Monday, September 23, 2013

'Til Hair Do Us Part

The other night, I was in the emergency room of a hospital. (Not for me -- for someone else; and everyone is doing okay...)

As I sat there, I watched two teams of ambulance people roll patients in. They unbuckled and lifted and bellowed (one of the patients was hard of hearing) and finally finished delivering their befuddled-looking charges.

At one point, both teams were standing in the same area, writing on clipboards and punching things into iPads. A corpulent ambulance man in his fifties -- with grey, woolly hair and a grey, woolly moustache -- looked up at his ambulance counterpart from the other team; she was younger, a little "thick" in the body, but attractive.

The older man looked up: "Hey. You got a hair cut."

(Her hair was very short.)

"Yeah," she said. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing," he said. "I didn't say it looks bad -- just noticed you got a haircut."

She went back to poking her iPad. "My husband likes long hair. But, hey, I'm the one who has to do it every morning, right?"

...encouraging and polite laughter from the female nurses standing by her. "That's right, girlfriend," one of them said and then "high-fived" the ambulance lady. The woolly-headed guy raised his hands in a warding, surrendering gesture and went back to writing on his paper.

This is something I never "got." I have always wondered why people set up adversarial little dialogues (either literal or implied) within their marriages; always wondered why people seem to enjoy this sort of confrontational situation and then to brag about it. Why did the women jump in to celebrate this woman's decision to go against her husband's preference? -- is there a ghost of an implication that their bond as women is stronger than the bond of marriage? (Men do it too, by the way. Are we all so desperate to prove to our casual peers that we are "our own people"?)

This kind of tiny power struggle can't be good for a marriage, at any rate. I'm not saying one instance of it will destroy a couple's relationship, but, it just seems like another unnecessary shim driven between two people...not merely the decision to do one's own thing, but the apparent need to celebrate that decision. It just has to be slowly corrosive to the foundations over the years.

Yes, of course, the final decision has to be hers as to whether she keeps long or short hair. Maybe she had long hair for her husband's sake, for years, and finally couldn't stand it anymore, having had to deal with sometimes incoherent patients flailing around and grabbing at her flowing locks; maybe having suffered through the surprisingly strong grip of four babies... I'll bet, too, her husband is fine with it, in the end -- as he really has to be. But, did it all have to turn into a power-struggle that she has to brag about having won?

That dialogue could have run differently, is my point. How about: "Yeah, my husband really likes long hair better, but I couldn't take it anymore..." or (better, still) "Yeah, I just got sick of maintaining the long hair..."?

This way, she's not painting her most important, lifelong friend and lover as powerless and slightly controlling for the benefit of an audience of near-strangers.

Too much to ask?


  1. Couldn't agree more Chris. It seems that we as a society applaud bad behavior as a whole. Had she taken that high road, you would have had to write about something else this morning :-) Sadly your post also speaks to our collective inability to let a simple comment go at face value & always look for the cheep shot we presume someone is taking. She immediately assumed she was being criticized for something that was nothing more than a gentleman taking note of a change she made. Is she that insecure that she needs constant reassurance and approval? She just, across the board, seems like a sad individual to me.

    1. I guess I am more apt to understand her objection to the guy's comment than her immediate statement about her husbands preferences, but I see your point.

  2. I might suggest, in the woman's defence, that women are often expected to be decorative -- that is, to present appearances that are pleasing to others -- and that expectation is often expressed by their husbands as much as the rest of the world.

    And yes, of course, in an ideal world, a good husband wouldn't make a big deal of it, and therefore the woman herself wouldn't make a big deal of it, but then, in an ideal world I'd have a housekeeping staff and a pony, too.

    I've been asked on a couple of occasions what my husband thinks of things as seemingly simple as my hairstyle or manicure, or had men with no particular relationship to me tell me what they think of my personal appearance. I'm blessed in that my husband isn't a controlling jerk, But I know other women who are married to men who do think they have a say in in their wives' appearance.

    So I'm sympathetic to your paramedic. I can easily imagine her husband expressing that attitude with complaints about how he liked her hair better long, or that it looked better long, and now, in addition to being fed up with her long hair, she's also fed up with her mate's sense of entitlement about her appearance. All it takes is one guy with a woolly moustache to remark on her new coiffure for her to make a defensive remark.

    1. Quite. But I know that my wife has strongly objected to my trying to grow a beard or mustache. I suspect that she would regard a mullet--which I haven't the hair for these days--as grounds for divorce. I could regard that as controlling, or I could just shrug, shave, and let it ride.

    2. Dern those woolly mustached guys. Fair points, all, 'nora. I would like to emphasize that I did mention that guys do this, too. I think I was more focused on the publicizing of marital conflict than on the woman's particular situation, even if it didn't come off that way. The guys can be just as bad or worse when it comes to this sort of thing.

  3. To me it sounds like garden-variety banter, perhaps learned from sitcoms or reinforced by them. Close analysis may not be called for.

    1. Well, George, I agree with you up until the first period. Though I do, I think, agree with part of your notion: we can't think she is necessarily aware of what she is doing; she might well be aping sitcoms. Still, I would argue that this sort of thing sets corrosion in motion. Close analysis for her? Maybe not. But for the impact on marriage? I think it matters.

  4. George, I might also suggest that the difference between your wife's objection to a mullet and the paramedic's husband's preference for long hair has to do with the way gender relations tend to work in this world. Men are more usually valued for what they do, but women's worth is too frequently tied to how they look. The male gaze is in fact a thing, and women learn very early that there are risks to not performing for it.

    That doesn't of course address the specifics of the paramedic's marriage and whether she was being fair to her husband, nor can it. (I make a point of not commenting on marriages that aren't my own). But I don't think you can discount the issue when looking at the incident as Chris recounts it.

    1. In a way, 'nora, I didn't see this as so much a gender relations issue. It is a really matter of not being a good friend. Of course, I did talk about the "teaming-up" of the women, so, I can't complain that the discussion happened. But, whether it is a result of my flaws as a writer or not, I really see this whole thing as people not knowing how to (at least in one way) commit to a life-partner. I do think little things like this matter, especially over time, and that they can be symptomatic of "issues". (Clearly, I'm okay with commenting on marriages that are not my own...alas...) I know I don't talk about my wife like that to others -- I wouldn't criticize her in even the smallest way to my friends or to anyone else. It is not just bad form, it is potentially damging. At least, I think so.

    2. Chris, I agree it's not an ideal way to talk about one's spouse. I'm just pointing out that for women, issues of appearance or personal grooming come with a lot of baggage, baggage that men generally don't have to deal with, and may not even see (because they don't have to deal with it). And that is probably why the other women applauded her "decision to go against her husband's preference" -- because they have to carry that baggage too.

      I've been trying to avoid the S word here because I don't want to look like I'm calling you out for it, but maybe I should put it on the table explicitly: sexism. I know you aren't that guy. But there are a lot of guys out there who do regard it as a woman's duty to provide them with something pretty to look at, and because of the way gender roles and power/influence are stuctured in our society, they believe their preferences carry weight. The chorus of nurses applaud because this paramedic has made a (perhaps clumsy) statement of her own identity, rather than existing as an extension of her husband's will.

      So obviously we don't know what was going on with your paramedic, her husband, and her woolly-moustached colleague, and perhaps she really was being unfair to him. Maybe Woolly Moustache comments on her appearance all the time and she's sick of him, but deflected it back to her husband as a way of avoiding a direct confrontation with a co-worker. Which, again, not ideal, and I'm not defending it. I'm just pointing out that there are many more issues beyond "not knowing how to commit to a life-partner" swirling around here, and without knowing the specifics, I'm inclined to cut the woman some slack.

      I could also point out that this is a lot of meaning to place on one woman's haircut. *grins*

    3. I suppose the shame of it is that it came down to a haircut and a woman on this particular occasion. I wish I had seen a guy say "my wife is a pain in the ass" because then I could have called him out for going against his wife in public and then I could have criticized his buddies for applauding him. (But, I suppose that's why they came up with the intentional fallacy.)Going to write a follow-up to this piece for next time... The sad part is that married guys get fat and ugly and everyone thinks it is okay. Women do this (and this is the double standard you are pointing out and that I completely agree with) and they are judged for it; thereby yielding the applause of those nurses... It is such an excepted double-standard that your typical couple in a commercial consists of a chubby husband with a "hot" wife. (I suppose this is also a psychological appeal to the average dude...but, there it is...)