Sure, people tend to complain more when they are annoyed about other aspects of game direction. Many people are currently very annoyed.
FWIW I don't think people are entitled to any in-game reward. But "being willing to try CAR" doesn't earn you the reward, does it? And encouraging people to try CAR is a pretty bad idea when most cannot clear it and will simply annoy the raiders.
So sure, it can be bought. And many casual players, rightly or wrongly, see this as their gil being siphoned off to hand to the favorite players. The players SQEX actually values. Because they play the game how SQEX wants them to. See how unpleasant this gets?
Basically I agree with you. The complaints about the hairstyle being locked behind savage are intertwined with a host of other complaints about game direction, the majority of which are legitimate. In that purist and abstract sense, I can see how the complaints come across as entitlement.
Here's a thought experiment. Let's suppose six months ago, we had a thread here titled "What could SQEX do in 7.1 to most annoy the playerbase?"
I would bet folding money a top answer would be "lock a long hairstyle behind a savage raid." The only reason it might not appear is most people couldn't conceive of SQEX doing something that monumentally stupid.
