Long Hair

Blog Post 16

5/15/2023

38O6’49” N108O1’19” W

There were a number of interesting things that happened in India from the perspective of being an outsider. But the most shocking effect was half the length of my hair automatically classified me as a woman in the eyes of most. Walking down the crowd of the streets of Delhi, seeing thousands of people pass by, never once did I see someone dressed traditionally as a man have long hair. It seems as though there’s a strict dress code for all men in India: whether you were digging trenches on a construction site or working in an office, you would wear a collared shirt, dress pants and short-cut hair. These rules became more lax in the countryside, but in the highly populated cities, I saw zero deviation from this trend. I not only had long hair, but my hair is red.

In India 15 years ago, a brutal terrorist attack happened to a hotel that killed 31 people and left over 300 injured, and after that attack, every single hotel and museum set up a rigorous check involving metal detectors and a mandatory pat down. At each one of these checks, there are two lines, one line for men, and one line for women, and every single time I went down one of these lines, even though I was wearing perfectly masculine clothes and the only “off” thing about me is the length of my hair, I was yelled at in Hindi by multiple people saying that I was in the wrong line. I even kept track, and the record was five times in one airport. My hair is fairly long, but in America, I’m treated no differently than anyone else. So it was shocking to enter India and have the paradigm completely change from the very beginning of our travels.

At first, I took it personally. I felt uncomfortable. It felt almost as though the world revolved around me, but it was the worst way possible where all the people are judging you. It was also shocking to be treated suddenly completely differently than I had been treated my whole life. In the beginning I had a very strong feeling of people constantly staring at me. At points I even considered cutting my hair, but slowly, I stopped blaming those around me. I realized that I was judging all these people myself because I had no window into their culture. How would I act if I saw someone with long red hair if I grew up in a place where everybody's hair is brown? I would probably be a little curious too. As it was happening, I did feel as though I gained some value from the experience. I have experienced my life predominantly from a place of privilege, so while I would never claim to understand the experience of marginalized people and victims of systemic oppression, it was teaching to be in the position of someone who was judged for their physical characteristics.

It still is of course sad that gender norms are so strong in India. I wish I could go there and not worry about being judged by the way I look, but instead by the way I act. That is the goal that I hope we are all striving for. But until then I need to remember not to blame those influenced by the system. I instead need to blame the system itself.