I don't feel like caring about or "forcing" real people to do something with their hair is nearly the same as a sole author of a property and characters, changing those designs to meet their whims or preference. Sounds obvious but some people are talking about one thing, other about the other, and are sometimes treating these things with the same context and weight in their responses.
I personally do find Jeph semi-regularly changing the ladies hair to short tiresome. Not because I demand the character look how I want them to, but I do have a personal preference. Also when so many of the characters have short hair, the ones with long hair stand out more and if a change to short hair happens, it lessens the diversity of the character designs. I also think it's worth pointing out people are talking about women's hair, because the majority of Jeph's characters are women and they're the ones mostly having their designs changed in the same pattern.
You can do lots of different short hair designs, but in the last couple years n particular we've seen
Faye (her hair has grown a bit now),
Hannelore and
Tai changed to the similar short on sides, long on top design.
Sam has a version too but it's more a bowl. For me, I think it's just kinda disappointing to make it so characters have a bit less uniqueness. It's okay to express that disappointment or frustration, or even admiration or pleasure if you happen to prefer whatever the new look is.
There's also truth that women and femme presenting people do get shit when they have short hair. Lots of people associate long hair with femininity and they think if you're a woman you must want to look your most womanly all the time, and short hair goes against that so that's a Bad Thing
TM. People will tell a stranger with short hair to tell her she'd be so pretty if she grew her hair out, or she'll never find a man looking like that (assuming that's something she even wants). Although we're not talking about real individuals doing something and people responding. I'm reminded of
men people saying in response to complaints that lady comic characters having revealing or sexualised outfits and poses, by saying that's slut-shaming those women character's choices. Except it's not a real woman deciding to wear whatever of her own free will, it's a character designed by a man using the same tired tropes we've seen before.
Jeph having a preference for a hairstyle isn't on that level, but in both cases it's the creator's choice. We're just reacting. We can talk about it, but we still have to remember and accept it's the creator's prerogative. Also rereading an old thread I saw a good comment.
I was also going to make the point that it takes about five minutes to cut your hair short, and many many many months to grow it back. I've been growing out my fringe since April and it's still not quite long enough to tuck behind my ears.
And the five-minute change is a lot more fun for an artist--"Woo! Character x has a new look!" Deciding to have character x grow her hair out, having to remember to lengthen it incrementally for several QC-time months (maybe years in non-QC time) and keep track of where you are in the process, would just be tedious.
Also I'm kinda tired of the circle this week of:
"I'm complaining about thing."
"I'm complaining about you complaining about thing."
"I'm complaining about you complaining about complaining about thing."
Which I am now contributing to, but fuck it. That's what this space is for, nitpicking and discussion. I just think this week it's reached a weird point.
Thread recommendation:
Sexism