DC METRO– On Tuesday, Sarah, a butch lesbian living just outside of the DC area, went to the barber and showed them a picture of a haircut that she wanted. “I told them, ‘I want this EXACT haircut but on my lady head,'” she insisted to AfterEllen with the annoyance of someone who never gets the haircut she asks for because she requests it with a female voice. “But what the barber hears is ‘This — but SOCCER MOM!'”

Sarah says she wants that traditional dykey undercut with the hot-girl bangs swoop. To clarify, she isn’t a mom and has no idea how to play soccer.

Sarah’s story is part of a disturbing historical trend of gender nonconforming women struggling to get a decent haircut. Confused male barbers everywhere think that women like Sarah maybe one day will want to go back to a longer hairstyle that gives men boners again. “I mean, it seems like maybe she’s just going through a phase…I figured that I knew more about her head than she did,” insisted male barber whose name doesn’t fucking matter.

The male shop owner also added “These women come in and insist they want a man’s haircut, but how do you do that on a woman’s head? My guys haven’t been trained for this. We give them something better than what they asked for, and they are never happy!”

Jess, another lesbian customer at the shop sympathized with Sarah, telling us, “It’s like they can’t comprehend that I want the exact same haircut as this man we are both looking at right here on Instagram, even though I’m a woman. It’s 2019 — I thought we were past style being in gendered boxes.”

We asked Jess if she thinks butch lesbians in or near major cities have better luck in pursuing men’s haircuts. “I’ve tried several barber shops and at least this one doesn’t give me the ‘Can I speak to the manager,’ so that’s a minor improvement, I guess,” she said.

This article is part of AfterEllen’s new section, Things That Never Happened.