Maybe some of them would, or maybe their hair is thin and fine and looks like crap when it’s long. Or it frizzes out like crazy. Or since they are older, it’s more brittle and simply harder to grow long, even if they wanted to.
I’m only 28 and trying to grow mine out, and even though it grows like a weed and is nearly impossible to break despite all the coloring I’ve done it, it’s still a pain in the ass to grow it out.
I grew out the oogy Laura Bush do I wore in my 40’s and now at 53 I have a whole Caroline Kennedy thing going on. When I eventually stop coloring it I’m going to attempt an Emmylou Harris. Too bad I can’t grow her bone structure.
My mom told me a story of someone…not sure if it was a cousin or a friend…who cut her hair into a “flapper” bob, against her parents’ wishes. They grounded her until it grew out!!!
My hair is the longest it’s ever been. I’m 51 now and my loc’s are down my back.
I wear them up most of the time, but I won’t be cutting them.
I have majorly thick hair; it holds water like you wouldn’t believe. Even cut down to jaw length it takes at least 5 minutes of intense towel-drying to make it look halfway dry. Left long and blow dried, 15 minutes or more of lots of blowdrying and brushing was quick. I could wash it before going to bed and wake up with it still seriously damp. Add to that it being “naturally curly” (read: tends toward frizzy and does whatever it wants to), and my hair is a nightmare at any length, but worse when long.
In college I was lazy about getting haircuts, so I’d leave it grow out for a while (shoulder-length or longer), then have it cut down very short, and repeat the process. I’m sure the OP didn’t intend this meaning, but I rapidly got sick of male friends practically crying every time I got my hair cut short. It really came across as if I was supposed to deal with that hassle just so I could provide eye candy to them. Finally I said that if they loved my long hair so much, I’d have the stylist tie off the chopped tresses in a hank and give it to them, and they could wash it, blow dry it, brush out the tangles, trim the split ends, and try various products to tame the frizz. I didn’t hear whining after that. I kept it short through my 20s and through today, late 30s. (My coworkers until a year ago all thought I’m in my mid to late 20s, as well.)
I look fantastic with short hair. I’ve tried a few times to have long hair, but you lose my face with long hair, not because I have thick hair because I don’t. I have a lot of fine hair and past about my jawbone it just hangs there looking stupid. Even when I grew it out, I wore it up almost every single day. Really–why bother at that point, eh?
So now that I’m older, damn straight it’s short. That’s how I look best and I like looking my best. To borrow a quote from **DianaG **in another thread, even my pajamas are cute so you better believe I’m picking the most flattering hair style I can get.
Some hair colors, as they go gray, turn a dingy yellow off-white color. Kind of like yellowing teeth. Not a very appealing color. Byadding blue to the color, what you see is whiter/brighter. In practice, some people go to far and end up with a white color that tips towards blue.
The same thing is used by some people to make their white laundry look whiter.
Thank you all for the replies.
What I don’t get is the whole “long hair draws eyes downward” thing. Can anyone post some pictures showing this effect?
So far I’m the oldest to confess her age (I’ll never see 60 again), and I have long hair – as long as it was when I was 18. My reasons are that I like the feel of the wind in it on a breezy day, I don’t like to pay for haircuts, and I don’t like to have to mess with styling. During the times when I wore it shorter I spent what was to me an inordinate amount of time mucking about with hair-related things. Now I just wash, condition, and comb out. I get a trim when the ends get splitty. If it’s in my way when I’m working or when it’s hot, pinning it up on a hair clip takes 5 seconds. The other day I caught a look at the back in a mirror, and thought, dam, that nice silver river looks pretty cool.
Think of it as being like an arrow. Your eyes follow the length of the hair, and once they get to the end of the hair, you end up looking at a body that might be less shapely than it once was, etc.
Wow, that Emmylou Harris do is fantastic! I used to have long hair, but it started looking really scraggly right around age 40. I cut it to shoulder length and really loved it, but last February I had to buzz it all off (Lice! Horrible!) and it’s taking forever to grow back. One of the good things about buzzing it off was that I got to see my hair at all kinds of different lengths, and shoulder-length is still my favorite. If only it would grow that long soon.
I’m letting the gray stay in mine too, MLS. It’s at the point where people ask me where I got my ash highlights done but it won’t be too much longer until most of it is gray. Maybe it’s because I live in such a casual place with lots of old hippies but women with longer gray hair isn’t an uncommon sight at all around here. It’s not that yucky yellow color, just silvery.
I had short hair all the time while growing up. (I’m 42 now.) My mother, although she claimed that my blonde curls were beautiful, kept them cut short. Out of habit, I kept them short throughout my life, until the past four years or so. My hair is now past my shoulders, wavy and thick (although no longer blonde–started dying it auburn when I was 14 and still love it, so it gets dyed each month).
About 1 1/2 years ago, I had some major hormonal stuff going on, and my thick hair started dropping out and thinning. I’d find long strands everywhere. I was FREAKED. No bald patches, and my hairdresser said that my hair was still thick and “lots of it”, but compared to how it’d been in the past, was thin to me. Eventually, everything evened out, and now my hair is uber thick once again.
It’s a pain in the ass. It’s thick, long and wavy and half the time it doesn’t do what i want it to do. It grows fairly fast, so I have to update my roots every month with dye. There’s gray threaded throughout, so it’s really obvious when I don’t dye it, and the gray is thicker than the rest (even when it’s dyed). In the summer, it’s hot as hell. It takes forever to dry (at least half a day–I don’t blow it dry).
However, it’s my hair, and it looks great and I love the feel and thickness of it, especially after growing up with short hair for most of my life. Besides, I weight more than I should, and I don’t think short hair looks good for me–just makes me look more round, which I don’t need.
I’ve said that when my roots start coming in silver, then I’ll chop it off and stop dying it, but I don’t see that happening in the next 10 years or so.
I’m 38 and can’t imagine that I’d ever want to go shorter than shoulder length again.
I’m not sure about color though. I’m either going to go with the full-on gray scraggly witch-locks (and feel my true self at last!) or dye it pink. Whichever upsets the children more.
Excellent post, Truus.
I sometimes find myself thinking ‘She would look better if…’ about friends and strangers, and have to stop myself. I am a fashion chameleon, and I can only imagine what some people think of the way I occasionally style myself (which is rarely to attract men). So who am I to assume that’s every woman’s intention?
I too always wondered why so many women over 45 or so got such ugly short haircuts. Shaved around the neckline. Ugh. Only a few women can carry that off.
I had always had great hair, the kind hairdressers would cluster around and moan orgasmically over. I did not know how bad hair could be.
Then I hit my mid-40’s, and some hormonal effect made it go both limp and frizzy, straight and curly, scraggly, dull, faded. As a higher percentage went gray, that was like having yet another, purely evil head of unruly hair mixed in. So it always looks very bad now. I’ve often felt like totally shaving it off. I wear it just touching shoulder length and ignore it.
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Kinda related, and funny:
My great-grandmother had long, beautiful hair, which my great-grandfather loved. One day they got into a huge fight, and she got it all cut off, came home and handed him the hank of hair.
I’ve had every length of hair at some point. I’m currently shoulder-length. I’ve even been bald twice due to medical issues. I’m 53, and I prefer the extremes - either super short or just long and straight. One thing I can say is even though my waist length hair used to get compliments they were directed at my hair, never ‘ooh you look pretty’. I think I look better with shorter hair but my husband likes it longer, and I have to admit when I walk outside I enjoy the wind blowing my hair.
Short hair is easy, long hair is easy, in-between is a pita. At my age I am crotchety enough to do what I want, especially since I’m outside of the breeding pool now. I just want to look nice, not ‘hot’. now get off my lawn.
One of my fondest memories of my sixtiesh grandma when I was little was watching her brush out and braid her waist-length silver hair and pin it into a bun. I always thought she looked classy and elegant with it up, but I never got over the intimacy and wonder of seeing it down.
I’m a longhair girl. I don’t think I’ll ever cut it.
