It is such a shame that whether or not you have a penis or a vagina plays such an important role in deciding the "appropriateness" of hairstyle.

Related anecdote: When I was growing up my best friend went to a private school that had a dress code. After spring break one white student came to school with her hair in cornrow braids and she was forced to remove them before she was allowed to go to class. Why? "Because it wasn´t her culture." There were black students who had always come to school with similar hairstyles and no one thought twice.

As a biracial person (and strong believer in race as a social construction), I have to wonder how "black" you have to be before cornrows becomes "not your culture." Black according to who? Darker than a brown paper bag? Who made up these magical definitions of culture anyway? I didn´t know culture was something that was owned by a person or a group, but what do I know?

Anyway, I digress. I don´t even want to imagine what the school would do to an intersexed or transgender child.

I understand completely how you feel about being snowed in! I've been stuck at my parents' for days. Finally dug out my truck yesterday. Finally. And now we expect more snow tomorrow.

I started kindergarten in 1969. That boy's hair looks a lot like mine at that age.

My family has a photo of my dad taken circa 1933, when he was four -- he has curls down to his shoulders and he's wearing a dress. He looks like a boy.

These are not simply gendered norms; nor are they particularly "conservative," if you take conservative to mean "old-fashioned." It was never the fashion for boys that age to have short hair until relatively recently. This is something new.

School Boards sure don't learn. The Supreme Court decided a case about long hair on a high school student in 1970, Tyler Crews v. Eugene Cloncs. Mr. Cloncs was still the principal at North Central High School when I went there a few years later.

http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/432/432.F2d.1259.18110_1.html

"Second, both witnesses admitted in their testimony that although girls engage in substantially the same activities in gym and biology classes, only boys have been required to cut their hair in order to attend classes. [...] defendants have offered no reasons why health and safety objectives are not equally applicable to high school girls. On the present record, therefore, we believe that defendants' action constitutes a denial of equal protection to male students."

"Despite the rationalizations offered by defendants, we believe that their action in excluding plaintiff from North Central resulted primarily from a distaste for persons like plaintiff who do not conform to society's norms as perceived by defendants."

Oh my goodness. This is so terrible on the part of the school. I hate this kind of shite. My kids have always got to choose their hairstyles; my son had hair down to his shoulders until his recent cut:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellyhogaboom/4072538539/

Let me tell you, as a parent, things got a lot better when I got my ovaries up and began sticking up for my kids' personal sense of style in the face of the gender-policing comments we'd get. Interestingly, my son gets comments and pressure - for his long hair or wearing a skirt - far more than my daughter for dressing up as a wolf or cutting her hair short. Luckily though, most every comment I've received has been supportive of our choices as parents to let our kids decide their style and physical being for themselves.

Back to the original story: with all the pressures on the parents and the kid, I'm sure they'll cave and cut his hair. And I don't blame them. I wish I knew their email or contact information just so I could write them a, "You're right and they're wrong" supportive email.

YAY, Texas! I'm really becoming somewhat of a fan, no, really...

NPR: Native American boy's right to wear braids moves to US Appeals Court

"A five-year old Native American boy in Texas was punished for wearing his hair in two lengthy braids. School officials deemed the kindergartner's braids in violation of the Needville Independent School District's dress code which forbids long hair for boys."

More on gender and hair: SNL considers the man in UPS ads to be a "man in a lady-wig."

http://www.hulu.com/watch/113219/saturday-night-live-ups-1

My daughter was at Legoland last year (she was 4 at the time) and her father was instructed to put a shirt on her while she was in the water play area. Boys were allowed to go topless, but not girls. It was a good thing I wasn't there with them, cuz there would have been an incident. Ridiculous!!

eugh. my son is three with hair longer than that boy. although that boy is sooo adorable! long hair for boys and short hair for girls is so cute! he's a preschooler, let him be!

This is the stupidest thing. It is sad when stupid people run the schools. He is 4 for goodness sakes. Who cares if his hair is a little long. It isn't even that long! Of all the things for a school to worry about, the kid's hair should be the last thing they worry about, unless they have lice or their hair is dirty or something. SHEESH! Poor kid.

This is hardly new. When I started teaching in 1970 the teapot tempests were (1) long hair on boys and (2) boys wearing earrings.

Really incredible that a school felt that policing an arbitrary gender norm was so important that it was worth disrupting the education and socialization of a four-year-old (whose hairstyle is, despite their protests to the contrary, still the decision of his parents). The decision to segregate the child within his class was especially interesting - like an old separate-but-"equal" policy had to be dusted off for a community that never quite warmed to modernity. Although it's a totally different issue, I'm really reminded of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24prom-t.html

The gendered nature of the double standard is obvious and totally viable in any legal action against the school district. But what really gives me the creeps is the fact that, in cases like these, a child's fundamental right to an education is so undervalued that it can be retracted as early as the age of 4, when no child can possibly conceive of an offense so grievous as to deserve a long-term punishment.

Nitpicky, I know, but it's not the Dallas Independent School District. It's the Mesquite Independent School District. Mesquite is a suburb of Dallas, yes, but the school district is separate and distinct.

This is totally ridiculous.

And you know, I'll bet girls are allowed to have short hair.

Yeah, I remember how distracting long hair in the classroom was when I was four, totally put me off my finger painting exercises.

Is this a gendered code or a code based on ones born sex? Because it seems to me to be based on someone's born sex (genitals), not their gender (how they express their born sex). When did those two words become the same? :\

Well, if girls have hair that's "too short"--a buzz-cut, for instance--then the crap hits the fan. But yeah, it's generally accepted for girls to adopt (to a small extent anyway, wouldn't want them getting uppity or anything) masculine traits because it's tacitly understood that girls are less-than and that moving towards masculinity would be a sort of upgrade for them. Quite the reverse for boys--moving towards femininity is shameful, and cannot be tolerated.

I wonder what would happen if people's illusions about the fixed nature of gender traits all suddenly vanished. I bet their little world would just fall apart.

Meanwhile, a student is missing days and days of school because of...his hair? We're not even talking behavioral problems (though those are also gendered and racialized in enforcement).

Is this a public school district?? My cousins would get in trouble in high school and be sent to the principal's office to have their hair cut, but they went to private Catholic school. In that case, you know the rules when you go in.... it's expected that Catholic school is going to be strictly conservative, so I never really felt up in arms about them having strict policies about the length of the boys' hair. You choose to put your kid in that school.

But for public schools to have such restrictive policies? I didn't know that was the case. I wonder if there are such rules in my district. (I'm an elementary teacher) I can also imagine such rules being on the books, but not being all that enforced. There are so many other battles to fight, really this is the one the district chooses??

The other thing that makes me SO angry is this: We get parents for truancy. We track them down, and judge them really harshly when they don't take their kids to school... We determine acceptable and unacceptable excuses for absences... because it's bad for the students to miss a lot of school. It makes sense! AND YET you will suspend a student and threaten expulsion of a student for HAIR LENGTH?? How long has he been out of school? How much school has he missed at this point? I know he's only 4, but the early start programs can have such an impact on childrens' learning throughout their lives. They are not only doing an injustice to this kid's right to look the way he wants, but his education. We would call a parent criminal for doing the same thing. This is NOT an appropriate reason to stay home.

I used to have long hair and wasn’t admitted to a private Catholic School, but it was no problem in public school. Heavy Metal and stuff \m/

Why is it so *wrong* when boys/men adopt traditionally feminine appearances and styles, but not the other way around with women/girls?

@rebj: because women have fought for decades to dress how they like, but there hasn't been a corresponding mens movement to dress like girls, because girls are seen as less than. it makes sense to want to be masculine, since boys are superior, but a boy who wants to look like a girl? well there must be something terribly wrong. /snark Also see laughingrat above.

Good for the kids parents. I hope some one takes the school to court for this. JUST. SO. WRONG.

This is my first time commenting here, but I've subscribed for a while.

When I was in grade 3, I had long hair but it was in horrible condition. So my mum took me to the hairdresser and I got a pixie cut. And to tell you the truth it was distracting. I was made fun of, peers called me sir, I lost a friend or two because they thought I was gay (at the ripe old age of 9) and my teacher had to deal with a lot of students bullying me. It was a pain for the principal because she had to talk to about 5 different boys that day.

10 years later, I still have short hair. If we didn't have this idea that girls have long hair and boys have short hair, I wouldn't have spent a lot of my adolescence hating my hair and hating my mum for making me get it cut. So putting a ban on it is just ridiculous because it enforces that idea. And now I'm late for work, life story ends now.

Question from the uninitiated (aka European): It seems that on the chart shown in the dress-code that corn rows are also not allowed. Why?

Seems like an easy-to-care for (once they're done), clean, "undistracting" (it doesn't need constant tugging and pulling like the stupid pony-tails I had as a kid) and generally accepted hairstyle to me. What's the connotation that goes along with it that suddenly makes it unacceptable? Help me out, please.

that's because I'm nigerian and I can't grow long hair :(

Uh...seriously? Education sucks because of idiotic educators. That kid's hair wasn't terrible. It looked clean and groomed. I think the school has a problem with the unorthodox appearance of his parents and they are taking it out on the child. A kind of "We don't want your kind around here" thing.

That school administrator in the clip, the woman, had an awful and awfully distracting hairstyle. She should be fired for looking weird...or at least segregated from society until it grows into a more acceptable format. One that doesn't bother me or distract me or offend me. Because how I feel about her hair is the most important consideration for her to make when choosing a hairstyle. She CLEARLY missed the mark. I'm always dumbfounded by these odd regulations. In Baton Rouge, near LSU, there are bars that have dress codes and one of the signs posted actually says no white shoes, no wifebeaters, and no Mr. T starter kits. WTF??!! How do people live with themselves?

Where I live the only dress code required for going to school is the uniform(wich is a t-shirt with the school's logo) and is like that all across the country

As the mother of a boy who has hair down to his waist and a preference for flair jeans with sparklies on them, I definitely think that defying gender norms is harder for boys. Tomboys are somewhat okay because it is "best" to be male in our society. I was overjoyed when we moved to our new (more conservative) school district. Our last home was extremely progressive and so no one blinked at our beautiful boy. How would he be treated here? Well his teacher told us that his hair was shorter than the principal's son's hair and that her own boy likes to wear dresses. Victory!

However, I do want to point out that, although girls aren't as heavily policed by gender norms, they are heavily policed in general. The marketers target them for bare midriff tops and mini skirts, but then those same outfits are not allowed in school because they are distracting.

It's funny, my hair was about that long in kindergarten (longer, actually. and curly, so it was all poofy and ridiculous), and so was the hair of my best friend Anton. I used to be confused about that anyway, as I actually thought Anton was a girl when I first saw him. But yeah, I never got any guff about it, but then this was Montana, where everything is a bit strange.

No piercings, though.

Do you mean that that length of hair is considered feminine in modern America? Reading your comments I see how everybody acts like if it was gendered! It's NOT and wasn't before the fifties or so. My father, great grand father, etc, they all had the same haircut as that boy. My boy has the same hair cut as his grandfather when he was a boy, and it never occurred to me it could be gendered. He is a boy, looks like a boy, and I would find traumatising to cut his hair like if he had some plague or something. What worries me the most here is that, as in clothing for little boys, military influence is the rule. And I think that short hair, combats and camo pattern is not exactly my idea of how a childhood should be enjoyed.

I moved to Texas in the 9th grade, and got a warning from the Vice Principal because 9th Grade me should not have a beard and young men should be clean shaven. I ended up making my doctor write me a doctor's note excusing me from this asinine dated rule. I mean, it wasn't like I was prepubescent neckbeard. I'm Italian, so it was a full on luxurious beard. So yeah, Texas schools are just weird. 

Well, in this case, the principal is not my pal.

I had to get my hair cut down to a normal "boy" cut for junior high basketball. The explanation the athletic department gave was that it was "too rebellious."

I hated it. It didn't make me feel any better that losing my pony tail definitely helped my ability to fit in.

We could get rid of these educators by showing them pictures of some of my high school classmates.  Images of (First Nations) boys with braids down to their ass is sure to give them lifetaking heartattacks.

I teach prek, and almost all of the 4-year-old girls in my school have longer hair and earrings.  The boys have buzz cuts or at least short hair.  One of my fellow prek teachers took away an earring from a boy, saying he was wearing "bling", but doesn't bat an eye at all the girls in her class that wear earrings.  I felt sorry for that boy.  

My school didn't care about hair at all-- there was a young man who had a 2-foot bright green mohawk which he styled with Elmer's glue and touched up in the cafeteria-- but my parents both had hair stories. My mother talks about how much she hated those stupid rubber swim caps, and how all the girls had to wear them in pools-- until the 60s hit and boys started to grow their hair long. Well, the girls pitched a fit because supposedly they had to wear the caps to keep their hair out of the pool filters, but the boys were allowed to go in without them. The public pool owners freaked because they couldn't ask MEN to wear swim caps, that was a GIRL thing, so they settled by making them optional for all.

My father tells the story of being in a conservative public high school in the 60s and how they had an older woman who would inspect all the girls for hemline infractions, makeup, piercings, etc at the start of the day. The boys had no such person, but the principal assumed that responsibility to ban the "hippie hair"-- longer hair, sideburns, beards. Well, my father was called into the office one day for his long sideburns, and the principal was all prepared to make him shave right there-- he had a disposable razor at the ready-- until my dad explained that he was hiding a rather bad scar. This was an acceptable manly reason, so he was permitted to continue the sideburns.

Back in high school a friend of mine started wearing a kilt to school a la Axel Rose. He kept getting in trouble for wearing it because it broke the "no crossdressing" rule. Apparently the Vice Principle of Discipline at the time was so thick it never occurred to him that only men wear kilts.

Of course, this was the same VP of Discipline who dressed like a wannabe gang member and got caught having an affair with one of the teachers on school grounds. Oh, and the teacher got suspended without pay for the rest of the year, but the VP kept his job as though nothing had happened.

wow. It sounds like some of these schools are really going back to what the educational system started out as...just a means of social control and indoctrination.

I remember this fight from the early 1970s when I was teaching at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX.

dontcha know? our kids are "gender dysphoric" if they don't wear culturally created and socially created personal adornment items like clothing and hair. This is how gender essentialist our world has become and it's sickening. I would have been "corrected" as a child for dressing like a boy and "acting" like a boy - whatever that means...

Who's to say what is the norm but double standards may be in play here. No rules for girls so short hair is allowed. No logic in this. My son who's 8has longish hair and that's his preference. No guidelines as long as they wear their uniform. Think jewellery and heels are just not allowed. Which is reasonable it's a primary school but hairstyle is just dictating too much I think.

I wasn't allowed earrings until I was 13 which I think is the right age. Had second lot done at 18 which were more painful.

I now have a daughter. Think it will be more reasonable for her to choose over age of 9 as it would be her informed decision although really I want them done when she's 3. This would be cruel as it will be going against her wishes as she just won't understand then

Amazing write-up! This could aid plenty of people find out more about this particular issue. Are you keen to integrate video clips coupled with these? It would absolutely help out. Your conclusion was spot on and thanks to you; I probably won’t have to describe everything to my pals. I can simply direct them here!

Incredible that this is even an issue in the 21st century.

"In the first place, God created idiots. That was for practice. Then He created school boards" -Mark Twain

In my 52 years on this planet, I've seen very little to belie this quotation.

We moved to Texas in 1972, a small town outside of Waco. As a guy I had long hair and was starting the 10th grade. The vice prince actually took me to a barbershop and told the barber to give me a short ivy, a sort of crew-cut. The reaction from my parents was "he looks nice". Seems like history is repeating its self. Hopefully now a days a parent would take legal preceding s and sue.