If you look at the TV of the day, even into the late 80s men still had long hair. Remember John Stamos on “Full House”? Alex P Keaton, had a medium long style of hair too. It was a businessman’s haircut but still long. McGuyver had long hair. Most of the fashion was still long or medium-long hair
George Michael had long hair in mid 80s as well though when he stopped dying it and cut it and grew a beard it was a major signal for men, who stopped wearing mustaches by the end of the 80s and switched to goatees.
I went to school in the 70s and it wasn’t that uncommon to have short haircuts as well as long haircuts. We still go the “summer cut,” in June when school let out, you know cut down to the skull for the summer.
If you look at TV you can pretty much see the styles as they come and go.
There’s some truth to this. I remember that in certain parts of Brooklyn, well into the 1980s, the “D.A.” haircut was practically obligatory for young men (although mousse or gel and a blowdryer had supplanted hair oil or grease).
When I was a young kid in the 70s (I was born in 1972, to give an idea of the timeframe) I had longish, curlyish hair - I’ve still got several pics of me like that, since about 1990 (was a metalhead in the 80s) I like to keep my hair a little short lest the curl come back.
When my son was born in 2004, I’ve noticed his hair looks a lot like mine at that age if I let it grow (heck the rest of him is a spitting image of me at that age too!) - for nostalgia’s sake (and because I think he looks cute in it) I like to leave his hair longish and curlyish and reminisce over my old pictures of me and how much he looks like me - despite the protests of my wife (and sometimes my son himself) that he needs a haircut.
I have to keep reminding myself that a 5 year old boy with long curly hair was normal in 1977, but not in 2009.
I started school in 1967, and all of my classmates had “short” hair until about 1969, when it started getting longer. This went on until I graduated in 1979, despite a very short period around 1974, when ads I noticed mentioned “the new short hair”, which never really caught on en masse, although there were guys wearing it this way, among guys that did have the longer hair, and we’re talking hair that was definitely below the jawline or longer, to about the shoulderblades in the back.
Among teenagers, longer hair probably started around 1966 in earnest, and even then, more often than not, it was usually a Beatles cut. Center parting didn’t really start until around 1968, but was not common until around 1971 or 72.
Among adults, only the real “hip” types sported longer hair ca. 1969, the majority of men still having hair lengths above the upper part of the ear, although by 1972 or so, they were letting it stray a little further south, up to about 1977 when half an ear was okay. For examples, look at photos of Derek Sanderson of the Boston Bruins of the NHL in about 1969; Derek was very “hip”. The rest of the players still had shorter hairstyles, but by 1971 were letting it grow longer.
Shorter hair finally arrived back around the time of Miami Vice (1983 or so), but even then, it was still longer than it had been in the 50s or most of the 60s (among adults), and I don’t think it had really receeded back to the lengths of those days, except in the case of punk types – there seem to be a lot more skinheads and brushcuts now than there was since about 1967 or so.