several people, besides my mother, think that it is sound advice for a woman in the dating game to play according to certain rules. But back then, there was no internet. And in addition, I found the idea of having to act a certain inauthentic way in a relationship very repulsive. Weren’t there already enough areas in life where we had to put on masks? Like at the university and later at the workplace? Would this pressure to behave a certain way also flood into other areas like the private life? No, I didn’t want that.

I kept my faith that I could walk around as just myself and that I would still find a partner who would accept me as I was.

But despite my courageous intent to just be authentically myself, reality hit eventually, and I realized that some dating conversations tended to turn awkward when I talked about my successes during my academic education. Some men who I was dating seemed intimidated when they heard about the prestigious scholarship foundation, Stanford, and the summa-cum-laude doctorate. I guess many men were looking for a woman who would look up to them. And if the woman was too smart and successful, then that was dangerous for the men’s ego. I learned to be careful with what I talked about.

I was pretty sure that if a guy had had these successes and if he would start talking about them, many women would find him more attractive. But for me, as a woman, somehow it led to awkwardness in the conversation.

It was not only during dating events at the beginning of relationships that some men were intimidated. But it happened also in long-term relationships with my ex-boyfriends.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.