I was combing my hair this morning when it occured to me that I never answered the original question. When my 5-yr-old had her hair focibly cut she felt very ashamed, even if it wasn't her fault. (Possibly because she had gone along with it for awhile, but then backed out. Possibly she would have felt shamed anyway just because of her temperment.)
My 2-yr-old felt very angry. She didn't understand completely what happened, but it made her mad all the same. At random times for the next ten days or so she would cross her arms and start saying the meanest things she could think of about her sister. (To the unitiated, ten days is a HUGE attention span for a 2-yr-old.)
I grieved, but it wasn't over the loss of the hair persay. It was the fact that she had been wronged and there was no way to make it right. Their hair was cut at the beginning of last July. While my 5-yr-old only had her hair cut from waist-length to halfway down her back, the 2-yr-old would have looked much stranger if we fixed it. So, while it is straighter than it was last summer, it'll be another year before the left side matches the right.
You'd have to talk to James about how he felt. At the time it was obvious he was pretty angry, but I can't say if it was because he was the parent of the victim or because he was the parent of the offender or both.
In short, the responses varied greatly from one person to the next. I suppose it would be similar to any other assault, since a forced haircut is much the same as any other way a woman is overpowered and violated. Remember, it's not always about the hair. Sometimes it's about more than that.
Elisabeth
P.S. Bethy, my hair takes much longer to style at a short length than a moderately long length. I donate it every three years, so in that third year it takes a long time to work with. (It gets too dry and it takes longer to get the knots out.) In that last year, I've found that if I take three minutes to braid it before I go to bed it saves me fifteen to twenty minutes of messing with it in the morning.
