Serious Hair
Author: Jennifer Lycette, MD
Keywords: Women in Medicine, pandemic, gender stereotypes, sexism, workplace appearance,
hair
If you want to be taken seriously, you have to have serious hair.
That line has lived in my brain since 1988. I was fifteen years old, and I was convinced Melanie Griffith’s character in Working Girl had revealed one of life’s secret truths. In the movie, she utters the line as she directs her friend to lop off her long blonde mane. All so her new boss, played by Sigourney Weaver, will take her seriously in the workplace.
As a teenager in the ’80s, it was obvious as I looked ahead to college and “escaping” my hometown, this was the secret to success I’d been searching for. After all, could Sigourney Weaver have fought off the Alien if she hadn’t had serious hair?
No doubt, much of my fascination with the potential of what a radical haircut could hold for a woman came from the fact that my father had forbidden short hair. So it will come as little surprise to the reader here to learn that shortly after I “escaped” to college, I took myself into a salon. “Cut it short,” I declared.
The stylist raised an eyebrow but made quick work of it. For the first time, my hair ended above my shoulders. I reveled in my new style. I felt older, freer, lighter.
But did people take me more seriously? A hometown friend commented when I returned for winter break, “You look like someone from 90210.” (Note to Gen Z: this was considered a compliment in the early ’90s). Still, not exactly the vibe I’d been going for.
The lessons from the movies of my coming-of-age years continued. In 1995, Legends of the Fall came out. I recall being home on college break and watching it with my family. Afterward, my dad turned to me with a perplexed expression. “But why did she cut off her hair?” (referring to Julia Ormond’s character).
I struggled to find the words to reply. Was he asking about the movie? Or something more. A multitude of thoughts went through my mind. To be free. To express herself. To be her own person. To take control. To leave bad memories behind. What I said out loud, with a falsely nonchalant shrug: “I don’t know.”
A few years later, toward the end of my time at medical school, my then-boyfriend (now-husband) and I set a wedding date, and without discussion, I let my hair grow out long again. He didn’t care about my hair length, but it would seem I couldn’t get past the social conditioning of my childhood—a bride “needed” long hair.
But in residency, when I decided to apply to Hematology/Oncology fellowship, I cut it short again. I couldn’t envision how I’d tell my patients the treatments I’d be recommending would cause hair loss if I was sitting in front of them with long hair myself. Besides that, I thought it would also head off the constant comment, “you don’t look old enough to be a doctor.”
But no matter my hair length, those comments persisted. For the years that followed, I continued striving to find the ultimate style for “serious hair” that would garner respect in the workplace. But I could never seem to get it quite right. I tried them all—the classic bob, the long pixie, the angled bob, the lob. But no matter the style, I could still be asked at the end of a patient interaction, “when do I get to see the doctor?”
At the same time, I want to acknowledge the privilege I’ve had as a white woman physician. Women of color suffer from even more macro and microaggressions over the appearance of hair. As Dr. Onyeka Otugo, an emergency medicine attending physician and health policy fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told the New York Times in 2020,. “Many [medical students] worried that if they wore their hair naturally, instead of straightening it or even changing it to lighter colors, their grades and performance evaluations from whitephysicians might suffer.”
As the years went on, no matter my hair length, the questions and comments persisted—even two decades after medical school. Mostly from patients, but colleagues, too. Recently starting a new job, fifteen years post-fellowship, a male physician who didn’t know me (or my C.V.) repeatedly suggested I “run my cases by” another colleague, as if I was a trainee. My hair still wasn’t serious enough. And apparently, I was ageless. Unless the problem was never my appearance—but my femaleness.
So when the pandemic came, and I stopped going to the salon, I welcomed the relaxation of society’s “style rules” for women. My hair grew. I didn’t pay attention to it. Pulling it into a quick ponytail for work took all of thirty seconds. For the first time since adolescence, I didn’t care what anyone thought of my hair. We were in a pandemic, people.
Then, recently, I attended my first, small, in-person work meeting (masked and socially distanced, of course). The biggest surprise wasn’t how awkward it felt to be with people outside my department for the first time in over a year. It was the hairstyles of the other women. Salon- quality cuts and color. All different lengths. I couldn’t stop gaping. It felt like a betrayal—I thought we had an agreement.
So the other day, I gave in and booked an appointment online (I’m fully vaccinated, and the salon requires masks). It’s been over 18 months since my last salon haircut. Will I emerge from the salon with serious hair?
No matter the length of my hair, the answer is no. Because like so many expectations society puts on women, the pandemic has helped me see such a thing doesn’t exist.
(Sorry, Melanie).
About the author: Jennifer Lycette, MD, is a community hematologist/oncologist in rural Oregon, mom of three, and recovering perfectionist who’s writing her way back from physician burnout, one word at a time. Her essays have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, The ASCO Post, and more. She was a Doximity Author (2018-2019) and Doximity Fellow (2019-2021), and is currently a regular contributor to Medscape Blogs. (Website, https://jenniferlycette.com, Twitter: @JL_Lycette).
