another report for the journal of experimental gender studies

[psocoptera]

Hair trumps everything. That is my conclusion. Quentin gets pretty consistently read as a girl, and for awhile I figured it was mostly due to him frequently being dressed in "girl" clothes, and then I started thinking it was the shoes regardless of clothes (for awhile he had purple and green sneakers) but recently there've been a bunch of times he's been read as a girl even when wearing entirely "boy" clothes (including his latest sneakers which are navy and orange, and also at the pool in his boy swim shirt and boy trunks and no shoes at all), so it's got to be the hair. (His hair is shaggy, not really all that long yet, but obviously not being cut short, and I pull his bangs out of his eyes into a little side pigtail thingy.) I'm trying to think, now, if Junie only got read as a boy when her hair was pulled back or obscured... anyways, I thought it was interesting.

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I've found that a lot of people rely on silhouette for their first/strongest gender cue, rather than looking at clothing or haircut as such. That's the only explanation I can think of for more than half the strangers who see me in my purple coat call me "sir." I wear it with a hat, and people see the general outline of man-in-traditional-wool-overcoat, and think "sir" without looking at my hair or face or even at the coat being purple.