Actress Felicia Day cut her hair a few months ago—this is a thing people noticed, naturally. And thanks to comments and social media, anyone can throw in their two cents about her new look. Thing is, sometimes, those two cents are hilariously misguided and wrong.
The picture above, for example—which was blogged by Felicia Day herself—is supposed to be a before/after shot that compares Day's current haircut to her old haircut. The purpose was to highlight how poor of a choice her haircut is supposed to be (or something). One problem: the first girl isn't even Felicia Day. Um. Not that that stopped people from sharing the image. Day had a sense of humor about it, of course—referencing the people who made the image, she wrote:
I will not credit or point them out, because the BEST THING TO DO is laugh and just block trolls. Giving them attention is exactly what they want. But I had to share the picture because:
THE GIRL ON THE LEFT IS NOT EVEN ME!!! THEY CANT TELL TWO WOMEN APART WHO HAVE THE SAME HAIR COLOR!!!
I was laughing so hard this morning I had to share. I mean…come ON, dudes. It's so obvious.
My boobs are WAY smaller than hers.
Yesterday, Day blogged about her short hair and the disappointment she feels when she thinks about how much people focus on her looks. "The [comments] that confuse and hurt me the most are like this one I got last week: 'Love your videos, will be back when you grow your hair out,'" Day wrote.
"My hair doesn't affect what words come out of my mouth...but he can't see me as anything else, I guess. Guys like him tune in because I'm attractive to them. Without long hair, I'm not attractive to them. Ergo…goodbye. The substance of my work doesn't matter because my looks are the only context they have for me in their lives. And that makes me sad, because I've always tried to be more than that, without screaming it in people's faces," she continued.
The haircut, she clarifies, is not meant to be some political statement, and she doesn't completely blame some commenters for reacting the way they do. Thing is, society has primed people to consider a woman's look as something that is reflective of her work, or perhaps more important than her work. Even when you know a woman's work has merit, her looks can still tint the way you judge her. Hillary Clinton is constantly hounded and criticized when it comes to her hair and fashion sense, for example—people talk a ton about how she styles her hair, how long it is, what she looks like, and so on. Famously, in 2010, after being asked about her fashion sense in an interview, she responded "Would you ever ask a man that?"
She's just one example out of many.
Perhaps commenter Jens Wessling put it best when responding to Day's blog post about her hair:
I've gone back and looked at pictures of you with short hair and pictures of you with long hair, and after considerable consideration, I think you are funny and talented.