I think youâre right that some people will make prejudiced snap judgments of you if you have cornrows, but my instinct is to say, âscrew âem, they should get over thatâ. I guess Iâd check in on how common you expect prejudice to be and how relevant such judgments will be to your career or other goals. For example, are there successful people in your academic field who look the way you want to?
I am a person with weird hair (usually dyed blue-green) and I think there are some social circumstances where this benefits me by making me more memorable, e.g. I was âthe girl with green hair who likes mathâ at one student conference. It also has costs; I think looking like a person who cares about my appearance/âself-expression makes me seem less serious to many people.
As one example of navigating this trade-off, I dyed my hair back to a natural colour when I went to the UN Bioweapons Convention in 2017, because it seemed like a context where it was more important to be taken seriously and which might have more formal dress norms. I probably would not do that if I attend again in 2022, since Iâll be 5 years older and have more experience in biosecurity.
Just seconding this. For context I work not in academia but as a software engineer and data scientist in London.
I usually have crazy sticky-up hair that sort of does different things each day especially as it grows. Thatâs my main superficial weirdness (unless you count the unusually big nose) though I have plenty of other quirks which are harder to label and harder to spot from a distance.
In hindsight I think the hair has made me memorable and recognisable in my workplaces (e.g. people have expressed looking forward to seeing me and my hair in meetings...), and since Iâm also reasonably agreeable and competent, I suspect this memorableness has ultimately been net useful for networking (which is useful because networking hasnât historically come naturally to me).
Depending on the situation, I would disagree with the âitâs their problemâ attitude. I think pushing the boundary is fine and other people should be the ones to be more tolerant of the yet-to-be-normalised things, but that doesnât discount the fact that it would make it hard to get your foot in the door in the first place. I think after youâve gained some foothold, then pushing the boundary has more impact.
For example, Iâm a bearded guy, but in order to get a job in Japan, I shaved it off (to my complete discomfort), and after a month or two I asked my boss if I could grow it back over our summer break. Had I not shaved, maybe my job prospects would have been worse and I would not have had the opportunity to open my colleaguesâ minds.
I think youâre right that some people will make prejudiced snap judgments of you if you have cornrows, but my instinct is to say, âscrew âem, they should get over thatâ. I guess Iâd check in on how common you expect prejudice to be and how relevant such judgments will be to your career or other goals. For example, are there successful people in your academic field who look the way you want to?
I am a person with weird hair (usually dyed blue-green) and I think there are some social circumstances where this benefits me by making me more memorable, e.g. I was âthe girl with green hair who likes mathâ at one student conference. It also has costs; I think looking like a person who cares about my appearance/âself-expression makes me seem less serious to many people.
As one example of navigating this trade-off, I dyed my hair back to a natural colour when I went to the UN Bioweapons Convention in 2017, because it seemed like a context where it was more important to be taken seriously and which might have more formal dress norms. I probably would not do that if I attend again in 2022, since Iâll be 5 years older and have more experience in biosecurity.
Just seconding this. For context I work not in academia but as a software engineer and data scientist in London.
I usually have crazy sticky-up hair that sort of does different things each day especially as it grows. Thatâs my main superficial weirdness (unless you count the unusually big nose) though I have plenty of other quirks which are harder to label and harder to spot from a distance.
In hindsight I think the hair has made me memorable and recognisable in my workplaces (e.g. people have expressed looking forward to seeing me and my hair in meetings...), and since Iâm also reasonably agreeable and competent, I suspect this memorableness has ultimately been net useful for networking (which is useful because networking hasnât historically come naturally to me).
Depending on the situation, I would disagree with the âitâs their problemâ attitude. I think pushing the boundary is fine and other people should be the ones to be more tolerant of the yet-to-be-normalised things, but that doesnât discount the fact that it would make it hard to get your foot in the door in the first place. I think after youâve gained some foothold, then pushing the boundary has more impact.
For example, Iâm a bearded guy, but in order to get a job in Japan, I shaved it off (to my complete discomfort), and after a month or two I asked my boss if I could grow it back over our summer break. Had I not shaved, maybe my job prospects would have been worse and I would not have had the opportunity to open my colleaguesâ minds.