Last night, I watched this video 24 Hours of Madness. It is some kind of British celebrity game show. You know the kind where everyone goes on just to show that they are more clever and charming than the Yankees? And I got sucked in. It was loads of fun. But if you are going to watch it, fast forward to about 10 minutes, because it is a raw tape and you can’t hear anything up to that point.
One of the celebrities was comedian Sue Perkins. And I thought—in addition to being, of course, clever and charming—she was lovely. And then I thought, “I’ll bet she’s a lesbian.” So I looked it up in “Who’s a lesbian,” also known as Wikipedia, and sure enough: she’s a lesbian. And that got me wondering, “Why do I always find lesbians so attractive?”
My answer is that it is the hair. I love short hair on women. Normally, I would call for more straight women to cut their hair short. But the truth is that it works for me that short hair appears to be a lesbian thing. That way, I can have unrequited crushes on women and know that it absolutely is nothing personal. And that’s a very comforting thought as I make my way through the frumpy years.
Well, one man’s meat is another girl’s poison, as they say. I can go for short, or a ponytail — anything simple. Fashions and hairstyles go through cycles, and one lady who was studying to be a fashion designer told me she learned that most people spend their entire lives wearing the style they wore in their prime, a frightening thought.
It’s an axiom that many women dress up and do their hair not to impress men, but to impress other women. Right now the trend among young women in America is to see who can look most like various insecure celebrities — you know, the ones on "entertainment" news shows, constantly scheming to steal one another’s boyfriends. Even those of us who avoid this stuff will see the magazine covers in line at the store when we buy potatoes. It’s the Farrah Fawcett, teased-this-way and tweaked-that-way look, back in vogue.
Lesbians, like any other random sampling, don’t have a lot in common — but one thing those I know DO have in common is that at an early age they stopped trying to compete with the alpha females. Short hair is a way of refusing to play that silly game. It announces to the universe that you’re simply not interested in spending 90 minutes fixing your hair before you go out in public. You wash it, you dry it.
Which of course is quite appealing to those of us who were never the alpha males (didn’t QB the HS football team or make our first million at age 25.) Women who don’t want to be trophy objects are far more interesting. Heck, men who aren’t alphas are far more interesting. Winners are dull; they spend far too much effort on winning and usually neglect the rest of their personality development.
Here’s advice I’d give to any young, straight male with problems finding a girlfriend; become friends with lesbians. This may result in an unrequited crush or two but you won’t get strung along to bolster an ego. They’ll let you down quickly and kindly. In the meantime, you will meet interesting people, You will learn quite a few things about typical male behavior that smart women find irritating and why you should stop it.
Eventually, you will probably be introduced to some of the lesbians’ smart, straight female friends (once you’ve renounced your irritating male ways); and they won’t be interested in alphas. Best of all, if you date a woman your lesbian friends introduced you to, you can still be friends with them. Just be aware that any annoying male things you still do will be spoken of. You have to willing to have a sense of humor about your own foibles for this.
The same young straight lonely male could also make friends with gay men; they also can give you useful tips on stupid male behavior and introduce you to smart friends of theirs. But you’d have to be pretty comfortable in your own sexual identity for this, which lonely young straight males usually aren’t.
The one thing NOT to do is take advice from alphas. It’s no fault of yours that their warped culture suits them better than it does you, and any advice they give will just be to become more like them. You can try and try but you’re unlikely to ever catch up. Better to opt out of that competition entirely.
Which brings us back to the appealing nature of smart ladies with short hair . . . and, oddly enough, mainstream austerity economists, if I can stretch a metaphor . . .
@JMF – I think you’ve got a book there: "Advice to Lonely Young Men."
Now that you mention it, I very much like pony tails. It may all be a librarian thing: I like the hair out of the way of the face. It makes me think smart. I also have a thing for glasses.
As for winners being dull, I just started writing an essay kind of riffing off Hazlitt’s essay on hating, "On the Pleasures of Failing." I have much to say that is good about failing.
Looking forward to that essay if it’s posted here!
@JMF – I am playing with it, but it would be book length. Failure is a big topic!