Photo by Paige Bush
I love the trend of “flow.” I remember growing up and it was always the coolest thing to have the shortest hair possible. Without going bald of course.
There was something military and macho about it and it always made me distinctly uncomfortable.
So in my eyes, men incorporating longer hairstyles into their repertoire is probably a net benefit for humanity.
However one of the consequences of men wearing longer hair is occasionally they need to tie it up. And this, my friends, is where we run into a problem.
If you’ve ever wondered why feminists talk about men having a fear of femininity, this is a prime example. The hairstyle called “the bun,” despite having no linguistic reference to girls or women, appears to be too feminine for men to use.
For some ungodly reason people have taken to calling this a ‘man bun.’ Myriad BuzzFeed lists and hashtags have been used to document this social phenomenon and it is undoubtedly the single stupidest development in the English language to appear in my lifetime. I want it to stop.
Hair does not have a gender. Hair is a genderless term linguistically and a genderless object physically. This is because objects don’t have genders in the English language. It’s not a ‘man-bun,’ it’s just a bun. This is just an unnecessary addition of words to our common lexicon to make men feel special for a hairstyle that has existed for decades.
But lo and behold it’s not just ‘man-buns’ that are defacing the English language like this. What’s up with ‘Man-gria’ instead of Sangria? Are wine drinks and coolers too feminine for men to consume? Or how about bath bombs in the shape of grenades. Is there something so irredeemably emasculating about a fancy bubble bath that we have to sell it to men in the shape of ammunition?
When it became socially acceptable for women to wear pants a hundred years ago, women didn’t feel the need to rename pants. They are just pants.
Women didn’t seem to need the feminization of everything to start using things that had been exclusively male.
Sure, some companies tried to target products to women specifically, but we all remember the Bic Pens for Her fiasco from a few years ago, right?
Men won’t do anything that could be remotely feminine unless it’s wrapped in chainmail and scented with gun powder.
Can we please get over this gender essentialist bullshit and stop needlessly forcing a collective dick into every part of our culture?
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