#describing presentation

Hey there!

I’d say to go for it! There’s nothing inherently wrong with a factual description and is absolutely something most people would notice. It makes sense for an omniscient narrator to comment on something like that, and it does a nice job of subverting typical presentation/gender expectations.

Basically - go for it!

How do NB people describe their hair? I’d think it’s perfectly fine for my AFAB NB who looks feminine by face and masculine by clothes to call their 6 inch hair “long”. I think it’s just preferences like that suit/dress question you had, but I have no idea what preferences are common in the LGBT community. I mean in RL I know cis guy with shoulder length hair calling it “short” because he usually has mid back hair and has to explain every time because it’s contrary to the community. But I don’t have that knowledge on NB hair inside the LGBT community. Thanks.

Answer

Just a tip! In future you might not want to call certain body parts (like a face) of a nonbinary person feminine or masculine and clothes are often extensions of that. Lots of folks will self-refer this way, and if within your story, this is how your character codes these parts of themselves, that’s okay, but it’s important to understand that coding certain clothes and faces as being masculine/feminine can be dysphoria inducing. Even though it’s a fictional character, if you as the author describe them this way, it implies a widely understood status quo of what a “feminine face” or “masculine clothes” mean.

With regards to hair regarding longness and shortness, I think this is more reliant on what somebody’s ‘usual’ is if that makes sense.

I’ve had a lot of different hairstyles from buzz cuts (I’ve buzzed it maybe 2-3 times majorly? I did keep them up for a while as well, but that’s just counting when I buzzed off longer hair) to roughly nipple length hair. Right now it’s an undercut all around up to a bit above my crown. (I DIY so... I accidentally have been shrinking the longer hair surface area while trying to make sure I have the borders shaved evenly every now and again.) On the top of my head, the hair there goes past my shoulders when it is down.

I call this long, even though it’s like, 75% shaved? (Maybe more?) It also grows super fast and thick (*Maybelline commercial voice* Maybe they’re born with it... maybe it’s... that’s the truth actually, it’s just genetics. Also the #CGmethod helps accentuate.) and I can wear it down and not have anyone realize I have an undercut if it’s parted right. It feels long because to me, it’s long. 

Although, to me, it’s been long since it was long enough to touch my eyebrows. Or put a bobby pin in to hold it back, etc. 

I also referred to it by its style in the past, for the most part, rather than length. For example: accidental bowl cut, undercut, shag, pageboy, mullet, “Tank Girl hair” etc. There was a long while during when I was homeless that I was cutting off big patches with a Swiss army knife because it’s just what I did, and it was summer and if you act proud of it, people don’t bother you. (Generally being otherwise aesthetically punk makes every fashion faux pas part of The Look though honestly.) At that time I think I also just described it as undercut, and neglected the broader terms that defined it just on length. Just that it was getting long enough to be in my way. It is long, right now, for me, for the most part.

If someone goes their whole life with hair that’s a couple inches from their scalp before it gets cut, ‘long’ will mean something specific to this sense of normalcy, if we’re just talking length phrasing. Unless or until they get used to something else. I’d say this time span is different for everybody, kind of like the span of time it takes to get used to being called by a new name. (Not to imply these both take the same time withIN the same individual necessarily.) 

But it’s a lot less gender-coded than I think you might think. Plus, there’s lots of nonbinary people who are naturally bald or balding. I also know folks who have rewired their sense of this when switching back and forth with relaxers for a long time to natural curl and vice versa. Hair growth looks different on different textures, and there’s different measurements and ways of measuring that folks use to gauge when it’s long or when it’s ‘too long’ etc. 

And the range that somebody’s hair has to grow before that individual sees it as long varies a lot, but can be mostly chalked up to the haircut that they normally or recently have been used to. Preference is a part of that but I’d say the recently-used-to thing is much more of a factor.