In Texas, a student was suspended for having too long hair (apparently other reasons also) but this is an ongoing issue since i was young, both school and jobs; this is double standard since girls/women can wear their hair as long as they want. Since this is 2023, not 1953, I would think this would be covered under gender-bias or discrimination. Of course this gets into why society has this hangup about long hair on men.
Barbers Hill Independent School District prohibits male students from having hair extending below the eyebrows, ear lobes or top of a T-shirt collar, according to the student handbook. Additionally, hair on all students must be clean, well-groomed, geometrical and not an unnatural color or variation. The school does not require uniforms.
To be able to easily tell who is a man and who is a woman, which generally also means that women MUST have long hair. This is very important for a lot of people for some reason, which obviously causes other problems.
They don’t insist girls have long hair. There does seem to be a bias in that girls and women are allowed long or short hair, and to wear characteristically male styles of clothing, while boys and men are not allowed long hair or dresses etc. In general the dress codes are just following social acceptability, but long hair on adult men is pretty accepted, I think.
ETA: perhaps the rules are stricter for boys, since they could feasibly be mistaken for girls, whereas adult men are generally obviously masculine even with long hair.
It’s second hand misogyny. Long hair is a supposed feminine trait, and a man should never emulate feminine traits. Because a man lowers himself when he does that.
Conversely, short hair on women is not seen as particularly wrong, because if a woman emulates a masculine trait, she’s aspiring to a good (manly) trait. Won’t help though, she’s still a woman.
Of course, none of this is consciously expressed, not even in thought.
My girls highschool had hair color(odd colors) restrictions, no yoga pants or leggings. No graphic t-shirts of any kind. I don’t think hair length was forced.
The Lil’wrekker was in theatre and a whole group dyed their hair pink to play the Pink Ladies in Grease. They got called to the office and sent home. It was a big stink. In the end the theatre group won that one.
About 5O girls all dyed their hair many shades of the rainbow the next week. It caused all manner of crap, detentions, parent visits.
You give 'em an inch they’ll take a mile.
Teenagers are nuts.
It’s an interesting point that in general women with short hair or men’s clothing were more acceptable in our societies then men doing the reverse even some time ago, while men in feminine clothing or hairstyles are still not really accepted.
The explanation I heard that seemed to make sense is that patriarchy assigns women a very specific role, and says “women can only do this” while men are the “default”, so anything that isn’t feminine is permitted to men.
As our societies liberalized women were allowed to do things outside of the “feminine” role, but men who were already free to do almost anything did not see a similar loosening of their own (much smaller) forbidden zone.
You don’t realize that these males with long hair are hippies–who disrespect authority, smoke pot, engage in promiscuous sex–and don’t want to die in foreign wars like Vietnam?
I went to high school in Texas, and the Plano Independent School District had removed hair restrictions for students in the 1970s I think. By the time I got there in the 80s, there were restrictions on male student athletes but nobody else that I can recall. There may have been requirements on girl athletes while they were engaged in sport but nothing else that I can recall.
As a wee lad, my mother cut my hair and I hated having it cut. When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, I refused to get it cut and it grew long enough for the other kids to start calling me Boy George (man, that really dates me). I went under the knife and let my mother cut my hair.
For whatever reason, long hair has come to be associated with women rather than men in our culture. And whenever you buck social norms there will be others who push back against it. I feel as though the bias against long hair for men is not nearly so sharp as it used to be. I’ve never look askance at a candidate for a job and was put off by their long hair.
One data point (especially for many parts of the US society these days)
1 Corinthians 11:14-15 (NIV)
14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?
Would have thought the very same guys who wore long hair, disrespected authority, smoked pot, draft dodged Vietnam and at least dreamt of promiscuous sex were now the guys enforcing the regulations against long hair in the Barbers Hill Independent School District.
And the sign says: Long hair freaky people need not apply So I put my hair under my hat and I went in to ask him why He said: You look like a fine outstanding young man I think you’ll do So I took off my hat I said: Imagine that, huh, me working for you
Conventions for males’ hair length and facial grooming are always changing. In America, there always seems to be a substantial portion of the population taking serious umbrage at violators.
**Numbers 6:5 All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.
Leviticus 19:27 in Other Translations 27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 27 You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.
We all know Paul was a fun and sex hating square dude.
Note during the 1800s it was weird for men to not have facial hair. Then it was bad, then mustaches were Okay, but beard were bad. Now - it’s all good.