Women Without Hats

I have now been happily married for a whole year! AND, I've only been married for one year, so that's a pretty good track record!

Now, I've felt funny in religious settings for a long time, because I'm frequently the only woman who wears a tallit and kippah and pants, but now I'm funny in a different way. I don't have any marriage-related head covering. In fact, I'm even wearing the same kippah that I did before I got married.

To be honest, I've barely acquired any clothing since acquiring a husband. I've got a ring and I wear that very faithfully, but I've decided that it's the thing I wear to signify my married status.

But then how will men know that I'm not sexually available to them??

Easy. I won't sleep with them. Hell, I won't even kiss them!! (I'm a total extramarital prude.)

Simply put, I don't think that the visibility of my hair is a marker of my sexual availability. Granted, I do have very nice hair, but -- just like the rest of my body -- just because it's visible in public doesn't mean it's up for public use.

(Maybe people should think of me like a gorgeous house in prime real estate. If it's that nice in this area, it must be spoken for. Right?)

But also, I think modesty is not really a prime concern of mine. While I do dress more modestly than I did when I was a single girl running around New York City, this is mostly a function of me being 28 instead of 21. And there's a difference between dressing to attract attention and dressing to deflect it. I want a middle ground.

But isn't there something different about being married? Don't you want to signify that? Honestly, since I've been with LMN, I've dressed pretty much the same, both before we were married and afterwards. Once I was monogamous, that was it. Getting married didn't increase my level of monogamy. Why should it change the signals I send out to others about their chances with me?

(Now I'm not saying marriage didn't change anything. Marriage changed my feelings of commitment in the long term, but it didn't change whether or not anyone else had a chance with me while I was with LMN. If I wanted to be with someone else while we were together, we would have broken up before anything happened. Therefore, monogamy levels are stable both before and after the chuppah.)

I tried wearing my hair up in this crazy city for about 1 mile of walking. I was going to meet LMN and I was wearing a long skirt, just kicks, and I had a scarf. So I thought to myself, what would happen if I put this on my head?! Right here! In public! So I did. I tied all my hair up in it and walked down the street, all beskirted and beheaded. (Wait; that's not right...)

And what did I think to myself? Oh goodness, I hope no one sees me. Because I was scared that someone would think that this was a religious expression instead of a sociological experiment. And I'm really committed to not expressing myself religiously that way. But I wore it anyway.

What was it like? It was HOT! Like, keeping much more heat on my body than I like. And my ears were covered. It made me feel like I should neither be seen (covering myself) nor should I hear anyone. Wouldn't it just be easier if I stayed home? And it was a subtle, but continual, pressure squeezing my head at all times. I think that if I stayed like that, it would increase my baseline crabbiness about 50%. And that's too much.

So, all in all, the head covering was not a pleasant sensation. And coupled with disagreeing with it on an ideological level, it was not the beginning of a new personal style.

Who else agrees with me on this issue?

Let's talk about Willow Smith. Willow is certainly not sexually available. (She's 10 years old, you pervert.) But Willow is proud of who she is, what she likes, and how she looks. And she's not afraid to let her hair fly!

Sing it, Willow!

Willow Smith - Whip My Hair (Official Video)
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