Today, though, their hair is short
Another they does an interview.
Kae Tempest is perched at a table outside a station-side cafe, playing with a cigarette. Murphy, Tempest’s alaskan malamute, stirs as I approach, and on clocking me, Tempest returns the cigarette – still unlit – to their chest pocket. For years, Tempest’s long curly barnet was a trademark look. Today, though, wearing white trainers, upturned jeans and a turquoise jacket, their hair is short, a neat fade that, Tempest says, they still occasionally catch themselves admiring.
Got it? Tempest is special. Tempest is a they, Tempest perches and plays and has a malamute, Tempest has short hair.
In August 2020, in an Instagram post, Tempest came out as non-binary. They announced their name is now Kae (pronounced like the letter K), and explained that, going forward, they would be using they/them pronouns. “I have tried,” they wrote at the time, “to be what I thought others wanted me to be so as not to risk rejection. This hiding from myself has led to all kinds of difficulties in my life. And this is a first step towards knowing and respecting myself better.” Beyond this statement, however, today is one of the first times they have publicly spoken about their experiences.
So what? Do we have to hear about such experiences from everyone on the planet? We couldn’t even if we wanted to, due to time constraints, but fortunately, we don’t want to.
Tempest dreamed of cutting their hair. “I wanted to, so much,” they say, “that every time I saw somebody with short hair or a fresh haircut, it would physically hurt me.” For years, Tempest felt trapped in their longer locks: everyone said cutting those long curls would be a travesty. It became symbolic: a shield Tempest hid behind, yes, but also representing their ever-present discomfort with expectations of femininity. “I convinced myself I could never risk cutting it,” they say. “I’d think: ‘If I do, will I still be able to go on stage? People will stop listening.’ It’s wild what dysphoria does to you.
“I was resigned to living the life I was in,” they say, “and then maybe at 50 when I stopped having this career I thought I might be able to finally transition. But increasingly I couldn’t bear it.” In January 2020, they chopped their hair short. Their eyes light up when recalling the sense of liberation. And then, the pandemic hit. For the first time in what felt like for ever, Tempest was forced to take a beat. A few months later, they came out publicly.
They chopped their hair short, and then the pandemic hit. Bit of a disjunction there. There’s really no need for that much angst over a woman cutting her hair short. Ever seen photos of Audrey Hepburn? Jean Seberg? Shirley MacLaine? It’s not unknown for women to cut their hair short. I get that it’s more fraught for some than others, and maybe extra fraught for a performer, but still – it’s not really that significant. Encouraging this kind of navel-gazing is a mistake. One might even say it’s Not Helping.
Yes, but when those women cut their hair, it didn’t have COSMIC significance and repercussions. When Ka(t)e Tempest did it, it caused a worldwide pandemic! So special!
It’s all so very, very boring. As if there’s nothing else going on in the world that people might want to know about.
The whole hair length thing is strange. I grew up in the 70s (I was born in the 60s, but I can’t claim first hand awareness of hair styles from then). I remember my older brothers having hair down to their shoulder blades. I remember girls at high school having hair ranging from lower back to pixie cut in length – same at university. In fact at university I had a conversation with an adult student – a woman – who was known as a christian proselytist around campus. Her particular view on Christianity was that women should be humble, submissive and modest. Never to outshine the men around them. She wanted all women to have either off the shoulder hair, or long hair bound up and covered. A bloke with hair half way down his back wandered past. I pointed and asked, ‘what about him?’ Oh long hair on men is a glory unto God, she replied.
When I look around now there are certainly still some girls with short hair, but it’s more common to see short hair on older women than teens. I’m sure there is some sort of cultural pressure that causes these shifts. Certainly all the women we see in movies, advertising, instagram, porn seem to have long lovely hair. Hmmmm. As with so much of the gender woo bullshit, this isn’t really about hair length. Kae could have her hair short if she wanted to, even the more traditionally styled masculine cut she seems to have gone with. Women have done it before. The hair bit is just performative look-at-me-ism. Then again, hair styles and attitudes as the song goes. It’s always been about image.
They’re not fooling the Malemute. The nose knows.
As far as I’m concerned, almost everybody is “non-binary” or “gender non-conforming.” Kae is just making sure everyone knows that they’re non-binarier than everyone else. Turns out there’s a Y axis on the Barbie to GI Joe spectrum. Who knew? I wonder what its units are?
All this doubt and fragility over a haircut? Get in line. Bowie was a fucking chameleon, and Madonna’s had so many styles I foreget what she looks like. Neither of them demanded we change our way of speaking about them (Prince used that weird symbol for a while, but my understanding was that it was part of a contractual issue with his label at the time. As Jane Clare Jones has pointed out, he never shied away from pushing style boundaries either; still a guy, though.) Maybe if a visit to the barber’s/stylist’s is so fraught, Kae might have other issues? At least in their case, hair will grow back if they change their mind.
As I keep musing aloud (sorry for the repetition), I wonder if it’s bizarro cultural items like the “Real Housewives” series that make people think they have to make a big drama of being a they or trans or maybe a little of both. “If that’s a woman what the hell am I?”
I have long hair. That is not what makes me a woman. For a short time, I had short hair. I was still a woman (though a woman who had truly unruly hair). When I wear pants (which is almost always) I am a woman. When I do science, I am a woman. When I fix things and put the computer together and solve various household problems dealing with screwdrivers, hammers, and a drill, I am a woman.
What is so goddamn hard to understand? This is the point GC feminists (or as we used to say, feminists) have been making for a long time. They want to tell us that biology is not destiny? Live it, then. If you are a woman (or a man, or non-binary bullshit), so what? Live how you want to live as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else. If you have a penis but want to wear a pink tutu, I will fight for your right to wear that. I will NOT fight for your right to wear it into the women’s room, or into the women’s locker room.
Amen Sister!
The Swedes have come up with a ‘gender-neutral pronoun.’ So we have ‘he,’ ‘she’, or ‘hen’ in Swedish. But it would not do to just cut-and-paste that across into English, because ‘hen’ is already spoken (or should that be ‘;cackled’) for?) Compounds like ‘heorshe,’ ‘sheorhe,’ ‘herorhim,’ ‘himorher,’ and so on have been wheeled out for a trial run or two, but for some reason have never caught on.
I think the answer lies in the reality that languages evolve to maximise economy; conveying the maximum of information in the minimum of vocalised sounds. My own personal history is that I was trained by my feminist-of-her-day mother to treat girls and women with respect and courtesy at all times; to put them on pedestals if you wish.
In a phone conversation with a stranger, I like to find out a bit about who I am talking to. “Who am I talking to here?” will usually bring forth information (tone of voice, etc) as to the age, sex and maybe other facts about the person on the other end of the phone; not the least of which is whether or not they are running some scam or other.
There are also definite physical and morphological differences between human males and females that have no equivalents in our close primate relatives, and which have given rise to interesting theories of human evolution. Children display less vocal sex distinction than do adults, and the differences between male and female voices, just like those between male and female build, probably have and understandable evolutionary origin.
Look up some old pictures of them when they was a she (lol). I did, and I was pretty surprised. From the quotes about being pressured to look feminine, I expected some girly-girl type with elaborately styled hair and a lot of makeup. Instead, she wore no discernible makeup and had her hair in a simple part. She looked quite androgynous, and could easily have been a man in a 1970s rock band. Nothing at all wrong with that, of course. Just doesn’t look like someone being crushed by the “expectations of femininity”.
And breaking from conforming to feminine stereotypes by being super angsty about your hair style is an interesting approach.
Skeletor,
But that is the point, isn’t it; she didn’t conform to all of these so-called expectations and she tried taking a stand by using minimal makeup and a simple hairstyle, which I’m guessing most actual people didn’t give her any grief over, except for perhaps publicists and “image” types — vultures, in other words, who prey upon young famous people in order to secure a sinecure. And then, bam, some gender evangelicals — evangendercals? — swooped in and said wait, no no, the vultures are right; if you really were a woman, you would wear thick layers of makeup and do 500 dollar hairstyles, etc. etc. The fact that you’re not doing that means you’re not really a woman, see, so join our ranks and get a haircut and secede from womanhood.
It is to be pitied.
“And breaking from conforming to feminine stereotypes by being super angsty about your hair style is an interesting approach.”
Good one, made me laugh.