I Don’t Care Whether You Think Colored Hair is Attractive or Not

It’s not even the unsolicited opinions on our appearance, it’s that you think it’s SO direly important that we know when…we don’t actually care what strangers think.

There is this never-ending story that takes places on social media time to time.

It is a tale as old as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, but with less subterfuge and more open douchebaggery.

Though it’s not really even a story as much as it is…a cycle. Like when summertime comes on the otherwise-sleepy Jersey Shore, the boardwalk goes from empty to full, an unsuspecting visitor gets a slice at Manco & Manco’s then a seagull snatches it out of their hand and proceeds to squawk like the singer of a noise band for 15 minutes prior to promptly spraying shit all over those wooden benches like a can of Pam to a muffin tin, then all is quiet until that seagull returns for another massive triangle of gooey cheese. Repeat until October.

The cycle here is that some post by a right-wing pundit or character from the “manosphere” pops up, it could be a day old or even four or five years old at this point, with some monologue about how women need to look feminine and why do they think having four or five different color highlights or a whole head full of bright hair is attractive to them. Similar neanderthals or sock puppets agree, saying that a head full of blue hair is a sign for them to go elsewhere and while they’re at it, piercings and tattoos on women are ugly! Then it’s “why do they dress like a Hot Topic had sex with an anime show”.

Feminists quote-tweet or screencap it and make fun of it, and this is eventually followed by plenty of men jumping in the comments with statements like:

“But I like my wife’s purple hair!”

“Colored hair is cute!”

“I think the woman in that photo is a fox, what’s this asshole talking about?”

Then this eventually segues into:

“Alternative women are SO hot!”

“Goth babes give me such a boner!”

“I had such a crush on this punk rocker chick in high school, I’m glad that more women have ink and colored hair now because they remind me of her.”

Okay, I have something to say to both of these factions as an old, fat alternative woman who has partaken in various scenes and ridden my share of dick for the greater part of two decades.

Are you ready for some football?!?

I do not care how I affect your dick in any fashion.

I do not give one micron of an iota of a fuck whether you like my hair color and tattoos or not.

I do not dress for you.

I do not EXIST for you.

Your gaze does not set the parameters of my appearance and moreover, my life.

I am not here to turn you on, turn you off, or anything of that ilk. I am not here to buy into the capitalist propaganda that I need to worry about my age and 10,000 things I must “fix” to land a man.

But it all starts with Internet threads like these. Then it’s invading our personal space in real life, or sending unsolicited DMs or emails when we barely exchanged a word. I have received both hateful and horny messages representing both factions; some would even qualify as both.

To the random men who send me these messages: you are a stranger on social media, or standing behind me at Costco while I stock up on acai bowl components. Why is it so urgent to give me this report on the state of your boner like Dan Rather reporting on Afghanistan?

I’ve swung a dick or two in my time; if I want a status update on yours, you will know. Now stop looking at which brand of toilet paper I buy, you freak.

But if you think you’re bravely defending alternative women by “white knighting” us and letting us know how hot we are when those chuds post this ridiculous shit…well, you’re part of the problem.

Here’s the thing. I get that you think you’re being nice here, or just giving a compliment. But you need to direct your energy at making fun of these chuds. Calling other men out for their shit. We’ve seen and heard it all before, men need to hear from other men that this isn’t okay.

You don’t need to prove that you find traits and aesthetic choices attractive just because a couple fash bros love spewing misogyny onto the Internet like it’s freshman year at Dickcheese University and they can’t keep a 6-pack of Natty Ice down. Believe me, alternative women KNOW that there are an equal amount of men who’d crawl through broken Cholula bottles while Simon Cowell is bitching at them just to get a glimpse under our vinyl Lip Service corsets, and men who send us these War and Peace size diatribes about how our very existence makes their dicks shrivel into the ether.

All this white-knighting does is reinforce the idea that women exist to be looked at. That we only have intrinsic value because of our appearance, and that it’s ultimately what matters. That we only exist to be ornaments in your world, and how dare another man not like your kind of ornament.

Now, in before the inevitable protests of, “What, you can’t tell a woman she’s pretty anymore?!”, “Are men even allowed to talk to women anymore?!”, and “NOT ALL MEN!”

There’s a time and a place for that. What I’m ultimately saying here is that women are actually multidimensional human beings who don’t exist for the male gaze, and the idea that being pretty is more than important than anything else she could possibly be is incredibly damaging.

After all, those men who post their laundry lists about what they don’t find acceptable or attractive? Well, they keep moving the goal posts for what’s considered feminine and attractive. The entire POINT is for women to lose.

They start with things that can be more easily modified like hair color and styles, makeup, and the clothes you wear. Anything bright, “crazy”, or subversive is an automatic out which honestly, that’s great for women like me and my friends who wouldn’t put up with some sexist manbaby like them anyway.

But the more “conventional” woman is at risk. They’ll start out being overly nice then this slowly turns into manipulation where they’ll complain that you look too slutty, and need to tone it down because other men are looking at you. (When I thought the entire point was having a conventionally “hot” woman to show off to your friends??) But once you tone it down, they’ll bitch that you don’t make an effort to look nice for them anymore and dress so frumpy that even Michelle Duggar would find your dress conservative. It’s an incredibly stupid game with an even stupider prize.

But then the slope gets a good glob of Crisco to become even more slippery: now it’s that you need to lose weight or change various aspects of your body with extreme diets and exercise, cosmetic surgery, and other incredibly expensive and intrusive procedures. Where once again, we don’t need to hear from White Knights about how you find short/tall women hot, big/small boobs are just fine, etc. Or you valiantly declaring that you loved fucking this fat woman from work before you met your wife. (Fat women have sex, Chad. Some even with multiple partners well into our fifties. GET THE FUCK OVER IT.)

Those chuds though will move the goalposts even farther away, to the point that not even Lionel Messi could kick that far because now it’s that you didn’t work on those major changes long and hard enough.

The entire point of this slippery slope that starts with demonizing alternative women and our aesthetics is to minimize a vibrant, independent woman confident in her own skin to the point that she’s constantly second-guessing herself and feeling like she’s simultaneously not enough and too much. The goalposts shift and shift til they’re not just off the field, they’re in another goddamn galaxy.

It’s all to force women to be in this image of anything but their true selves, all while calling us deceivers and liars, as this test of how much we’ll kowtow to them thanks to socialized people-pleasing tendencies.

Telling women that men insulted that we’re hot and to just ignore them doesn’t change things. Men telling other men they’re engaging in possessive, controlling asshole behavior does.

As for how this gets proclaimed to the Internet and to individual women like it’s SO important? I made it to almost 40 and am really just out of fucks to give here. I laugh at the chuds who declare that women lose their “market value” after 35, the opposite happened to me by MY definition. So if you don’t like blue hair, tattoos, and amphibians, that is A-OK with me. I don’t want your company either. And if you DO like things? That’s cool too, but I’d have to see if I actually like talking to and hanging out with you before we have adult sleepovers then consider something more serious than that. You’re not getting invited to one by default. I don’t exist to ornament your world, only my own. I will only merge worlds if we truly have mutual respect and love and if that just doesn’t happen, mine is pretty damn sweet on its own.

I could care less about the male gaze; I’m all about the ME gaze.

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