Hello, I'm cute

Now that we all have online profiles, whether it’s something vaguely professional liked LinkedIn or it’s Facebook or just your profile at some Ning site, I’m seeing a lot of photos. Photos of people. Photos of women, ordinary women, confronted with the sudden need to look sexy.

I’m not talking about bikini shots on your CV website or anything ridiculous like that. I’m talking about the pressure to at least look “cute” online.
Because we all know snapshots are so cruel in their variability – you get one where you look great and one where you were having a great time but you look sweaty and tired and horribly old.

Think of the hundreds of work minutes wasted by a million women trawling through photos to find the right one to post!

And as a vain person, believe me I am not immune.

(There’s always the “photo of your kitten” route, but then people like me who forget names get confused. Like there’s a guy on Facebook who friended me with a picture of a – I guess *his* -- dog, and I have no clue who he is. I’m sure I do know him, I could just click “accept” but it bothers me.)

Short vs. long

Okay, so I mentioned my haircut, right? It’s totally neat and chic and arty and fun and – short.

See, I used to have long hair, for ages. Short hair looks better on me though, and it’s hella (as they say ‘round here) easy to make look good (thank you, Aveda).

But.

Guys don’t flirt with me *nearly* as much. And this bothers me.
I can’t help it. Its true that I’m not looking for a date, I’ve got a steady, but I’m not living in a cave, free from all societal pressures, and so yes, I value males telling me I’m cute.

And I’m not *less* cute than when I had long hair, there’s just something guy-pulling about long hair.

It seems sort of hypocritical of me to both value the flirt attention but be mad that guys like some stereotypical maidenly image. But, you know, I am.

I am still thinking about this. Sometimes I decide that I’ll go back to long hair, even though I know I looked much less put together, more frumpy, and also I had to constantly wash it. Then I want to smack myself and say, ‘Hello, you look good, shut up already.’