Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Masculinity is based upon merit. So complaints like “I have the same hairdo as Y or dress the same way as X so I am entitled to everything they have” – this is not masculine. Definitely not. The preschool attire or hairstyle rules are not about masculinity, they are about stopping some parents from making cute baby dolls out of their kids – until those kids can have their say at least. So whining about a 4-year-old sexuality being suppressed or wrongly channeled is just another example of some parents’ readiness to play a victim card even at the expense of their kids.
As for Jesus and Washington, merit-based masculinity is like the Judo scoring sytem: you have sort of ippon, waza-ari and yuko points here. If you done something good, like Jesus and Washington, that’s enough so that your masculinity would never been questioned. If you live like a normal man it’s sort of like waza-ari point, enough to settle the score. And only if you done nothing and can’t live like a normal man, those yuko points, like the hair length, start to count – if only to show that you are man enough to say “Mommy, I don’t like this haircut!”

[I’m… pretty sure Washington’s hair and (very fancy, he designed them himself) uniforms weren’t tolerated because of all the other stuff he did. They were one reason he was admired. Because everyone except maybe the Quakers aspired to look that way. Even though today he’d look out of place, and seem unacceptably vain, almost anywhere. Which is what I’m irritated about. By the way, though, I’m actually perfectly prepared to believe your assertion that masculinity is about having the right number of “good” points and “bad” points — that sounds about right. But also utterly arbitrary. Finally, who said the 4-year-old is anybody’s victim? He’s just a kid. All I’m saying is that the school district is run by castrating ass-clowns who think a little boys are so fragile they’ll be destroyed if hair touches their collar whereas they evidently believe girls are strong enough to survive it and thrive. In my experience, mostly, preschoolers mostly don’t care. —fl]

I think the irony of this is hilarious. My dad would most definitely be in the category of conservatives (having grown up on a farm in a very strict Church of Christ home) trying to instill “appropriate” grooming in boys. When my brother got one of his ears pierced as a teen, Dad huffed and puffed about how “grily” he now looked.

The couple that introduced my hubby and me are Wiccan, so their “grooming” for their little boy is very hippy, and he’s a great looking kid who happens to have long hair. I don’t see why there’s anything wrong with that.

I think those types of rules are ridiculous. But, I guess that’s as it has been for a long time – those with all the power make the rules (or something like that)... even if they’re stupid rules.

[Or, as in, say, fraternities and/or prisons, because they’re stupid rules: what matters most is what you’re willing to submit to in order to conform. This is possibly hard to avoid between teenagers. Unseemly in grown men and women. Thanks, Cristy. —fl]

This is an interesting topic from many perspectives. My kids have always gone to private schools with a “dress code” for boys AND girls. What is most interesting though is how administration chooses to enforce it…The administration when we started was all about the kids and their education. After the first year we were there, that started to transition to an administration that was all about the “rules” and the quality of the education became secondary.

last year my son was in 4th grade….there were several boys throughout the year that were told that if they did not shorten their hair they would be suspended….my son definitely had the longest hair in his class (which I personally absolutely hated – but my wife and I like to give him some degree of freedom with things like that within “reason”). He was top in his class, a good athlete, and represented the school in regional speech, science and math competitions where he always did very well. I was waiting for the day they would tell him to cut his hair (MOSTLY because I wanted him to cut it and was looking for their enforcement to backup my telling him that I did not agree with it)....

anyway – they never told him to and never mentioned anything about it to neither my wife nor I….it did finally get long enough where he was bothered by it especially when he was playing basketball – so he chose to cut it. All that to say – I think that even in situations where these institutions/schools have rules, they are still arbitrarily enforced and often times with no rhyme or reason from a parent’s perspective.

Mike

[Oh yeah. The article also mentions that there are other children with longer hair. But it sounds like this kid’s a ball of energy anyway and his dad’s a tattoo artist and in some places that just counts as “undesirable.” —fl]

M’kay, comments are getting a little heated here so I’m going to close them for a couple of hours.

There’s some controversy over the appearance of this 4-year-old so here are two photos of the boy with his father, dated Dec. 15th, 2009, from the Austin Statesman

Source: Austin Statesman, www.statesman.com

I like the photos, quite a lot, because I think they nicely illustrate the difference between “masculine” and “male.” The boy and his dad are unquestionably male. There’s considerable disagreement in Mesquite, Tx as to their masculinity. That’s what bugs me and prompted me to write the post. I apologize for having not posted the photos earlier.

I promise that by closing comments I’m not singling anyone out… at least no one but myself… but it’s important to be generous to each other in comments here.

— figleaf

Update: Comments reopened

Agreed as to the absurdity of claiming some kind of inherent maleness about standards that have changed hundreds of times through history. There are historical sources which state that among the Vikings, BOTH sexes commonly wore eye makeup and kept pet peacocks and lapdogs( not to mention having far stiffer legal penalties for harming lapdogs as compared with harming other dogs or with many other crimes). Now what would most people today think of a man wearing eye makeup and keeping peacocks and fussing over the well-being of lapdogs? And yet, who can think of a more “masculine” image than that of a Viking?