I was browsing some articles on Huffington Post and one mentioned several hair styles and also gave each one a number? Like: “loose curl pattern, 1a-3b” and “4b Afro”. I had no idea! Do guys have the same deal? I just thought we asked for a Tom Cruise of a George Clooney or maybe a Vin Diesel.
Never heard of that before. Seems maybe it’s a Black hair thing?
No it’s not a hairstyle or hair do or haircut number. It’s the type of hair you have, like the strands growing out of your head. So it also applies to men’s hair 
People mostly use it in reference to curly hair, but the lower numbers are for straight hair.
Maybe, but I’d be really surprised if there was a specific number for the verging on Cryptkeeper skullet I sport these days.
And damn, that strip club’s rules suck. Afros rule, I’ve always been jealous that hairstyle was simply not an option for myself. Any perm that could get my hair to do it would certainly have made it fall out like hers did when it was straightened. Since it’s all falling out now, I probably should just get one and be the Larry Fine of my dreams.
Heh, nice. Thankya. I’d be 1A. Bone straight, and when we took the micrometers to strands of our hair in shop class mine was 50% of the thickness of the next thinnest hair. About the only fun thing you can do with my hair is rat it out and do it up in a Patty Duke flip.
Of course, I’m also part Wookie. So my head hear blends into my body hair, and I’m pretty much wall-to-wall shag carpeted except around my eyes until you get to the tops of my feet. It starts getting curly and thick before you get to a “normal” person’s hairline.
My wife is a 2B. She blow dries it straight a lot of the time, like a maniac. But when it’s cut short and she leaves it alone? Mmmmm, beautiful finger waves right out of the shower. So jealous.
Indeed, the Andre Walker Hair Typing system devised in the 1990s by the eponymous stylist working for Oprah Winfrey often features in discussions of men’s hair types, especially in how hair loss affects different types of hair.
To summarize, there are four numbered basic categories:
- Straight
- Wavy
- Curly
- Very Curly/Coily/Kinky
Within each type, the lettered subcategories A, B and C denote respectively least, more and most amounts of body and thickness (which are affected by both hair follicle density on the scalp and the coarseness or size of individual follicles).
As a more or less Type 1C, I too have always envied the gorgeous springy curls of the 3 and 4 gals (and guys). You mean you can braid your hair without fastening the end of the braid and it just stays that way?!??! 
There’s some kind of retro haircut poster on the wall at the barbershop I go to. I think the numbers were just 1 through whatever, not some kind of code, and each cut had a name. It’s pretty much the same kind of poster I saw at barber shops when I was kid in the 60s when it was up to date.
Like this? My goodness all those cuts are short short short, but I really like the design lines shaved into some of them.
When I was a kid (mid-late 1970s), and my dad owned a hardware store in downtown Green Bay, WI, there was a barbershop across the street from me. One of the barbers there, who cut my hair a few times, was mute, and I think he was also hard of hearing; he had a bunch of well-worn cards (each about 8" x 10") with fairly dated pictures of various men’s hairstyles (probably from a poster like that); when someone came in for a cut, he’d show the patron those cards, and have them pick out a cut.
I’m a 3b. Got no patience for having braidable-length thick curly hair But you’d be jealous of the curls and volume I have just upon waking up in the morning….
Well like that type of poster, but much older styles, nothing all that exotic. This poster shows the kind of styles they were. Haircuts for men and boys were all really short back then.
Not exactly the same, but we have the Norwood Scale for male pattern baldness…
Wasn’t the whole Rolling Stones “Some Girls” album cover design a take off on the idea that women’s hair styles (at least 50 years ago) were identified by haircut names?
I believe it is classified as “OMG”
Not so much haircut styles as wigs - that’s the reason for the price listings. And as best as I can remember, the names are specific to the company.
Four kids in my family, and two of us got curly hair and two got straight. I got curly (probably a 2 verging on a 3), and I hated it until I was in my 20s and started to embrace it. I had to give up on straight hair because mine is so sensitive to humidity (a couple of friends and I in high school called Santa Ana’s Straight Hair Weather), and I didn’t want to do anything chemical to it. I thought my hair just looked thick because of the texture, but my hairdresser kept telling me how thick my hair is.