In all the world’s cultures, throughout all history, it seems typical for women to grow their hair longer than men. The only exception I can think of is Africa, where, judging by a few pictures Ive seen, women and men both cut their hair short.
It seems to me that something so universal across all cultures might not be just a cultural thing. Is there something in a man’s genes that makes him attracted to long hair, just as he’s attracted to other female features? If it is cultural and not genetic, it must trace back all the way to man’s beginnings, and then must have been passed on culturally from generation to generation as mankind spread across the globe.
Does anyone have the Straight Dope on this? Why do women grow their hair long?
Maybe long hair was evolutionary weakly associated with youth and health. Of those, especially youth would be more important to men than to women. And culture has then overridden the weak association with attractiveness for males, while it is still somewhat there for females.
As a side note, I don’t really understand why there are so many somewhat short-haired women. I haven’t met a single guy who said he didn’t prefer long hair.
It’s at the very least genetic that women’s hair naturally tends to grow longer than men’s. Most men, if they don’t cut their hair at all, will tend to grow out to about 4-6 inches, which by female standards would be considered short (yes, I’m aware that there are exceptions).
And there likely is some genetic bias for men to prefer long-haired women, as well. The simplest explanation would be that hair length is one of the cues humans use for sex differentiation. Start with some small variation in a trait, such as hair length. If women have a slight tendancy to grow longer hair than men, then long hair will begin to be regarded as feminine, and the men who prefer long hair will then be more likely to be attracted to women, and thus more likely to breed and pass on their long-hair-preferring genes. Similar explanations probably apply to why human females tend to have such large breasts, and why human males tend to have facial hair: If I see one person with long hair, boobs, and a smooth face, and another with short hair, flat chest, and a beard, all else being equal, I’m much more likely to be attracted to the former.
Chronos, do you have a cite for that? I ask because I consort with hippies, and *all *the men in my life have, at some point or another, gone long-hair. None of them had a problem growing it long. So many that it seems really unlikely that a hundred of my closest friends are a statistical anomaly.
Many cultures through history have had men have long hair. In fact some say the short hair for men comes from the Romans who used it specifically to distinguish their soldiers from all the other soldiers in Europe whom they were figtigting.
This is speculative, but I’ve always thought the difference was purely cultural (i.e. emn are culturally motivated to cut their hair, women are not). Chronos’s assertion that the ability to grow long hair is genetic is interesting, but not intuitively obvious to me (the sex-differentiation idea seems weak; body size/type and the visibility breasts seem to do the trick just fine for most lads:-)).
Curturally, men would be encouraged to cut their hair for a couple of reasons, e.g.: (1) long hair is a handicap in fighting/warmaking–a truly male activity–and (2) long hair could be dangerous in certain other occupations, especially in the industrial era…
The is pure speculation, but I’ve wondered if the tendency for cultures to maintain long hair in women goes back to earlier primate ancestry. Baby primates of other types cling to their mother’s hair. I wonder if early humanoid babies could and did. Obvious as modern humans evolved, young infants lost the ability to cling by themselves, but many new human moms can tell you that there is a strong impulse in babies to grab onto long hair and hold on.
Interesting; after reading your post I set out to find examples of ancient Chinese and Egyptian men with short hair, but all the depictions I found proved you right.
Here you can see Emperor Qin’s terracotta soldiers. Their hair seems to be long and arranged in some sort of braid. Searching for “ancient Egyptian art” on google image search, all the men have long hair. Men in Greek sculptures, seen here have sort of a shaggy hairdo, and the old Greek statue of the dying Gaul has somewhat long hair. None of these examples, however, have as long hair as women tend to.
If men’s hair has always been shorter, I wonder if it has to do with male pattern baldness. Being bald with long hair looks pretty ridiculous. Maybe the old, balding leaders of ancient communites cut their hair short and the rest followed suit.
I don’t buy the clinging theory because shorter hair is easier to use for clinging. I also attempted to lift 5 pounds (which I estimated as approximate birth weight) with my hair and found it very difficult. What’s more, the defining characteristic for the course of hominid evolution is bipedal locomation. By being upright, we freed our hands and hips to carry babies. If we did live out on the savanna then a thick hair covering could help protect our heads while the dangerous sun is directly overhead.
Long hair could have been a mutual sexual handicap. A sexual handicap is a secondary sexual characteristic which may pose a greater risk to the individual in general survival terms but increases the individual’s reproductive success. A well-known example of this is a peacock’s showy tail. By expending valuable nutrients on long locks of hair, the individual demonstrates that she or he is fed so well s/he has nutrients to “waste.”
One of the things that made Romans stand out in the ancient world was that their men wore their hair short and had their faces clean-shaven. Traditionally (which means I have no hope of finding a cite for this) this was because long hair and beards make a convenient hand-hold for one’s enemy, and seizing someone by the scalp or by the whiskers is a pretty effective way of hindering their movements in close combat.
Athenian men from the age of Pericles are usually depicted with shorter hair as well (but full beards). Spartan men, however, were famous for their flowing locks.
As we became more hunter than gatherer, long hair might have gotten in the way. Tools and long hair still don’t mix much. Most all workers at job sites wear ponies.
Right. So the question isn’t why some women wear their hair short, but why so many women have long hair and then wear it up so you can’t tell. You get all the hassle and none of the benefits. Really, what’s the point? Why not just cut it off?
I went to school with this girl for over two years before I realized she actually had long hair, she just kept it hidden.
I’ve known some women who just can’t bring themselves to cut their hair. The ones I’ve known seem to think it was some essential symbol of their femininity, or just could bear to change something they’ve come to identify as a central part of their looks.
Of course, some just wear it up unless they’re getting dressed up or going out somewhere. Long hair tied up tends to look neater for longer than long hair left loose. I have long hair and it’s almost always clipped up when I’m just doing errands or whatever.
(Side story: when I was a teacher’s assistant there was a fourth grade teacher in her mid fifties who always wore her hair tied up in an intricate looking roll on top of her head. She was somewhat known as the school spinster, and her austere looking bun just accentuated the image. Over summer vacation, she baffled us all and got married. First day of the new school year, there she was, waist length hair let down in all its glory. There were more than a few ribald jokes about that, I can assure you. She never did wear it up again, as far as I know.)
Long hair has sexual overtones or is a strong signal of femininity. Women who want to make it in traditional male surroundings, like politics or top business, or the military I assume, will often have their hair cut.
I’m having a lot of trouble believing this. For one, we were always hunters. Primates are omnivores and bonobos and chimps, our closest relatives, hunt meat for food. There was a branch early in our evolutionary history who were strictly herbivores Robust Australopithecus but they are thought to have become extinct because of this. Futhermore, I distinctly recall seeing hunter-gather societies in South American and other areas who had long hair. The better transition-mode would be to farming, and again, I don’t see any evidence amoung contemporary early-farming cultures.
I don’t know about African hair and based on pictures of contemporary Hunter-Gatherers who live in Africa, short hair seems to be better. But I will say that for me, a white girl of mostly Western European stock, my hair is much easier to maintain and keep out of the way when long. I braid it in seconds, throw it over my shoulder and it stays out of my way. The only other hair cut that would keep out of the way as well is a closely cropped one.
