By Heidi Stevens – The people have spoken, and the people hate my hair.

“How could anyone take seriously anything written by an author whose accompanying picture makes her look like a tramp, with greasy, matted, uncombed hair?” a fellow named David wrote me recently

“For heaven sake, comb your hair,” offered a woman named Jacquie. “Your picture instills not one iota of a knowledgeable person.”

“I would ask you to develop some insight,” wrote Amy, “but anyone who thinks the hairstyle you have is attractive likely is overflowing with too much narcissism to grasp the idea of personal insight.”

And, my personal favorite, from Karen: “My neighbors and I give you permission to shoot your hairdresser.”

They flow in by the week, these notes.

Each one takes me aback. Not because my hair is above reproach, but because my hair is completely beside the point.

It’s unremarkable in appearance (not dyed fuchsia, not shaved on one side) and has no relevance to my job: I’m not a model; I’m not selling hair products; I don’t work at a salon. (Though pity my poor hairdresser who does, what with the figurative crosshairs and all.)

I realize we have a cultural habit of turning women’s hair into a talking point, even when it doesn’t have much place in the conversation.

I realize we have a cultural habit of turning women’s hair into a talking point, even when it doesn’t have much place in the conversation. Hillary Clinton’s locks have inspired many an impassioned debate, from her headbands to her scrunchies to her layers.

Sheryl Sandberg’s hair has launched a thousand Google searches.

Remember when Michelle Obama got bangs?

But those women command real power and attention.

I command no power. I can’t even get my kids to go to bed on time. How does my hair capture even a single moment of attention? Simply because my photo appears in the newspaper?

I asked some fellow writers if they ever get hair harassed. They do.

“One woman literally wrote ‘I pushed a baby out. What have you ever done? Grow your hair!'” Meghan Daum from the Los Angeles Times told me.

The Tribune’s Mary Schmich, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has been fielding hair complaints for decades.

“Over the years, several readers have written to scold me for wearing my hair long, which they think shouldn’t be done past the age of 25,” she told me. “A few times, they’ve cut my column out of the paper and drawn new hairstyles for me — a flip, a blunt cut — and hand-written a note suggesting that I might be attractive if only I did something about my hair. I kept one of the drawings tacked to my cubicle for a while but, alas, it did not prompt me to improve my hair.”

I couldn’t find any male writers with hair stories, though Christopher Borrelli said readers often tell him to trade in his Red Sox ball cap for a Cubs hat.

Is this really where we’re stuck as a culture? At a place where we drown out women’s voices with critiques of their hair?

I called Carolyn Bronstein, a DePaul University professor whose research focuses on media representation and social responsibility, with an emphasis on gender.

“Hair is a powerful symbol for women,” she said. “It’s where a woman’s appearance sort of begins, at the top of the body. When women have unruly hair they are considered to be disobedient and uncontrollable.”

Is this really where we’re stuck as a culture? At a place where we drown out women’s voices with critiques of their hair?

I suppose the fact that I don’t get routine keratin treatments and salon blow-outs renders my hair unruly.

Bronstein likened it to Lena Dunham appearing nude on HBO’s “Girls.” Her body is not extraordinarily different than most women’s. But she doesn’t look like Scarlett Johansson, and she doesn’t live under a cloud of shame for this fact. Those two realities are enough to be a bucking of

“Women who dare to present themselves as they are, without subduing their hair and subduing the naturalness of their body, without dyeing and conditioning and waxing and plucking and dieting are deeply threatening to our society,” Bronstein said. “If we lived in a culture where women’s appearance no longer defined them and controlled them, women would be a much more visible and threatening force.”

Why is that, I wondered?

“Women are pressured to spend so much time and energy controlling our bodies,” she said. “Making sure our body is slim, hair-free, waxed and contoured, making sure our hair is carefully colored and cut stylishly and not frizzy. What if that energy went into something else?”

I reminded her that many (most, actually) of my hair haters are female. Schmich told me the same is true of her detractors.

“Women are not unaffected by the discourses in our society,” Bronstein said. “If we were able to resist them, we wouldn’t have so many women suffering from eating disorders and low self-esteem.”

That’s a pretty fantastic point. And a demoralizing one.

The notion that women should focus first and foremost on our appearance is so deeply ingrained that our fellow women scold us for failing to do so.

“Anyone who seems to have just a little bit of freedom, who allows themselves just a little bit of laxity in their appearance, I think, threatens the order of things,” Bronstein said.

My hair is naturally very curly, and despite the wishes of the aforementioned readers, does not respond well to combing. (Picture a lion’s mane, only bigger.) Believe it or not, I sort of straightened/styled it for my column photo.

I have spent moments of my life hating my hair and other moments liking it OK. Mostly though, I admit, I sort of ignore it.

I hope others can learn to do the same.

About the contributor

Heidi Stevens is the Balancing Act columnist and lifestyles writer for the Chicago Tribune, where she has worked since 1998. You can follow Heidi on Twitter.