#and my oc eyon with the half-up half-down hair. looks kinda like the military hairstyle from the front but it's actually tied up. tboy swag

[spocks-kaathyra]

Cardassian hairstyles, Nal and Eyal's mommy issues, and Pythas is here too

In my mind, Cardassians don't have the same "long hair = feminine, short hair = masculine" convention as we do. Because that would be lame. I think the distinction for them is that women wear their hair up, and men wear their hair down. Of course, this means that women have to have hair long enough to put up, but I think in general it's unusual for any Cardassian to have hair shorter than, like, chin-length. It's considered improper for a woman to be seen in public with loose hair, as if it's a state of undress. This, of course, also leads to a woman's loose hair being seen as sensual, since it's only seen in intimate settings. With the popularity of the gelled-back military hairstyle, it's somewhat uncommon to see men with loose, unstyled hair either. Anyway, with this established, the fun part is the Implications for my characters.

Nal never got to be a little girl. She'd watch from the doorway as her mother carefully braided her baby sister Eyal's hair, wishing it were her instead. In a way, the desire to be loved and the desire to be feminine are inextricably linked for Nal. The love that their mother gives to Eyal is something Nal will never get to experience, precisely because Eyal is a daughter and Nal is a son.

Decades later, her husband Pythas gets into the habit of doing her hair for her, initially with the excuse of using it as practice to regain dexterity and sensation in his hands after his burn injury. But it becomes a routine for them, a quiet ritual that makes Nal feel so, so loved. His first attempts are clumsy, but Nal wears them with pride anyway. He gets good at it eventually, braiding her hair into elaborate styles every morning and gently brushing it out every night before putting it in a simple braid so it won't tangle while she sleeps.

Meanwhile, Eyal, lightyears away, has long since buzzed her hair short. What Nal saw as love and care felt like suffocation to little Eyal. She'd squirm in her seat as her mother tugged her hair into styles she had no choice in, waiting for it to be over. Her mother had had 20 years to hope for a daughter, 20 years to form a fantasy of who her perfect little girl would be. And Eyal was broken and bent into the shape of that fantasy, with no regard for who she was. An adult now, on a different planet orbiting a different sun, she chooses to shear off her hair, destroying the means of her mother's control.

Pythas grew up a little girl, but his mother never braided his hair for him. In this, as in so many other things, he was on his own. The summer before he's sent to Bamarren, he hacks at his hair with a pair of dull scissors until it resembles the typical military hairstyle. He wants to blend in as much as possible. When he becomes an agent of the Order, though, he's given a specific role to play---he's always been a particularly pretty young man, and a good spy will use that to his advantage. He grows out his hair to look the part, lets it flow loose past his shoulders, looking youthful and charming and irresistible. When he becomes head of the Order, he chops it off again. Now that he has the power to say no, he won't let anyone jerk him around by his hair anymore. Over the years, he gets into the habit of gelling it back like a good Cardassian soldier, paralleling how he becomes deeper and deeper entrenched in the ideology of the Order. He loses most of his hair in the Fire, and half of it won't grow back. As he heals, he chooses to keep it in a buzz cut. He's not a soldier dutifully playing his part in the machine, he's not a pretty boy obeying orders to let himself be used, he's a person with autonomy.