Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/06/british-boy-has-excellent-hair.html
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If you want to get ahead, get a hat; unless you have excellent hair, in which case, have excellent hair.
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Oh God, this is a country with a “generally progressive bent”?
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He does have excellent hair… kind of reminds me of Finn…
Haters can go jump in a lake! That kid’s hair rules!
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I could see “please pull it in or braid it, so the kids behind you can see the front of the class.” It does look poofy. But making him cut it? Yick. Do white boys with long luxurious locks have to cut their hair?!
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They do, actually. No long hair on boys, no buzz cuts on girls…
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Sheesh. That’s ridiculous.
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Yes, dress codes in generally that are aimed at reinforcing particular gender norms generally are. Probably time to leave all that behind in the modern world.
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Gender norms and a really white bias.
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Absolutely that’s the case.
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Things are not going so well at the moment, obviously, but experiencing other places can be a reminder of what’s at stake.
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Am skeptical of gay rights as a proxy for progressiveness. Gaycraft would never have been legalised here if the public had been asked; the government did it unilaterally (as kind of a fluke), and people accepted that because they’re authoritarian af.
More recently, while gay marriage (for example) is a small win for pooves, it happens to be a big win for those who want pooves to conform to married suburban norms, rather than having our own sordid subculture which many of us prefer. From my perspective, recent debate about gay marriage (somewhat) and trans rights (a lot) has been dominated by the interests of straight people on both sides. Like, you have to wonder if a trans woman living in a grim Daily Mail town in Kent really benefits from straight Guardian readers loudly waving her identity as a flag.
But I digress. Yes, Garbage Island is not as awful as Russia, but that’s an absurdly low bar. As for whether it’s more progressive than the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark – on gay rights or anything else – that feels very “citation needed”. (Also, if I’m reading that map right, the Vatican is more gay-friendly than Sweden or Germany…?)
TL;DR Britain is Shitain, and I’m in no mood to hear otherwise for at least five years
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Reminds me of that other episode in which Finn cuts his hair as part of assuming a new identity while BMO cries unconsolably. Then Finn asks “how do I look?” and BMO sobs “Like the Devil!”
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As an Englishman of a certain age, I did a double-take at that.
I get what you mean. But I suspect the school’s ban is at least partially rooted in the same prejudice that led to that word being bandied about with a different meaning when I was younger.
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I’d already lost context by the time I reached this comment, and thought you were referring to Ice-T. 
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You don’t remember the episode of SVU where Ice-T cuts off their long, luxurious locks?
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I’m still on season 6 in SVU of my Bataan Law & Order Death March.
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“Poove”, eh? Why, I haven’t seen that in print since Private Eye magazine was cracking jokes about the Wolfenden Report back in the ‘60s. Peter Cook was probably the last person to say the word, and he’s been dead since 1995. “Poove” – such a suave, elegant word. So much better than “poof”. Why, it’s almost respectful. Props to you, sir, for helping to keep a piece of linguistic history alive.
That is one FABULOUS 'fro.
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I only use it as a plural, which I stole from Kenny Everett.
It does presuppose that the singular is spelled “poof”, which seems uncontroversial, but for a long time there was a graffiti at Nailsea & Backwell train station that read “God is a puff” which was delightful on many levels
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