Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
Most of the recent ones have been from the contests, and the bias is overstated.

To my count, our "recent" hairstyles (since 5.0) have been:

- Shadowbringers trailer WoL (masculine and free to use)
- Great Lengths (neutral long style)
- Modern Legend (male contest runner-up; boyish)
- Wind Caller (masculine)
- Controlled Chaos (female contest runner-up)
- Saintly Style (male contest runner-up; boyish)
- Early to Rise (female contest runner-up)
- Both Ways (female contest shortlist)
- character hairstyles: Alphinaud, 2B and 9S

The original shortlist voting threads for the hairstyle contests are here:
Male hairstyles
Female hairstyles
.
Hmm fair, been a while since I looked at the thread and I mostly voted on the female styles anyway

At any rate my point was, I keep seeing hairstyles brought up as an example of why removing gender locks = everything will be more unisex/female leaning, but that example just. Doesn't follow because those hairstyles were pulled from a pool of contest winners and designed by players. As far as I'm aware it wasn't like SE decided hey, we're gonna stop gender limiting hair so now everything has to look more gender neutral. Like, this is all speculation, but it seems more likely that it was like "hey, designing hairstyles takes up resources so let's let the players design a bunch and then trickle out the ones they seem to like the most over the next however many years."