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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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It’s still not a buzz cut.

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Yeah I'm unfamiliar with any of these properties and understood BigGuy to mean something more cyberpunk than 'mid-lesbo' -- like a Chelsea with some gel-work on top.

It’s more the association. In the late 2000s, unnaturally colored hair dye and outré haircuts tended to be associated with the Alt and Scene aesthetic movements. Most of the girls who had that style back then tended to be stylish and attractive. Then in the early 2010s, partially because of the Scott Pilgrim movie, those kinds of hairstyles got very very popular. Odd cuts, side shaves, pink and blue hair dye was everywhere. Many women pulled it off well but a lot didn’t. As the 2010s wore on (and the culture war started to heat up) it gradually began to acquire negative associations. This is when the stereotype of the “300 lb blue-haired social justice warrior with BPD” started to develop (I don’t like to make fun of anyone’s appearances, but that was the stereotype). As time went on, and the millennial demographic aged, but still maintained a lot of those haircuts, it morphed into the “HR political commissar who is about to fire you” stereotype haircut. That’s why you see a lot of posters on here calling it “danger warning hair” or saying it’s very unattractive to heterosexual men. So when people today look back at Scott Pilgrim and see Ramona with that haircut, they get the wrong cultural signal from it. It’s supposed to signal that Ramona is unusually cool, sexy and a bit dangerous. But today a lot of people see it and just think it looks kind of cringe and lame and wonder why Scott didn’t see the obvious warning signs.

I am with you 100%, and I'm more thinking about chicks from the 1990s FFS -- I'm just saying that that particular haircut and that particular actress are... kind of ugly -- the dye doesn't really tip the scales one way or the other for me.

that particular actress are... kind of ugly

Everyone in that movie was ugly. Ramona, in particular, looks like a man (and even looking at her actress after the fact gives me that impression- it's not just for the movie).