I've grown my hair long and now I'm getting noticed and getting looks. Before, I had a flattering style and my hair was in better condition, and even dyed a flattering shade of auburn some of the time, but no dice. Not a single compliment from a male and not many from women. My hair used to resemble Oprah's curly do, only with a smaller profile, since I don't have professional help. I thought that objectively it looked nice, but since I inadvertantly grew my hair out, I found out that I was getting a better response, and I'm going to stick with what I've got. The condition of my hair was better before, and it's streaked with gray all the time now, but they still like it a lot better.
I understand men not liking unflattering, severe or butch haircuts. Mine was medium, and had curls and volume and was feminine. No dice. It probably resembled a color and cut that some middle aged housewives like but it had a different spirit, more like Clara Bow, or, as I said, Oprah's new do which people like. Didn't matter. I'm guessing I was tarred with the frumpy middle aged housewife with a perm brush, even though it wasn't like that. I know that men prefer long hair, I just didn't know they preferred it that much.
What do you think?
As we are asked to select a book to go with our subject matter, I found Curly Girl to be very useful and I recommend it. You should find a link to it here.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - SFC SKI
I prefer long hair on females, but only if it is kept neat, not stringy or blah. Curly or straight is fine.
That being said, I know long hair is a pain to maintain.
I can count on one hand the number of women I think look better with short hair than long.
2 - Nancy
This must be some kind of hard-wired response, since my reaction is exactly opposite to Ski's: I can count on one hand the number of women I think look better with long hair than short. IMO, I see so many women - especially older women - who desperately need their long, dragging (albeit clean) hair severely trimmed and styled, it almost hurts, and I wonder why their own mirrors don't tell them they need a shorter, neater 'do'. I can speak w/some authority on long hair, as mine was long enough to sit on until the year after grad school, when I finally got my PhD and then moved to a part of the country where it was hot, humid, and I cut it all off after one short summer there and never grew it back. I kept mine meticulously clean, the ends trimmed and even, and it was thick, silky, and a gorgeous golden-chestnet, but I never got any compliments on it, in fact never got any comments on it at all, from men or women...all the admiring comments came from little girls, who would 'oooo' and 'ahhh' and wish theirs looked like that. Maybe that should have told me something, LOL. The day I cut it off, almost as short as (the then) Mia Farrow's, I felt like I was freed. I still have that huge rope of my own hair, made into a switch, but my natural - and unnatural - color has changed so much over the years, it doesn't match any more. I keep it, as thick as a child's arm, mainly as a reminder of when I had the energy to maintain it, and the youth to carry it off. I'd look pretty silly with it now.
3 - Mat
Back in my younger days, I grew my own hair out to about shoulder length. I had never before (or since, unfortunately) had so many women suitors. I once even had some lovelies honk their horn at me and wave me off the road because of the hair (believe me it wasn't the car). So, I think the long hair thing works for both sexes.
And yes, I much prefer my wife's hair long. Even though she says it looks better, and is easier to manage short. She also uses the excuse that when its long, she just pony tails it, but at a shorter length she must take better care to style. I don't care, I prefer the long locks. It's something about the way it moves when its long, I think.
4 - Eric Olsen
I have heard this so many times that it must be genetic or something: men are more sexually energized by women with long hair. The question is why?
5 - Tristan
I'm not so sure about that~~~
Many guys had fantasies about Sinead O'Conner and her bald head....
And also that Amazon-like black singer-actress with the bald head.....
6 - SFC SKI
It really has to do with the woman's facial features, and even more with personality. I have seen some women who cut all their hair off and were still attractive, but some women can't pull it off due to their facial shape.
I think that long hair is just another aspect of the sensual and feminine look, generally it adds to the rest of what is attractive about a woman.
Something that always throws me off is seeing my female colleagues out of uniform, how they get such long hair into such a little ponytail mystifies me.
7 - Mat
Certainly there is more to being attractive than just the length of the hair. What male is gonna complain about the girls hair length when she's lying next to him naked!?
It gets me everytime when a woman....um, is sitting on me and lets her hair fall down over my face and body.
Anyway, it also reminds me of the scene in Shawshank Redemption where they are watching some old Rita Hayworth movie and get all excited when she flips her head up waving her long hair.
8 - SFC SKI
I think the attraction of long hair starts long before the bedroom.
9 - Shark
Cutting hair is about *growing up.
Eric: "...men are more sexually energized by women with long hair. The question is why?"
* --'cause long hair is for little girls.
See also: "pedophile", "men"
10 - Eric Berlin
Yeah, I prefer long hair on women. Interesting question... I've never really considered why.
I have a similar hair history to yours, Mat. For a brief, shining spell I had hair down to my shoulders. Joined the rugby team, gave myself a buzz cut for kicks... only to learn that I had devastated (or so I'd like to believe) a bunch of potential lady friends.
Ah, such is life.
11 - Shark
Cerulean, we might be better able to judge if you'd post a nice high-res jpg of yerself.
Preferably nekkid.
Thanks in advance,
S
12 - Eric Olsen
actually, Shark, short hair is for little girls and long hair is for women, but feel free to continue to share your pathologies
13 - Shark
EO: "...short hair is for little girls and long hair is for women, but feel free to continue to share your pathologies..."
I dunno; Maybe it's a generational thing?
And are we talking LONG hair here?
'Cause when I was growing up, young girls had shoulder and waist length hair, and cut it when they 'grew up' -- and older women with really long hair usually looked not only terrible -- but like they were trying too hard to hang onto their youth.
Maybe the wimmin' can straighten us out?
PS: lay off my pathologies.
14 - Eric Olsen
if we are seriously looking at anthropology, throughout most of human history the older you were, the longer your hair/beard/whatever grew.
15 - David Flanagan
I have no clear preference in hair, except to say that I prefer to keep mine pretty short. My wife has kept her hair long, even through the yanking phases of our two kids. A lot of moms we know cut their hair short just to keep it from being yanked by little ones [admittedly, a reasonable excuse].
In the 80's, women moving into the business world liked trim their hair shorter to make it look "professional." Fortunately, these days, women wear their hair short or long and all of it is considered professional.
Except for perhaps a reverse mohawk or something. That style never really scored high on the professionalism scale, unless you were an acid rocker, of course.
David
16 - Aaman
We need to have a photograph to compare against - posted perhaps in the "Sexy Bloggers" thread.
17 - Victor Plenty
In today's prosperous societies, long hair mainly makes us think of how much work it must take every day to care for it. (Those of us who bother to think about it at all, that is, as opposed to those who are blindly led around by their unexamined preferences one way or another.)
Yet in times past, long hair was an important signal of a person's history. Prior to civilization, with its medical treatments and its cosmetics, the only way to have hair that was both long and healthy was to enjoy years of basically decent nutrition and freedom from serious disease. A person with good hair, in those days, was more likely to be healthy enough to bear and nurse a child successfully (in the case of a female) or to protect his mate during her most vulnerable phases of pregnancy, childbirth and nursing (in the case of a male).
Later social training in different cultures has added layers of complexity on top of this underlying fact, of course, but this seems to explain the basic "hard-wired" nature of most men's, and many women's, preference for long hair in a prospective partner.
18 - JR
Obviously some different selection rules applied in Africa and Australia.
19 - Victor Plenty
Why would you say that, JR? All different hair types can be good or bad, by which I mean, healthy or unhealthy.
The definition of "long" hair might be slightly different in some parts of Africa or Australia, but from what I've seen, almost all of the people in these regions can choose between styles that are longer or shorter, so the same basic principles I mentioned above would still apply, with only slight modifications.
20 - Eric Olsen
good point about hair reflecting health, VP, that is still true: they can drug test your ass through your hair
21 - Victor Plenty
Drug test my ass through my hair? How will my hair tell them whether or not my donkey has been using drugs?
22 - Cerulean
Thanks to the vast majority of you for your participation. Nancy, that was very well written. Strange that you didn't get a reaction from men to your long hair.
Mat, interesting story. I have always preferred nice long hair on men too (although I don't end up dating those men for some reason or another). The men that tend to have nice long hair tend to be either a) ladies men or b)rebellious against society to the point that they are very difficult. We haven't meshed but I do love the way it looks. One of my employees, who was also a art student, had nice longish hair and one day for no reason he cut it off to get a boy next door cut. I hated that and his girlfriend did too. We both said the same thing to him, now you look like the boy next door. We felt like he'd vandalized himself. Ideally I'd like a guy who looks like an artist or a rock star or, well the cover of a romance novel but not quite so cheesy. That's what I'd like. In real life the guys who look like that have too many choices and have issues but that's my ideal look.
23 - Cerulean
P.S. I also noticed all the men who had a think about Sinead O'Connor when she was bald. They were really into her, all kinds of men including Arsenio Hall. That didn't seem to go with what else I've observed about men but there you have it.
24 - -E
I've had really short hair and long hair. When I had short, guys would tell me I actually pulled it off and girls would tell me it made me look mature (I was probably 18 when I had it chopped off).
I think part of the responses you get depends on if you can pull it off or not (I am sure you could!) but also on where you are.
25 - SFC SKI
Not all guys know how to maintain long hair, but they need to learn. Just like facial hair, a little care goes a long way.
Mine is, of course, just about crew cut, but it was past my shoulders the day I enlisted. For longhairs, the barber will cut from back to front, so you get to watch it fall into your lap.
Do I miss it? As much as any other part of my misspent youth, but my wife likes it better short, and it is a hell of a lot easier to take care of in my line of work. After I retire, I might grow it longer, but I don't know if I have the patience for that.
As for women, Sinead was gamin enough to look exotic and attractive bald, but I've seen her with hair and she looks better. Persis Khambatta was another women baldly going where no woamn had gone before, and she pulled it off very well.
Shari Belafonte Harper, gorgeous with short hair, Michelle Ndege'ocello, she can sing and play bass better than a lot of long-haired men or women, she can definitely do bald, as can Skin from Skunk Anansie.