A Dad Braided His Daughter’s Hair. And You Made It About You.
I love to play devil’s advocate. I don’t overlook or try to excuse other people’s bad behavior, I simply to to look for the whys of it. Try to understand why they don’t perceive their behavior as bad, as others around them do. When we understand that, I believe we find the root cause and are able to feel, then show, compassion. Not to force them to change, just to understand and find how to live beside them in the same reality.
Maybe that was just a long-winded way of saying, don’t judge a book by its cover, look for both sides of the story, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, yada, yada, yada. At the end of the day, it’s about perceptions, and whose we are considering as we make grand assumptions and allow our feelings to be hurt.
The one that’s stayed on my mind recently are the dads who do as little as braid their kid’s hair or make a school lunch, and the internet seems to shower praises on them. When do hard working, married moms get so much as a thank you for doing all that and a million other things, all day, every day? Since when do moms get credit like that?
Yup, just another slap in the face of every mother on the planet. When we work so hard to make the lives of our families livable, climb corporate ladders, and give into the pressure to look attractive — but not too attractive — just the right amount of attractive so that we are pleasing but not tempting to the male gaze. All of this, and fathers are seeking attention and praise for doing one thing? The bare minimum, at best? It seems wrong. Nay, it is wrong. Clearly, they just feel threatened that the voices of women are gaining traction and being taken seriously, and are trying to one-up womankind by… Being better fathers? That’ll show us…?
I don’t follow how this phenomenon is a bad thing. In fact, when you give a good dad the benefit of the doubt, women and feminism and mothers have nothing to do with it. What if that father who took cosmetology classes just so he could make his little girl feel good about herself, didn’t post his story online seeking praise and attention? What if his intention wasn’t to prove he could outdo a female counterpart, at one random thing in a sea of things that needed doing? That seems to be the main takeaway of these stories, after all.
What if the intention is to cry out to his brother in arms, summoning them to set their manly, manly egos aside, in favor of doing acts of real love for their children? Boys spend their young lives being taught that a brute is the most they will ever be, and grow into men who are secure in that truth. And brutes do not cook, play with hair, or attend fairy tea parties with pretend tea. That stuff is for girls. Sissies, if you will. Most will never think to question it until someone tells them to; if you were set for life like that, why on earth would you?
So, when one father summons the courage to defy the norm, spend the time and money, and learn how to do his girl child a simple kindness, perhaps because she has no mother to do so, it is worthy of note in its way. The man found the nerve to appear effeminate and weak and matronly in a culture that will not allow it, just to see his child smile. It might be one of the strongest, manliest things a father can do in this day and age. He could have kept it to himself, kept his pride intact, refused to let the boss and the boys at the office know he took a freaking cosmetology class like some sissy girl… And instead he made it go viral, for all the world to see.
For all the fathers of the world to see. This is what a father is supposed to do. If Christian doctrine is to be believed, Our Father, who art in Heaven, did exactly this for all of humanity.
It doesn’t seem like a lot to mothers, who are expected to be perfect at everything and so much more at all times. And in that way, I can understand feminist frustration with publicly invested fathers. No, it isn’t fair. No, one French braid or FnaF-shapped pancake breakfast does not brush eons of male dominance under the rug. Yes, we all wish we could wake up one morning and find that every man on the planet had an epiphany in the night, and is just doing what they should be doing without question or needing to be asked.
But that isn’t fair, either. That is only flipping an unfair script the other way around. Revenge is a natural desire, but it will never solve a thing, no matter how delicious it may look on the menu.
It’s all about perception, here. And in some cases, the disparity between the self and a stranger on the internet is all that is perceived. A child whose father has delighted and empowered her is being forgotten in the shuffle. A demonstration of agape love is being shoved aside to make room for the battle of the sexes. One man’s small attempt to turn the tide in the war on our children is being swamped by a tidal wave of wrath, shamed and sunken so that his fellow fathers will never see it. For the few who do see, the only thing they will take away is that being a courageously loving father does nothing but get you laughed at by screeching, angry women. And that rarely gets a man to do anything in particular. Well, nothing good, anyway.
Why are we discouraging this behavior? The courage of a few fathers with combs and hair-ties could change the world if we let them. They are giving their daughters a standard to hold, telling these little girls that they are princesses, soon to be queens, who deserve only the realest, truest, most unconditional of loves from the men in their lives. Their fathers are telling them that there is trust and safety in their relationship. They are demonstrating to their sons how to treat a girl, a woman, a lady, a wife, a daughter. These sons can look to their fathers and see that girls aren’t to be spent and tossed around like empty bottles, but to be cherished. That girls are worth sacrificing the ego for.
Sacrificing the ego is painful in the moment; but after the fact, when that storm has passed and one is still alive on the other side, one sees how simple and painless it truly is. One sort of, kind of wants to do it again as soon as possible. But not when the strangers around you make the aftermath painful. Why would anyone do that to someone did nothing but stick his neck out for his beloved children?
Male love is so looked down on in our society. Its shamed and belittled and bullied away. And then we have the gall to demand our men to just get over it (the way some of them tell us to just get over our own assault at their hands) and show a little emotion. A little kindness, a little interest. And when one of them raises his hand to be an example of how its done to other men, we shame his back to silence.
Ladies. Sisters. Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar. Terrifyingly familiar, and woefully unfair.
We can’t make another person’s struggles and triumphs about ourselves. Not when there is love to be signal-boosted and shared with the world. Not when men are genuinely enlisting themselves in our battle for the sake of their children. Especially not when those children being sacrificed to our outside perceptions.
A little encouragement goes a long way. So does a little shame. Think how much farther either one can take a single person in pursuit of the right, loving thing to do.
