Saheefa Jabbar Khattak's Haircut Backlash Is About So Much More Than Hair

By Sayed Abdullah | May 17, 2026

Let me start with a confession. When I first saw the headlines about Saheefa Jabbar Khattak facing backlash over a haircut, I almost didn't click. Another day, another Pakistani celebrity being dragged online for something trivial — it's the kind of story that has become so routine it barely registers anymore. But then I watched her video. And I realized this isn't a story about hair at all. It's a story about who gets to make choices without explanation, and who doesn't.

Saheefa's response was not the polite, PR-filtered statement that most public figures would have issued. It was raw, visibly frustrated, and pointedly honest. "Did it not feel strange to you to ask why I cut my hair?" she asked. "Have you ever asked a male influencer, a male actor, your father or your brother why they got a haircut? Never. But you will always ask a woman why she wore certain clothes, why she thought about marriage, why she chose to study so much, why she thought about starting a business."

That question — have you ever asked a man? — is the kind of thing that seems obvious the moment it's said, but that most people never stop to consider. And it got me thinking about the invisible tally that Pakistani women in the public eye have to carry: every choice, from hair to career to marriage, becomes an invitation for collective judgment.

The Double Standard She Called Out

Saheefa didn't stop at the haircut. She connected it to a pattern — one that any woman who has spent time in the public sphere will recognize instantly. The scrutiny is never just about one thing. It's about everything, all the time. What she wears. Whether she's studying too much. Whether she's starting a business instead of staying home. Whether she's thinking about marriage or not thinking about it. Every decision is treated as public property, open for debate in ways that male celebrities simply do not experience.

Think about the last time a Pakistani male actor was asked to justify a haircut. Or a male influencer was interrogated about his clothing choices. Or a male business owner was questioned about why he dared to open a restaurant. It doesn't happen. Not because men make fewer choices, but because their choices are not treated as deviations from a norm that requires explanation. The norm for women, meanwhile, is that every choice must be defended. And if you push back against that, you're accused of "playing the woman card."

Saheefa addressed that accusation directly. "You will then say I am playing the woman card, but you yourselves can see what has been trending. For the past three months, it is women who have given me the most trouble, women who have given me the most backlash." That detail is uncomfortable, and it's important. The criticism didn't come primarily from men. It came from other women. That complicates the narrative in ways that are worth sitting with.

Why Women Policing Women Is a Different Kind of Problem

The fact that much of the backlash came from women doesn't make the double standard less real. But it does shift the conversation. It's not just about men controlling women's choices. It's about a culture — shared across genders — in which women's decisions are perpetually treated as public business. Women internalize these expectations just as men do, and they sometimes enforce them more aggressively because they've been taught that conformity is a form of protection. If I followed the rules, the logic goes, then you should too.

That's not an excuse for the harassment Saheefa received. It's context. And it's context that makes her decision to speak out — to record a video where she's visibly upset but still articulate — all the more significant. She wasn't performing calm for the cameras. She was genuinely frustrated, and that frustration carried the weight of someone who has been dealing with this scrutiny for years.

The Timing That Made It Worse

Saheefa also pointed to something that made the backlash feel especially jarring: the timing. "Look at what has happened in our country over the past five to six days and what has been done to women," she said. "So please, a haircut should not be the discussion right now."

She didn't specify which incident she was referring to, and honestly, that's part of the point. In Pakistan, there are almost always recent incidents involving violence or injustice against women that should dominate the national conversation — and almost always, the national conversation gets diverted into something far more trivial. A haircut becomes a trending topic while serious issues go under-discussed. That pattern is not accidental. It's the result of a culture that is more comfortable debating what women do with their bodies than addressing what is done to them.

Saheefa's call to refocus attention on what actually matters is not something every celebrity would make. It's uncomfortable. It asks people to look away from the spectacle and toward the substance. And the spectacle-makers — the social media accounts that thrive on controversy — have no incentive to follow that request.

The Earlier Controversy That Complicates Everything

Now, any honest telling of this story has to include the baggage Saheefa carries into this moment. Earlier this year, she was at the center of a completely different firestorm — one that was not about double standards or gender, but about her own choices. In an Instagram video, she said she preferred hiring Pashtun workers for her Lahore restaurant, Roni's Pizzeria, and no longer trusted Punjabi or Urdu-speaking people. The remarks were widely condemned as discriminatory, and rightly so. Hiring someone based on their ethnicity rather than their merit is not a defensible position, and the backlash she received was not manufactured outrage — it was a legitimate response to genuinely offensive comments.

The restaurant was flooded with one-star reviews overnight. Calls to boycott her business circulated widely. Food vlogger Ahtsham Riaz, who had previously promoted her pizza brand, publicly expressed regret over ever endorsing it. Saheefa fired back at him sharply, accusing him of using her platform for his own reach. The entire episode left a mark on her public reputation, and it's a mark that hasn't faded.

I mention all of this because it would be dishonest to pretend that Saheefa is a perfect messenger or that every criticism she's received has been unfair. She's made statements that were genuinely harmful, and she's faced consequences for them. That's how accountability is supposed to work. But it doesn't mean that everything she says from now on is automatically invalid. And it doesn't mean that the backlash she's receiving over a haircut has anything to do with the Pashtun workers controversy. These are separate issues, and collapsing them together serves no one's understanding.

The Trap of the Imperfect Messenger

There's a broader pattern worth noting here, and it affects how we process public figures in Pakistan. When a celebrity has made mistakes — even serious ones — there's a tendency to write off everything they say afterward. That tendency is understandable on an emotional level, but it's intellectually lazy. A person can be wrong about one thing and right about another. Saheefa's comments about ethnicity-based hiring were wrong. Her observation that women are judged for things men are never asked about is right. Both things can be true at the same time.

The refusal to hold those two truths simultaneously is part of what makes Pakistani public discourse so exhausting. Everything gets flattened into heroes and villains, and once someone is in the villain category, even their valid points are dismissed. That's not critical thinking. That's tribalism.

What Saheefa's Video Actually Achieved

Whatever one thinks of Saheefa Jabbar Khattak — and there are legitimate reasons to think critically about some of her past statements — her video about the haircut backlash did something important. It named a pattern that most people see but few articulate. The question she asked — "Have you ever asked a man why he got a haircut?" — is so simple that it's almost embarrassing to realize it needs to be asked. But it does need to be asked, because the answer is no. We don't. And that tells us something about who is presumed to have autonomy over their own body and appearance, and who isn't.

The fact that much of the criticism came from women doesn't weaken her point. If anything, it strengthens it. It shows how deeply these expectations are embedded — so deeply that they're enforced not just by men in positions of power, but by ordinary women who have never been given the space to question why they're expected to explain themselves at every turn. Breaking that cycle requires the kind of uncomfortable honesty that Saheefa's video represented, even imperfectly.

The Bigger Conversation This Should Spark

If we step back from the specific personalities involved, what's left is a conversation that Pakistani society genuinely needs to have. Why do we treat women's personal choices — about hair, clothes, work, marriage, education — as public business? Why is the default posture toward women in the public eye one of scrutiny rather than respect? And why, when women push back against that scrutiny, do we reflexively accuse them of overreacting, playing a card, or seeking attention?

These are not easy questions, and they don't have simple answers. But the fact that they're so rarely asked, and that when someone does ask them it becomes a controversy in itself, tells you how much work there is to do. Saheefa's video may not change anything on its own. But it adds one more voice to a conversation that can't be avoided forever.

And maybe, just maybe, the next time a woman in the public eye makes a personal choice about her appearance, the first instinct won't be to demand she justify it. That would be progress. Not because of one video, but because of every person who watched it and thought: she's right — I've never asked a man that question.

Do you think Pakistani society holds women to a different standard than men when it comes to personal choices, or is Saheefa's criticism an overreaction? I'd genuinely like to hear your perspective in the comments.

✍️ About the Author
Sayed Abdullah is the founder of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he provides honest analysis on politics, cricket, and technology for the common Pakistani. He believes in context over clickbait. Read more.

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Important Disclosure: This article is based on publicly available statements from Saheefa Jabbar Khattak's official Instagram account, verified news reports from Pakistani media outlets, and background information on the Pashtun workers controversy. The analysis regarding gender dynamics, public scrutiny, and the implications of the backlash represents my personal opinion. I am not affiliated with Saheefa Jabbar Khattak, her restaurant, or any individual mentioned. The views expressed are entirely my own.