Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen

September 15, 2018 10:07 PM

Why 95.8% of Female Newscasters Have the Same Hair Hair politics from InStyle magazine, of all places
posted by pH Indicating Socks (30 comments total)

That was a good read about a thing I've been complaining about for ages. If it's not that bob, then it's the Rachel.

One of the things I really love about watching Vice News Tonight is that their reporters are very diverse.
posted by hippybear at 10:14 PM on September 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

I feel so bad for that girl who got canned for her braids. Her braids are so cute! There is nothing unprofessional about that!
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:16 PM on September 15, 2018 [13 favorites]

> Barbara Allen-Rosser, a TV-news veteran who now works as an image consultant for on-air talent, says the point of hair guidelines is to keep viewers focused on the actual news.

This merely justifies a death-spiral towards total uniformity. If there was no hair standardization among TV announcers, the viewers wouldn't expect any. Instead, Roger Ailes' fetishes and the success of Fox News have lead to a cargo-cult perpetuation of a presentation code for women announcers that has no counterpart among men announcers.
posted by at by at 3:05 AM on September 16, 2018 [50 favorites]

Even when it’s not an explicit order, the message to women in the industry is clear. “It was always one of those things where it was like, 'We’d really like you do to this,'” she says. “I’ve never known anyone where it was an ultimatum, it was just highly suggested.”

It's ultimatum enough. I used to work in local TV news, and I still feel bad for the anchor whose long hair and occasionally, mildly idiosyncratic attire choices drew the scrutiny of one of those dreaded consultants: within weeks, she elected to leave the profession.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:34 AM on September 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

I grew up in a news=the-radio household, and I have never been able to comprehend how people are able to stomach watching a tiny snippet of the news delivered, between acres of commercials and idiotic "feature" stories, with the exact same delivery and manner by people groomed to look like androids designed to replace us.

Amusingly, our local TV station was momentarily co-helmed by Oprah, until the cranky old white know-nothing in the other chair ran her out and she ended up on a local magazine show with a white guy with an afro to match hers before going on to bigger and better things.

I can't really understand why anyone doesn't get a horrible Stepford feeling while watching the news.
posted by sonascope at 4:35 AM on September 16, 2018 [25 favorites]

Wow, this is a thing in Australia and Taiwan too. Bobs all round.

her boss told her that “natural hair was unprofessional... the equivalent of me going to the grocery store in a baseball hat.” The following year, her contract wasn’t renewed.

What a tosser. Yuck.

Reading this makes me sorely miss aussie legend Lee-Lin Chin, who was famous amongst other things for her individual style, and who sadly retired from news-reading at SBS earlier this year after 30 odd years i still cri.
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 5:00 AM on September 16, 2018 [22 favorites]

From Pew: As you might expect, TV news generally attracts mostly older audiences. More than half of the people surveyed who are 65 and older said they watch local, network and cable TV news. But drop below that age, even to the 50- to 64-year-old bracket and viewership drops way off.

I assume that the hair thing is done, at least in part, because the audience is old and hates change. It would also explain why viewers have the time and inclination to call a TV station to yell about a newscaster's hair.
posted by octothorpe at 5:23 AM on September 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

Previously: Why are all these meteorologists wearing the same dress?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:27 AM on September 16, 2018 [11 favorites]

There was an outcry last year about a twin cities news anchor that didn't conform - Jana Shortall. Something she reported on went viral, and apparently the public though short curls and a blazer weren't professional enough.
posted by dinty_moore at 5:38 AM on September 16, 2018 [19 favorites]

I find TV News absolutely repellent, and one of the reasons is the Stepford Wife look of women anchors, which I actually find incredibly distracting.

I'm glad the TFA has a happy ending in that more and more stations are in fact allowing anchors to wear their hair naturally, including Jana Shortall.
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:48 AM on September 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

Patriarchy and racism! In control of broadcast news! I would never have guessed.
posted by crush at 7:41 AM on September 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

Sorry,that was snarky, not substantive. Still drinking coffee.

I really like that style publications are writing about the institutional barriers to success that patriarchy and racism perpetuate for women of color and white women who don't conform to a narrow band of expectation. I particularly like that they do as a "did you know?" and "can you imagine!' with a tidy "but so&so stuck to her guns and you know, things change but slowly."

Not only is confronting these structures hard, but just educating people about them in a way they will accept is hard. Getting people to recognize the difference between a patriarchal system or a racist system and a bad person is often an exercise in futility and anger and offense. But an anecdote-y little hey! did you ever wonder? comment on why all the women on teevee have to be exactly alike does actually get people to notice the harm being perpetuated all around them, even if it never bothers to name that harm out loud.
posted by crush at 7:48 AM on September 16, 2018 [18 favorites]

and there, I've done that thing I do here all the time. substitute "people" for "white women". I'm sorry. I've managed to almost completely remove "guys" from my vocabulary as a stand-in for "folks" or "group of people" but I'm still struggling with not using "people" to mean "white women".

I guess I'll keep trying.
posted by crush at 7:50 AM on September 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thank God I'm not in broadcasting. I have long, curly hair that frizzes at the drop of a hat. Oh, and bangs.

But you know what? I would much, much rather not have every woman on the news look exactly the fucking same. That is not a representation of reality. And also, this is 2018, not 1958. Get with the program already (pun not intended).

And another thing? For the love of God, let these women wear something other than solid dresses. A fun print won't kill anyone.
posted by Delia at 7:53 AM on September 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

More than half of the people surveyed who are 65 and older said they watch local, network and cable TV news. But drop below that age, even to the 50- to 64-year-old bracket and viewership drops way off.

I mean aside from Fox, female news anchors are expected to have the face of a twenty-five year old woman and the haircut of a forty-to-fifty year old women.
posted by Hypatia at 7:55 AM on September 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

There's definitely a Fox look, but it varies from the typical news look in a depressingly predictable way: the hair is longer, the makeup is stronger, and the dresses are....well, they're dresses that I would defend anyone's right to wear, but decry anyone being forced to wear them.

See also, this piece from Allure that basically blames the Fox influence for the shift from staid 90s anchorwoman.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:22 AM on September 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

Yes of course the women are held to many unreasonable expectations that the men don't endure, but with regards to hair, you will never see a male broadcaster with shoulder length (or longer) hair, an afro, or a Brigham Young beard.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:57 AM on September 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yes of course the women are held to many unreasonable expectations that the men don't endure, but with regards to hair, you will never see a male broadcaster with shoulder length (or longer) hair, an afro, or a Brigham Young beard.

Do you have any idea how much time and money most women have to spend to get the only acceptable hairdo? And how much more time and money black women have to spend than white women? TFA gets at it:

Noble Jones [who is black] spent years straightening her natural hair with chemical relaxers and, later, wearing weaves, while working at stations in Tennessee, Michigan, and Missouri. The treatments would set her back hundreds of dollars, no small cost given the pay local reporters often make (in 2017, the average starting salary for a local TV journalist was $29,500). “It’s very, very expensive.” Noble Jones says. “In TV news, sometimes you have to choose between getting your hair done and getting makeup, and eating — because you have to have this look on TV.”

After her initial cut, Katro [who is white] went to the salon every four weeks to keep the bob “perfectly in shape,” at a cost of $85 a month. For a while she was getting "babylights," because a stylist told her the subtle highlights would add the appearance of volume under bright studio lights. She keeps extra bottles of sprays, shine serums and dry shampoos at her desk and in her bag for touch ups on the go — all paid for out-of-pocket.

This isn't just about self-expression. This is a tax on women.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:35 AM on September 16, 2018 [44 favorites]

Brockton: "Yes of course the women are held to many unreasonable expectations that the men don't endure, but with regards to hair, you will never see a male broadcaster with shoulder length (or longer) hair, an afro, or a Brigham Young beard."

Yes, male broadcasters are also expected to have conservative hairstyles (and conservative by White standards at that). But this is definitely not an issue that impacts men and women equally.

From the article:

Anchors, reporters, and industry experts interviewed for this piece laid them out: Wear your hair down, in a smooth style that hits at the collarbone or above. Updos and complicated styles are a no, as are drastic color changes. Youthful appearance is key (better dye those grays away!). A bit of wave is okay (and increasingly popular at some stations), but ringlets and kinky curls are not.

It's not just perception, either. Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, analyzed more than 400 publicity images for local broadcast journalists and found that 95.8 percent of female anchors and reporters had smooth hair. About two-thirds had short or medium-length cuts. Nearly half of the women were blond. Zero had gray hair. Just one black woman in the UT study sample wore her natural curls.

There just isn't the same pressure for men to change their natural hair colour and texture or to hide the fact that they have greying hair. And as ArbitraryAndCapricious highlighted above this becomes a tax on women - hair styling and dyeing is expensive, and even a basic haircut for women is more expensive than it is for men.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 10:59 AM on September 16, 2018 [15 favorites]

Agreeing with sonascope and maggiemaggie. American tv "news" is horrific. It's worse than it was, and energetically circling some drain.
posted by doctornemo at 1:11 PM on September 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

I never quite understood why women were required to look so alike in so many different situations until I read this Cracked article, and #1 in particular, the requirement in comic books that “All female characters must share one face.”

“Admittedly, this isn't exclusively a comic book problem. Even the animators of Frozen said that "female characters are really, really difficult because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty." The problem is that the current definition of "pretty" in our culture is very limited, requiring a narrow face with high cheekbones and a pointy chin, a small nose, and full lips to bring it all together.”

Argh.
posted by Melismata at 1:21 PM on September 16, 2018 [14 favorites]

Melismata: I never quite understood why women were required to look so alike in so many different situations until I read this Cracked article, and #1 in particular, the requirement in comic books that “All female characters must share one face.”

I love these examples for arguing with people who think that "evolution means women are picky while men will sleep with anyone." If men are so open-minded in their preferences Because Evolution, why do all their fantasies look so similar?
posted by clawsoon at 3:59 PM on September 16, 2018 [13 favorites]

crush says: I really like that style publications are writing about the institutional barriers to success that patriarchy and racism perpetuate for women of color and white women who don't conform to a narrow band of expectation. I particularly like that they do as a "did you know?" and "can you imagine!' with a tidy "but so&so stuck to her guns and you know, things change but slowly."

YES. For me, I thought the article was good but not groundbreaking by Metafilter standards. What made it worth throwing in with the best of the web was that it was published in InStyle. InStyle, that necessary feature of the American supermarket checkstand experience, which hitherto confined itself to reporting celebrity relationship drama and drooling over celebrity real estate. Ho-ly cats! You mean, we can preach to somebody not yet in the choir?

2018: The year InStyle got woke
2019: ???
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 4:02 PM on September 16, 2018 [9 favorites]

you will never see a male broadcaster with shoulder length (or longer) hair...

Nope, not since Hippy Dippy Weather Man.
posted by Twang at 5:57 PM on September 16, 2018

this is a thing in Australia

But not the only thing: Lee Lin Chin, Aussie legend.
posted by flabdablet at 6:36 AM on September 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm still chewing over why "updos" are Un-Newscasterish. Anything "messy", I see, but when did French twists/chignon become unprofessional? (Note examples with many people's natural hair, and also different fluffinesses in the front to suit changing fashion.)

Current theory with extra bitterness: pinned-up hair, and short hair, is *too authoritative* for the female-newscaster-role. Newscaster role is a sneaky job of representing Authority without actually having a lot of autonomy about what they say, and women especially have to be safely visibly not too much in charge of themselves to not unnerve reactionary forces.
posted by clew at 12:03 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

What made it worth throwing in with the best of the web was that it was published in InStyle

Yeah, very much this. InStyle also did a solid piece on black women's hair last month:

How Black Hair Is Repressed and Regulated, Legally, in the U.S.

Again, old news to MeFites, but jaw-dropping when you consider it came from InStyle. That's like having in-depth analysis of American foreign policy in People.
posted by magstheaxe at 1:29 PM on September 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

I haven't read InStyle's back issues -- are we sure this is new for them, or have we just not noticed?
posted by clew at 1:32 PM on September 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's not remotely what I remember from InStyle when I used to read it in Dr's waiting rooms--though I don't know how reliable my recollection is. I recall it being very much like what lifetyle blogger's pages are like now: lots of pictures of thing you can buy with short paragraphs telling you why they LOVE IT or how it will change your life.

I don't even recall interviews with celebs or anything more involved than what a thing looks like, what it costs, who's wearing or using it, and why you'd love to have it.
posted by crush at 1:47 PM on September 18, 2018

Flipped through the beauty magazines at the grocery yesterday and Glamour also had an article on a particular -- I think newscaster -- who wore her hair natural against protest. People was, uh, utterly un-woke, though.
posted by clew at 4:44 PM on September 19, 2018