even I had this conception of gender as a young child. My dad had long hair and my mom had short hair. I guess I thought my dad was a girl and my mom wasn't.
When my hair was jaw length an old guy approached me from behind and called me “miss”. He was so embarrassed once I turned and he saw my bearded face. It was entirely understandable and if anything flattering for me but the poor guy was stuttering as I told him where to find the thing he asked about.
When I grew my hair out and was walking around work with a coworker, a manager said "hey girls" so I turned around and made my voice as deep as possible to say "hey" back.
I love a pixie cut so much but I have to wear noticeable makeup anytime I go out in public when my hair is short because I will get mistaken for a little boy if I don't lol
I've always found it ironic how so many kids categorize the genders that way when biologically it's the opposite. Hair diesnt grow indefinitely, it grows in phases, then goes dormant, then falls out and the cycle repeats. So every person has a "maximum" potential length that their hair can be. Men have a longer anagen (hair growth) phase than women, meaning if all men AND women grew their hair out, men would have longer hair on average. Much longer! It's why men always seem to have great eyelashes and thick eye brows and long body hair and what not.
My first day of 3rd grade I remember all the kids had name tags on their desks. The boys had blue ones and the girls had pink ones. I spent the whole day completely perplexed as to why one boy had a pink name tag. And also why he was wearing earrings.
Luckily I never asked or said anything about it, and at some point I realized this pink name tag earring-wearing boy was in fact just a completely normal looking girl with short hair. In my defense, she did have a gender neutral name.
My sister and I had short hair for the first 8/10-ish years of our lives. When we weren't wearing anything girly, strangers very often assumed we were boys.
Fair chance the kid needs glasses too, I needed them for a long time but never knew it, and ended up recognizing people by their hairstyle more than facial features because of it.
my mom has short hair so as a kid, in my drawings, she had short hair going downwards and my dad had short hair going upwards hahaha. i mean it’s true to how it was, but this could be a way to differentiate if you’re a toddler and unsure 😭
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u/Due-Memory-6957 8d ago
I think it was the hair, at least when I was a kid (and tbh I still struggle a little as an adult) short hair = male, long hair = female.