Boys Can Have Long Hair, Too (Duh)

How my 9-year-old nephew is bravely challenging gender stereotypes

There was wrapping paper everywhere. My nephew Kai, who had just turned 6, had opened all his presents, but the one that made him squeal the loudest was a box containing a princess dress and plastic high heels.

Kai had always loved to play with dresses and high heels. He was my sister’s third child. She had hoped for a little girl — her two older children were boys — but was nevertheless thrilled to welcome another boy into the family.

I witnessed his birth. My sister’s labor went on forever and foregoing the epidural, she quickly became exhausted by the extreme pain she was in. It was her most difficult and dramatic birth. After Kai arrived, I was excited that my brother-in-law allowed me to cut the cord. As soon as I closed the scissor blades, snipping through the tissue, blood splashed across my face.

This was a perfect entrance into the world for this little imp, as we all soon discovered. He insists on creating a lot of drama whenever he enters a room and he’s better than anyone I know at making messes. (Thankfully, as a Virgo, he’s also very good at cleaning them up.)

I call Kai our family’s little fae baby. If you saw him, you would understand this. He has fine, blonde hair, and eyes the color of a lagoon. His face is sprinkled with just a touch of freckles, and his bone structure is something out of a fantasy movie. Seriously, he looks like a narrow-faced Legolas.

Just like any good fairy child, Kai loves to make mischief, doesn’t care about rules, and has quite a talent for casting glamours on himself. So of course, it surprised no one that he loved to wear dresses and high heels throughout his childhood.

To their credit, this never bothered my sister or brother-in-law. I didn’t expect it would have upset Tegan — she’s extremely open-minded. My brother-in-law, Andrew, while also very open-minded, presents as the masculine stereotype: tall, imposing, tough, and opinionated. But he seemed to embrace Kai’s gender fluidity.

Kai had always loved to play with dresses and high heels.

Eventually, Kai lost interest in wearing dresses and began developing a very unique sense of style — something vaguely hipster, but with a Gen Z flair. What really interested us, however, was that he wanted to grow out his hair.

At first, his parents obliged, thinking it would get long enough to annoy him and he’d want to cut it to look like his brothers.

But no. A year went by, and that beautiful, blonde hair kept growing.

Andrew expressed some annoyance about the hair one day when I was visiting.

“You don’t need all that raggedy hair,” he said. “Just let me cut it.”

“Nope,” Kai said, his arms crossed over his chest.

Somehow, my brother-in-law talked Kai into getting an undercut, but that’s all he would allow. He wanted to keep most of his long hair. Like a Viking, he said. Or you know — Link from Zelda.

I used to hang photographs of my nieces and nephews on a bulletin board near my desk at my former workplace. People loved to look at them and ask me questions about the kids.

My god, they’d say. Who is that particularly stunning little girl?

Eventually, I didn’t need to look at which kid they were pointing at — I came to find it was always Kai who drew their attention. Yes, he is stunning, as I’ve mentioned. He really does look like a fairy prince or an elf from Lord of the Rings.

“That’s my nephew, actually,” I’d say.

They’d always stumble through the same apology. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I just assumed it was a girl because of the long hair.”

Yes, yes. I’d heard that a thousand times.

Their mistake didn’t bother me. Honestly, I think we make too big a deal over gender identification of kids and babies. Who cares?

Is there something inherently disrespectful about calling a boy a girl? (Nope — that’s just sexism.) Is there an unspoken insult to a girl’s appearance if someone assumes she is a boy? (Nope — also sexism.) Further, who knows how that child will choose to identify himself, herself, themself in the future?

What bothers me is the lazy assumption that a kid with long hair is a girl. It’s 2019, for heaven’s sake. How are we still at a place where short length is the only recognized way for a boy to style his hair?

I hear this constantly when I’m with Kai. Kids at his school who don’t know him express confusion — boy or girl? Occasionally, at the grocery store, people will give him a long look, as if trying to determine his gender. (Why that matters to complete strangers, I can’t imagine.)

What bothers me is the lazy assumption that a kid with long hair is a girl.

Recently, a family friend came to visit with her 4-year-old daughter. When everyone met up, the little girl, who was sitting on the couch next to me, leaned over toward her mother and told her nervously she wanted to play with one of them, but she couldn’t remember anyone’s name.

“Kai, you mean?” her mother said. “I know you liked playing with him last time we visited.”

The little girl looked uncertain.

“The one who looks like a girl? With the girl’s haircut? That’s Kai, sweetie. He’s a boy.”

At that, I bristled. I couldn’t believe she was passing down that gender stereotype to the next generation. I mean, come on.

“Lots of boys have long hair,” I muttered, but by that point, the little girl had scampered out of the room to find my nephew — the one with the “girl’s haircut.”

I find it fascinating — but also deeply disturbing — that we are still holding on to such damaging gender stereotypes even in 2019. Can a boy not have long hair? Have we forgotten the hair bands of the 80's? Should we encourage Jared Leto or Jason Momoa to cut their luxurious locks because they “look like girls?” Would the world be the same without Brad Pitt’s tantalizing tresses of 1994?

And why is it so threatening when little boys want to dress in “girl’s clothing” or play with “girl’s toys?” There doesn’t seem to be any issue when a little girl wants to wear overalls and baseball caps or play with tool kits or toy trucks.

Is our culture’s homophobia so deep that we feel pressured to “guard” our sons’ masculinity? Are we really so uncomfortable with a male expressing anything outside the culturally acceptable demonstrations of masculinity? (And have we really thought about how ultimately damaging that is to all men?)

I hoped by now, our world would be a safe place for my nieces and nephews to express themselves, though it seems we still have a long way to go. But I am proud of Kai and his determination to express himself, even in the face of people who keep telling him he has a “girl’s haircut.”

Is our culture’s homophobia so deep that we feel pressured to “guard” our sons’ masculinity? Are we really so uncomfortable with a male expressing anything outside the culturally acceptable demonstrations of masculinity?

He’s 9 now, and at Halloween, when he dressed as a Viking, I begged him to let me braid his hair so we could show off his undercut.

“No,” he said, as certain as always about how he wanted to look. “I want it loose and long with just a band around my forehead.”

I said okay and he handed me the headband while reminding me of the war paint he wanted me to apply around his eyes and over his cheeks.

“Eyeliner, too?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said with a nod as he smiled at himself in the mirror.

As he approaches his teen years, I hope with all my heart that he never stops looking at himself that way — with absolute confidence in who he is and how he has defined himself.

© Yael Wolfe 2019