My baby was born with lots of hair. That was always the first thing people commented on. It was dark and long and made them look a bit like a hobbit. At first I loved it. It was cute and made them look like a mini toddler. But when they started squirming and rolling, the hair at the back became matted on a daily basis. Combing it either took over an hour or led to a lot of screaming. So we decided it was time for our baby’s first haircut.
As it turned out, the hair underneath was a lot lighter. The before and after pictures look like completely different babies. It took some getting used to. But it wasn’t just that they looked different. My perception of their gender was also different.
They suddenly looked like a boy.
My general feeling on this is ‘Ugh. Why does my brain have to gender my baby based on their hair?’ But of course, just because I’m nonbinary does not mean I’m immune to the gendered programming I am surrounded by and grew up with.
For me, haircuts are one of the biggest sources of gender euphoria I can reliably get on a semi-regular basis. This is because having my hair short helps me express my masculinity and helps me see my masculine side when I look in the mirror. But just because short hair feels masculinizing for me does not mean that short hair indicates masculinity or male gender for everyone.
Especially babies! Most babies have no hair or very short hair. It was only because I was used to my baby’s longer hair that my brain registered the short hair as a gender indicator.
Then I began to wonder – does everyone automatically gender babies as male because of the short hair unless there is a female indicator such as pink clothes, frills, or a flower headband? Is this one of the reasons why baby clothes are so overly gendered?
In the two weeks since the haircut, with a steady stream of corrective self-talk, the gendering effect has worn off a bit. But regardless, I figure that if some people put flower headbands on their babies, I can too. Creating a genderful experience for my child means using clothing, accessories, toys, and language from all parts of the gender spectrum. It also means doing things to trick my brain out of gendering them based on their sex assigned at birth or their short hair.
What experiences have affected your perception of your baby’s gender? What things do you do to create a genderful experience for your child? Tell me in the comments below!
RELATED POSTS
- How to Reprogram Yourself out of Binary Gendered Thinking
- Gender vs Sex
- Thinking Ahead to Parenting as a Nonbinary Person
- Exploring My Gender Expression