August 16, 2023
"There was a time when hair like mine — let’s call it BTB, for below the boobs — was definitely a bit weird."
"Something of the mung bean to it. Then, ten years or so ago, ultra-long locks became... high-status.... The Princess of Wales has BTB hair. So do Gwyneth Paltrow and Demi Moore, Amal Clooney and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.... On the cover of British Vogue’s September issue the now fiftysomething supermodels have long hair too. Naomi Campbell’s poker-straight hair reaches her hips, while Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington’s is at what hairdressers refer to as bra-length — a cup-height cut that was, until recently, considered the longest most women might go. Now they are realising there are no limits to length or to age. Gone are the days of the sensible midlife crop; only politicians — and Anna Wintour — have power bobs these days.... Thanks to Rapunzel et al we are hardwired from the off to find long blonde hair somehow special. Without it I feel average, bordering on hideous...."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
43 comments:
I noticed that Megyn Kelly has gone with a long-hair look.
Well, fashion is fashion, but the long-hair look...? Does the London Times article include the phrase "mutton dressed as lamb?"
Long hair on women over 30 is much more preferable than partially exposed underwear bands on women over 30.
Midlife, huh. A personal choice. No human lives were endangered when embracing the feminine gender.
Of Course, THE PROBLEM IS: as one gets Older; their hair gets Thinner, and scragglier..
Unless you are SUPER RICH.. You Will NOT be able to pull this off.
Truly, NOTHING looks worse that thin, scraggly long hair.
Back at the turn of the century (March 5th, 2000), gilbar had Long, silky, flowing hair..
(he's a guy, so it's little different; but bare with me..)
After he hit the deer, they cut off his big long locks (so they could staple his scalp back on).
Once he got out of his coma, and once they took the staples out, he saw that he Now had Short Hair.
(this didn't bother him at first, since he had NO MEMORY of Not being in the hospital).
Once he got "better", and was back home; he'd remember his long silky hair, and miss it terribly.
By now, gilbar was in his forties, and Every time he'd think about growing his hair out; he notice some old hippy in Ames, walking around with thin, scraggly long hair.. And gilbar would think:
long hair is for Young People.
One of the Good Things that came out of my traumatic brain injury, was not becoming one of those disgusting old geezers with thin, scraggly long hair.
So, ALL OF YOU out there.. Boys and Girls alike..
If you're over thirty, and thinking about having long hair; remember these words of wisdom
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child;
but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.. That long hair is for kids
I remember my mother telling me way back in the 1960s that older women who had long hair looked silly, and that it was indicative of their fear of mortality. All these years later and I have never forgotten that. And she was right. They do look silly.
Just as I would look askance at a mid forties man with long hair, same for women. Drags down your face. Too many men are being worried about baldness. Damn glad I am bald. Don’t have to worry about all the maintenance. Shorter hair just works better for older women from a “looks” perspective. My aunt who lived to 84 went from short hair to long hair as she aged. Did her no favors. Older men should think about how shaggy hair looks on them. Same for women.
Wut? People will claim anything to be cool.
Whew! I realized at some point that they're talking about hair on the head. I lived through the 60s feminism attempt to glamorize women's hair growing literally below the boobs. No one wants to go back there.
My wife and I have a long-standing agreement: I'll keep my short if she keeps hers long.
Catch 22:The natural blondes are usually red haired curly. When it grows a foot or so long it has to be heat clipped or ironed. Too much work unless you have hair dressers daily. The curse of the Irish,
I have BTB (must I call it that?) hair. After menopause it's a PITA to have long hair. The texture is different, coarser. I completely understand why mature women have cut it short. And if you're coloring it, yikes. That's a lot of damage to long hair. It's high maintenance and difficult to style.
Does the article mention covid? A lot of us lost hairdresser appointments and changed our minds about what was possible. The hours in the chair looked silly after going without. Gray and lightly trimmed became the new norm.
Hair as a social status symbol? OK!
Let's play who had better hair: Paltrow or Sinead O'Conner?
Now let's play who gives a damn about women's hair versus their behavior.
I’m 60. I have had short hair all of my life. I’m getting tired of bad haircuts, though. It’s harder to cover up stylist mistakes when your hair is short. I’ve been thinking of letting it grow long and just wearing it in a bun. A lot of my elderly patients did that during COVID and they look pretty good.
Has any woman anywhere ever said “I’ll wear my hair however I think looks good on me”? Just askin’
Mikee, of course Sinead. She had a look that worked. Goop never had great hair to begin with (wave at Julia as you ride past, Goop). For long hair on women, brunettes always do better than blondes. Still, once you hit forty-five or fifty, cut it.
🎶Gimme a head with hair
Long, beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming
Streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there (hair)
Shoulder length or longer (hair)
Here, baby, there, mama
Everywhere, daddy, daddy...🎶
This coincides with a decline in Wood Shop.
Doesn't hair usually go down the back? Or is it being combed forward as part of the status indicator and chosen descriptor?
I'm amazed at how catty women get over hair length. The boob/hair length correlation is a new one on me....
My hair is not getting skinnier and stragglier. My hair at 63 is a freak out of nature, long flowing curly locks which in addition to
My new brilliant teeth a kinda happening. If only my body still
Worked right.
My hair, my choice. If I like it, I don't care what anybody else thinks of it.
Meanwhile my husband has let his hair grow long. First time in his life.
It's gotten to be an Old Man thing here.
One of the women on the current season of 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way has hair down to her ankles. Hair that long just never looks healthy or luxuriant.
But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her
- 1 Corinthians 11:15 (King James Version)
Yeah, Virginia grows an odd crop of atheists these days.
Hair extensions. Fifty bucks on Amazon. C’mon folks. You don’t think that women (and men) who don’t mind spending 2 hours every four weeks at the salon maintaining their hair color, would balk about adding a few hair extensions.
How many of these women have extensions or weaves? Naomi for sure.
"The boob/hair length correlation is a new one on me...."
Me too.
And I was surprised to see the extolling of blonde hair: "we are hardwired from the off to find long blonde hair somehow special. Without it I feel average, bordering on hideous."
I think a lot depends on your facial structure and the texture of your hair. I think it's true that some women look a lot worse in short hair, but if you've got the kind of delicate face that looks great in short hair — like Audrey Hepburn — you should embrace your good fortune and not listen to the idiotic notion that long hair is the best hair. There are a lot of women who know they need long hair to balance their big face and they project a lot of nervousness about short hair.
Personally, I prefer to keep my hair long because I'm not seeing any currently stylish short hair that would work right for me, and it's also just a lot easier. There's always the option of a ponytail (or braid or twist). It takes 10 seconds.
Boob length hair? It’s a thing?
This seems to be a thing that women unnecessarily obsess about, and always will. Same with boobs. Are they too big, too small? All men see is…boobs. Maybe boob length hair gives men an excuse to say they are looking at the length of your hair…
My wife's hair is thin and lank, but that matters more to her than it does to me (you guys know what I'm talking about, most of you). When we met, it was perfect early '70s straight, and could make a creditable ponytail is she let it grow, but over time and with her career she went to short cuts and various forms of follicular abuse.
Luckily she looks good that way too.
My Oma, who died in '84 aged 94, had hair down to her knees when she unrolled it, a rare and rather scary sight. That was what German country girls did back in her day.
I think most older women look great with long hair in a bun or a braid or a ponytail. Draped over their shoulders like prom night, not so much.
“I’m getting tired of bad haircuts, though. It’s harder to cover up stylist mistakes when your hair is short. I’ve been thinking of letting it grow long and just wearing it in a bun. A lot of my elderly patients did that during COVID and they look pretty good.”
A couple weeks ago, we had my partner’s daughter and granddaughter visiting. She has always had long hair. Always since she was a little girl. That’s what looks best on her - she has classic French features, with high cheekbones and a narrow chin, but dark blonde hair and blue eyes. Granddaughter does hair and nails professionally, so she was going to help her grandmother by cutting off a year or so growth. But then her daughter (who has a rounder face, even rounder with some extra weight, and a correspondingly shorter haircut) stepped in, and talked them into cutting it to about shoulder length, if not an inch or two higher. Whoops. She hates it. I found extensions on Sunday in PHX, and was ready to drive across town to buy them (with her along to match colors), but in the end, she decided to just balls out the next year or two until her hair grew back. Still think that she will end up with extensions for when we go out.
As noted, it all depends on your facial structure. My daughter cut hers off to about that length, for a more professional (PhD research scientist/engineer) look. But she has a much rounder face, and my thick hair. My partner’s hair is true blonde thin, compounding the problem of short hair.
Long hair on a woman has always been attractive to men. Shorter hair, CAN be attractive, but, generally, longer is better. There are a few women that look good with very sort hair.
I tried growing my hair long about 10 years ago. I gave up when the I had to devote time to care for it. And, it made my head warmer. Not good.
Women try to make themselves more attractive. We appreciate this.
The long hair works for Jane Goodall.
Yup I got the big face problem. About 30 years ago I got my hair bobbed and right away saw it was a mistake. ..the bf said ehh...it took years to recover.
I did transition to gray though. So that.
I'm old enough to remember when the real feminine normie girls all wore their hair in chic bobs, wedges, bubbles, flips and beehives.
Wearing your hair long was weird, like some awkward farm girl.
My late wife would sport a pixie cut, and she had the face to carry it off. Then Covid shutdowns and Alzheimers hit, so her hair grew out to be long and straight. I would give it a brushing and gather it at the back with a rubber band, and it looked great.
I thought that much of the long hair we see on female actors is not real, but extensions. I am skeptical.
To me, there are few things sexier than a Gibson-girl style hairdo. All that beautiful, long hair, tressed up in fascinatingly curvy, almost geometric ways, inspires a man to wonder and speculate at what it would look like coming apart, in stages. A precursor to the strip-tease, maybe. But that style of long hair always seemed to make a woman beautiful, in the way it framed her face.
Althouse-Your icon picture has your hair at an ideal length--sophisticated and in proportion to your features. It also happens to be the length at which my wife has worn her hair for most of the 49 years we have been married.
I have this hair, but I had it before when it was a little strange.
A visit to my hair stylist.
Stylist: "It's so long. Can I cut off a little more this time?"
"No, I'm enjoying the weirdness of it."
Then, suddenly, young women were coming up to me. "I love your hair!"
Next visit to the stylist.
"Is my hair in style now? Young people are telling me they like it."
"Ha ha ha! Yes, this is the style now."
I assume it will head back out of style, and I'll have weird hair again. Until then, I look like I follow trends. That is a fun character to play for a time in strangers' minds.
Before reading the other comments -
Without it I feel average, bordering on hideous....
My goodness. This is like that "View Of the World From 9th Avenue" New Yorker cover, isn't it? No space at all between "average" and "hideous."
It's probably the patriarchy's fault.
Also, hang on. We - a species that originated in Africa - are hard-wired to find long blonde hair special? I might allow "special," because blonde hair is a recessive trait everywhere in the world, but her implication of "better" doesn't seem likely, evolution-wise.
I can see that people of European descent might have a genetic predisposition to find smooth blonde hair attractive (a predisposition arising only since the last ice age or so, which makes "hard-wired" seem a bit of an overstatement), but how would that predisposition arise in, say, China? Before the modern era, everywhere but northern Europe, blonde hair would have been not only vanishingly rare but possibly a sign of a genetic problem, wouldn't it?
Her privilege is showing.
(It seems that today I am determined to hoist someone by her own petard. After this comment, I'll try to hold the snide one-liners to a minimum. After this comment.)
My hair is BTB, colored back to my original blonde rather than the mousy version that middle age is imposing on me, and has natural "mermaid curls." It's way easier to care for than when I've had it short, and it goes up in a bun, twist, chignon, or whatever in one minute when I want to class it up. Braid or ponytail for hiking, biking, boating, etc., wet it and scrunch it and leave it down for everyday life.
Thank God I am a guy and don't have to deal with the metaphysical meaning of my hairstyle. #1 to #2 blades on the sides and back, top cut to match, side part. Good for a month.
Post a Comment