This was just a little thought I had last evening. I was eating dinner with my wife whom has very long hair, and I wondered…Why do women tend towards having long hair? Of course not all women do, obviously. But when little girls are young, the parents don’t ‘usually’ take them for hair cuts like the little boys running around the neighborhood with crew cuts. Why is this?
This is not a gross generalization either, there are obviously men with long hair and women with short hair. I wanted to know where the predisposition came from for women to have longer hair then men…originally… If Possible
I am no anthropologist, but I have a WAG that seems to make a lot of sense (at least to me). The question isn’t really why women have long hair, but why men have short hair. Short hair has to be cut more frequently (to keep it short), there are fewer ways to style it, and it won’t protect your neck from the sun. My guess is that most of the ancient world, both men and women, had long hair. Think of any portrait of Jesus - he’s got long hair.
Short hair became the fasion of Roman soldiers (who very likely picked it up from someone else). They cut their hair to prevent it from being grabbed by opponents during hand to hand combat. The neck might get sunburned, but at least it was still attached to the head.
They spread throughout the ancient world and took their hair cuts with them. The style was adopted by most of Europe for the same reason the romans had adopted it. It remained as a sign of masculinity.
Just a guess.
-Beeblebrox
“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were REAL men, women were REAL women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Aplha Centauri.”
It’s a shame you have to put that disclaimer in, just so some idiot doesn’t come along and say “Girls can have short hair if they want to!” and totally hijack your thread.
I think it comes down to vanity though. Hair is decorative in humans. It symbolizes youth and vitality, and is a good indictator of over-all health. The line of reasoning probably runs something like this:
Girl: “I need to appear young, vital, and healthy in order to attract a mate. So if hair represents youth and cool! I can use it for decorative purposes, the more of it the better…” or something like that.
Guys don’t want to be decorated in the same ways girls are decorated… this would compromise their masculinity. So they decorate themselves in different ways.
However, Fabio stands in the way of my reasoning. Ahhhh!!! Fabio is always in the way!!! Why can’t he leave some chicks for the rest of us??!!!
I am a male. I have long hair because, to me, it is just another accomplishment. I am convinced that cutting my hair would be another way of “selling out”. Not to mention the fact that if I ever cut it, I would feel like I did it during a moment of weakness.
Do I feel like I get treated differently because I have long hair? Of course. Especially in the airport. If I am not wearing a suit I am often pinned as a social deviant and forced to endure “extra-special treatment”(i.e. checks with the hand-held metal detector even though I passed the “walk-through” with flying colors. Hmmm… :rolleyes: ) Too bad the idiots didn’t check the contents of my pouch of RED MAN™ chewing tobacco that I placed in the tray, which could have easily contained hundreds of ecstacy tablets. :rolleyes:
Long hair is nice, but like terriers’ tails it gets in the way while hunting/chasing away dinosaurs/scrambling through the undergrowth. Short hair for ease in hunting?
Paul makes a point on long hair: “Does not nature itself teach you… that a man ought to have short hair?” or something like that. From this I conclude that while Jesus may have had longer hair than we would consider short (although we can only go by the stylings of artists removed from Him by a minimum of 1000 years), it was yet believed that really long hair was the sole domain of women. Thus, “a woman’s long hair is her crowning glory”. These both have scriptural refs but I can’t be bothered. It’s 5am.
Many folk here know I intend to become a Pastor. I used to have long hair. I cut it as an autonomous mark of submission to Christ: my Pastor at the time appreciated such gestures, and I think I’d appreciate it too. I realised Jesus probably had longer hair than I ever had, but that in most of the conservative churches in Scotland my hair would have been considered long, and I didn’t want to go making a statement just for the sake of a statement. If folk get upset by my presence I want it to be for the right reasons: I intend to give them plenty. Hair-length remains a superficial issue and I’m happy to treat it that way.
ps: Bowie’s first TV appearance was as the spokesman for a group supporting young men with long hair.
pps: for the record, I personally think men suit long hair better than women do. One of David’s sons was a terribly proud man who took all his father’s concubines [sub](that’s another story)[/sub]. He died hanged by his hair in a tree, where it was caught in a chase. The moral is… well, try not to be proud if you’re likely to need a bit of speed. Or something. I think men’s short hair is a mark that they have something more important to do than just look good. And let us all bow to the fact that WOMEN CAN HAVE SHORT HAIR IF THEY WANT TO.
I think the best explanation put forth in the entire thread was that of Beeblebrox. Speaking as an anthropology student, it was right on the mark. There are many cultures today where women keep their hair anywhere from short to bald, and also cultures in which men have rather long hair. There are also many cultures in which everyone has the same hair style, more or less.
Let’s not be so pathetically ethnocentric that we assume that the contemporary macrocultural norms of the European West are in some way inherent to all of humanity.
As for Ross’s points:
“Long hair is nice, but like terriers’ tails it gets in the way while hunting/chasing away dinosaurs/scrambling through the undergrowth. Short hair for ease in hunting?”
Umm… chasing away dinosaurs? Let’s not even get into that.
Long hair has never seemed to get in the way for the many cultures that traditionally wore it. It seems funny to extrapolate a modern cultural norm all the way back to some sort of universal human prehistory. Sort of forgetting about the eleven thousand years or so that we’ve had agriculture?
As for the Bible references, they are hardly relevant to the majority of the world’s population that are non christian, don’t you think?
However, speaking as a Christian myself, I can address that. Paul was most likely admonishing the Corinthian males not to have the appearance of the male temple prostitutes of Corinth, from all accounts I have heard of the situation. That sort of makes more sense, too, with regards to the fact that Jesus himself (and probably most of the other Disciples) had long hair. You just can’t take a letter out of its original cultural context.
As for Holy Icons portraying Christ, they have been around since the Apostolic times. To say that they only started being made a thousand years ago is plain wrong. The seventh Ecumenical Synod of the Christian Church was held in the eigth Century, and dealt exclusively with the appropriate use of Icons. There are Icons in existence dating all the way back to the First and Second Centuries. In fact, the portrayal of Christ with long hair is a hold-over from those earlier times. Longer hair was less in fashion further down the road, so if the Icons were later fabrications you would expect conformity with those later norms.
Long hair is a pain. It takes forever to wash, comb and make presentable. It tends to get in things, catch in things, and other wise get in the way. It gets greasy and smelly quickly, and generally sucks.
The part of me that listens to feminist conspiracy theory says that female standards of beauty are designed to channel our energy into hair styleing as opposed to more liberating pursuits, and keeping us out of situation where our hair might get mussed up.
Zaph’enath: I’m sure those icons date back to the originals in the first and second centuries A.D., but the portrayals of Christ with long hair and a beard date back to the Greco-Roman tradition of that as a symbol of wisdom (back to Merlin, I suppose). These portrayals of Christ might not have been accurate to the Apostles and Him, but more portrays the Roman interpretation of the wise man Christ.
And going back on topic, here’s my two cents: Although I’m sure the original function of long hair was something our ancestors found came in handy on the savannahs of Africa, hunting and gathering in extreme conditions, as a way to keep the head warm, the modern cultural reason would be much different.
It might be related to what we’ve been getting at in the whole Roman warriors/masculinity thing. This might even date back even further, to the Greeks. Women probably kept their hair short as a symbol of their femininity. But I doubt it was to tie ribbons into it. Hair styling isn’t exactly an ancient tradition.
But back to the Greek thing, we might be able to find evidence for this. The Athenians are historically portrayed as the philosophers of the classical world, while the Spartans were the warriors (somehow Athens landed out on top in the end; not exactly historically acurate, but we’ll work from this). By using samples of art from this period, we might be able to ascertain why our friends Merlin and Gandalf don’t like razors & scissors and why short hair is so manly.
Would anyone like to help me on the cites, please?
Women have long hair because men find it attractive. Women wear makeup because men find it attractive. Women wear clothes that make them appealing to men. Of course, not all women or all men find the same things attractive, but generally each woman attempts to be the most attractive of all available women so she has the best choice of genetic material to pass along. Men do the same. Whence went the evolutionary biologists who should be answering this question?
“Hair styling isn’t exactly an ancient tradition.”
Of course it is. Who told you it wasn’t? Not an Egyptologist, I’ll wager. Dang, I stayed away for a whole year and Cecil is no closer to winning the fight.
Isn’t all of this about sexual selection and social mores? Throughout history, while natural selection has directed evolution in one direction, sexual selection has directed evolution in an occasionally very different one - witness peacocks with their tails - not useful from a natural selection standpoint, but at some point, peahens decided that peacocks with big tails…well, you get the point.
Add to that the volatile, weird nature in human/cultural tastes. Why the heck did the Mayans (IIRC) favor cross-eyed-ness and heads that were of a certain shape - even to the point of putting babies’ heads in between boards to achieve that shape. Let alone Chinese foot-binding (men apparently found this very sexually attractive), Amazonian use of those lip circle inserts - pretty much any culture has its wacky (by our estimation) ways to dress up.
With all of that in mind, has hair - men’s and women’s - gone through countless variations over history? Yes. Is there a constant of long hair? - probably not. BUT- from a sexual selection /cultural standpoint, a woman being able to maintain long shiny hair was able, over the ages, to demonstrate to a potential mate that:
a) She is healthy - sick people lose their hair or it looks awful
b) She is young - IIRC young women of marrying age tend to wear their hair down (maybe just in European history); married women don’t have the time to care for it, and often shorten it so they can focus on their chores
c) She is able to maintain her hair - basic domestic discipline - it’s not good or bad, but it may be the same as women of old demonstrating the ability to make their own clothes, cook, etc…
I remember seeing a program on female sexality and body types where the “center” of woman’s sexuality started with their hips/buttocks in Mesopotamia - a reference to the woman’s central role in breeding/procreation. Add to that the healthiness of hair as another sign for a mate to check for, and you have sexual selection.
So with all of that, a woman’s long hair is probably just an vestige of our anthropological and cultural past…
Yes, I read it and seem to remember that reference, but I also remember seeing somewhere (where is that photographic memory for cites when I need it!?)that men found the “lotus flowers” - even with necrotic toes and all - very erotic, even to the point of having sex with them (I am not sure how and choose not to visualize).
The point it, cultural forces not only influence humans to pursue physical and other traits that have no clear evolutionary advantage, but we get all caught up in it to and can define our sexual satisfaction through them.
