I spent a startlingly long amount of time thinking about this. If a woman can tell her boyfriend to shave his beard off, then logically a man can tell his girlfriend to straighten her hair. It should be that simple, right?
But it's not. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it's not. I feel as if a woman expressing her preferences for a man's appearance is fine, but a man doing the same is bossy and chauvinistic. I feel like a guy making a demand about how a woman should look is a throwback to a less friendly time.
I suppose what you should do ultimately depends on how you interpret his request. If it's a "you look beautiful all the time, but I love when your hair is straight" type thing, then I say indulge his desire if you want to. But if it's a "you're only attractive when your hair is straight" type thing (which I have a nasty feeling it might be), then I think you shouldn't do it. And beyond that, I think you should break up with him because he's being selfish and treating you like a dress-up doll.
Ladies, what are your thoughts? How do you take requests to change your appearance from men?
Related Links:
I Want My Boyfriend To Shave His Beard
My Boyfriend Won't Shave His Chesthair!
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I have curly hair, and I love it that way. I have been asked if i would ever straighten it and my answer is always no. I refuse to change my look for anybody but myself. I am a "take me as I am" kind of person. If you don't like me the way I am, then you don't have to hang around. I also get a lot of compliments on my hair, because it's different than the straight hair everyone else is sporting. I say if she likes her hair with curls than that's the way she should wear it...if her guy is that much of an ass that he puts her down because of it, then he needs to go.
That being said....While I prefer clean shaven, I also would not demand that a guy shave his facial hair for me.I might tell him how HOT he looks with a beard, but clean shaven REALLY does it for me, but that is all! It IS no shave November, after all.......Knowing I don't care much for facial hair I also would not choose to date a man that sports a beard all the time and then demand he shave...
I guess I would require my bf to shave (or at least most of the time). In my experience they want to look hot for you so they will. Guys have liked my hair curly, but I don't so I straighten. Usually if a guy likes a look that I'm not fond of, I do it as a treat for them.
I could write a book on this! I have a sort of an unusual look, created by necessity really. First, I have huge long thick curly red hair. Trust me, it stands out in a crowd, no pun intended. I would never get it chemically straightened, or cut off for that matter, because people compliment my hair all the time, and it’s always been my calling card. If a guy objected to it, first, he would be an aesthetic idiot and second, he would be out of my life. Fortunately, unlike with our darling OP, all my boyfriends have loved my hair. Which is good because it would take hours to straighten in the mornings and even then it would only remain straight with some major lifestyle adjustments. Adding to my funkitude is the fact that I bike to work. It is a lot of fun and good for me and the environment. This requires a backpack instead of a purse and clothes that can go from bike to office. Most people appreciate my creative and practical attire except my current dude, who’s a bit of a priss and an occasional prick. When I don’t have time to transfer the backpack to a purse, he grumbles. He really hates that thing! Although I think more out of fascination than disdain, he has called me a “Prippie” (preppy hippie) and a combo of Pippy Longstocking (braids when I bike), Princess Leia (not sure why that one) and Blossom (the leggings and helmet I suppose? – yikes!). But these are facts of my daily life. I’m not giving up biking and I can’t control the humidity out there. But I do adjust for him when I can and that’s the key. If he says he loves me in mini skirts or boots or whatever, I’ll make sure those are part of special nights. I always shower after the ride home if I know I’m going to see him later. I carry a purse when I can. I clean up real pretty. And I love my look and lifestyle. So unless he can appreciate my happiness and accept it comes with certain compromises, he can be damned. Wear your hair however you want, sistah! If it makes you smile it makes you attractive and if he can’t appreciate that he’s a bit of a prissy prick himself.
The reason you are having a hard time is because you are WRONG in saying a girl can tell her guy to shave. That isn't true. I think that people of either gender only can ask their partner's to change their appearance if that appearance is different from what it was when they first started dating. If a man had no beard when they started dating but grows one out years later, the woman has some weight in asking him to shave. But the girl in this question has always had curly hair so her BF has no place telling her to keep it straight. It seems like she's always straightened it from time to time, but it doesn't sound like she had it straightened every single day at the beginning of the relationship.
Further, shaving takes all of ten minutes ONCE per.. week? Straightening your hair takes at least 30 minutes EVERY DAY. Also, a beard makes kissing hurt, curly hair does not.
Meh. I go to the gym two hours a day because my wife demands I keep my ~10% body fat physique, as well as her, um, other demands.
I agree with you regarding this issue, but I also just want to add: I love it when my boyfriend grows his beard, it doesn't hurt to kiss at all after you get past the itchy stage. In fact to me it hurts less than when he keeps a clean face because the stuble grows in so fast he would have to shave every single day which he doesn't do, so its always scratchy. The fuller beard is sexier, and softer for kissing lol.
Oh my I got a good laugh out of this one. That's just too funny, breaking up with a man only for expressing his preference for a hair style, nice, nice.
I agree. What the hell, why not? Dump him! Kick him to the curb! Tell him to get lost! Those darn meanie control freaks! All the lovely women readers should do the same if their man dares to presume to express what he finds attractive in you, yep! The gall of that! They think they're Ozzy Nelson or Ralph Kramden or something?
You seem really unstable to me. Sometimes your answers are calm and intelligent, and other times, they're filled with bile.
In this case, breaking up with him for expressing a preference for a hairstyle is plausible because he's not just expressing a preference. He is, according to the OP, getting upset if she doesn't wake up earlier to straighten it. It's enough that she feels that he doesn't like her if her hair is curly.
What that boils down to is that he is a douchebag. You don't 'demand' something out of your partner. Treating her this way is its own kind of demand. So, I agree. If he treats her like that because of her hair, he deserves to be dumped.
TL;DR: "Presuming to express what he finds attractive," as you so charmingly put it, is not the same as "do it or else I'm going to treat you like smelly, ten-day-old dog poo encrusted on the bottom of my favorite shoes."
oh, darn, you are on to me. I'm actually writing this from the Saint Remy de Provence Institute for the Criminally Insane, and the doctors were late in administering my daily electro-shock therapy, and I think they had the voltage set too low this time. And I was still laughing when I wrote my first comment.
Okay, the reason for the, 'bile', is because the response by MM was not helpful to resolve the relationship issue.
He presents two possibilities, but doesn't offer possible approaches to them, instead he says "here's two possible reasons but either way dump him, just dump him." Lately much of his advice to women has been to dump and not talk.
He outright admits to having a doubles standard, but pretends to "not know why". I've had my suspicions MM is a stakeholder in GS or its parent companies. If I am right, that makes complete sense then as well as the rest of his response.
If I were asked, which I wasn't, I would have told her to try explaining to him, if she hadn't already, the work that goes into it. My gut tells me it's not about the hair but about a fear of his she's letting herself go, so I would tell her to reassure him on that regard, it's just changing her hairstyle, she still has the same beautiful face, she's not gonna pack on a hundred pounds. If he still insisted and pushed, I'd tell her to stop straightening her hair, call his bluff. See, though MM likes to portray us as knuckle-dragging neanderthals (good for the main audience), not many men would REALLY breakup over a hairstyle change. He might even grow to like it more after he gets used to it. And, if he does, then he looks the superficial shallow jerk and she dodged a bullet.
And if he didn't leave, then a relationship was saved, a conflict resolved. Of course that wouldn't appeal to the female viewers. But double standards in favor of women and referring to OPs' men as losers sure does. And, if there's a spike in men being dumped, more new viewers could be coming here, wondering why guys won't commit and only want sex. In that context, MM's answer was absolutely capital.
Not unstable, just annoyed.
And to my usual detractors, I'll preempt you: I DID NOT EVEN MENTION THE WORD WEST!
Not mentioning the word west in your comments is sooo Western!
I think there's sense in what you're saying, sometimes the best solution is to tell your boyfriend to suck it up and stop being such a whinge -bag rather than assuming that this is the end of the road. If we all ended relationships every time our partner developed an irksome habit instead of talking it through with them then we'd all be single.
The questioner sounds like she's letting her boyfriend dictate what she does with her hair and he can probably only get away with it because he lets him. Maybe it's just time for her to put her foot down and start doing what she wants with her image so the impetus is on him to get used to it, because at the moment he has no reason to.
I tend to agree that asking a guy to shave his beard is not okay. I think asking nicely is okay. I think persuading in whatever way works (seriously? This is not a difficult equation - sexier looking man = more sex. Done.) But going to him and saying 'Hey - I hate this beard. Shave it.' just doesn't sit well with me. Mostly because, you know, I don't want to be treated that way.
SO - to this OP, my answer is the same as MM's - straighten when you want and when you're willing to, leave it curly when you're not. And if he doesn't like it, find a guy who will be cool with you for YOU.
yeah, see I agree with this. Call his bluff. I seriously doubt he'd actually leave anyway, not over a mere change in hairstyle. He might pout a few days, a few days later get used to it, then he might even like the curls.
To bad MM didn't actually advise this.
I think in the end, if he is upset her hair isn't straight every day then he's just not being respectful to the OP. That's what makes him a duche and is a good reason to dump him.
I've had guys state preferences like 'Can you wear that red dress when you meet my family?' but never in a controlling way which you seem to have here.
Whether it's my clothing, choice of lingerie, my hairstyle preference or even my politics -- I always say the same thing to my fiance', "Sweetheart, I'm thrilled you like it, but I wasn't exactly aiming for your approval!" AND luckily for me, he just chuckles when I say it because he knows it's coming. It isn't that neither of us is interested in impressing or appeasing one another, but both of us acknowledge that we met each other as fully developed human beings with our own individual set of preferences, and we both respect each other enough to realize that we have little desire to change one another when it comes to these. That's not to say that we don't value one another's opinion/input, but he realizes as well as I do, that if either one of us has a strong preference for something that ultimately makes us feel better about who we are, why in the world would the other aim to change it? For me, the bottom line is this-- even if his own preferences don't fall in line with my own for him -- within reason/decency, I'm all for him choosing things that make him feel more confident, smarter, relevant etc because ultimately, all of that adds up to him feeling happier -- and when he's happy -- well, THAT'S just sexy to me. And because we've discussed this, I know he feels the same way about my personal preferences.
Aside from the OPs right to choose her hair style, lets remember that flat irons straighten hair using super high heat which fries hair when done frequently. Curly hair is more at risk because it takes longer and more passes with the flat iron to straighten it. The hair becomes burned, brittle and broken, which looks unhealthy and frizzy when it is not straightened. So doing this on a regular basis is just not at all practical.
I didn't read any of these comments, but I wanted to point out that hair on your head is way different that facial hair. You can't compare apples and oranges. I think a more accurate comparison to always being clean shaven thing would be if your boyfriend was like "I think you should shave your legs every day and not every other day/every few days/never"
that's what i thought too. I had a guy who hated when girls had armpit hair, so i was extra vigilant. I didn't like it when he was at the stubble stage (beard burn from kissing him is NOT sexy), and he was good with that.
however i never commented on how I hated when he let that little bit of hair grown in and was lazy about shaving it (yes, he was bald) and he never commented on how I decided to do my hair (color, length, style etc) he commented if he really liked something.
I found the two completely separate.
ask him to pay for it to be chemically straightened.
there are safe formulas out there
hi - OP here. I ran out of space in the question so I couldn't post any more details. Before we started dating, I pretty much always wore my hair curly. I've tried to straighten it for him when I can because I know he likes it, but I'm worried about how much it seems to mean to him. Just as an example, I was supposed to meet him after work for a dinner date last Fridy, and he asked if I was going to wear my hair in this sleek, low-ponytail style that he likes. I said yes, but then ended up having to work late. I only had time to change and didn't have time to change my hair which was curly that day. He seemed really upset when I met him at the restaurant so I asked him what was wrong. He said "I thought you were going to straighten your hair". I felt like the evening was ruined because I'd disappointed him somehow.
(BTW thank you Mystery Man for answering my question. I've been having a hard time with this)