Long hair

For other uses, see Longhair.

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A boy with long hair.

Long hair has several meanings, the main one being hair that is notably long. The definition in archaic English meant, roughly, someone artistically knowledgable or wise, an aesthete. As a descriptory term, it has been applied to Merovingians and classical music enthusiasts, as well as hippies and aesthetes. In the 1960s men used long hair as a political symbol like in the musical Hair or in Yoko Ono´s and John Lennon´s "bed-in".

Science

Anthropologists speculate that the functional significance of long head hair may be adornment, a by-product of secondary natural selection once other somatic hair had been lost. Another possibility is that long head hair is a result of Fisherian runaway sexual selection, where long lustrous hair is a visible marker for a healthy individual (with good nutrition, waist length hair—approximately 1 meter or 39 inches long—would take around 48 months, or about 4 years, to grow).

Cultural history

Hair is one of the most important ways humans have of both presenting themselves and judging one another socially, being one of the part of their body which is easiest to manipulate. Throughout Hinduism and Buddhism, hair is seen as representing sexual control over oneself—those having long hair having less control than those having shorter or no hair. Also, those having short, cut hair, is often viewed as being under society's control, while having long hair signifies being outside of the systems of society.

"She, as a veil down to the slender waist, Her adorned golden tresses wore Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved, As the vine curls her tendrils..."

— Milton's description of Eve in Paradise Lost

Men in Old Testament times often would go for long periods of time without cutting their hair to show devotion to God. They were called nazarites. Samson is one example, his strength depended on his hair length. The New Testament, however, says, "does not nature teach you that it is a shame for a man, but an honour for a woman to wear long hair." American Indian men wore long hair before the arrival of Christian missionaries. The idea of a man's strength depending on his hair length extended throughout history.

In the 1950s and 60s, African-Americans such as Malcolm X advocated longer hairstyles such as afros and dreadlocks, in order to express their individuality and freedom as a race.

In Jewish and other cultures, shortening hair signifies mourning and sadness.

In the European middle ages, shorter hair often signified servitude and peasantry, while long hair was often attributed to freemen, such as the Germanic Goths and Morovingians. Often, non-Germanic cultures such as Byzantines viewed these "long-haired men" as barbarians specifically citing their hair as proof. In Ireland, English colonists who wore their hair long in the back were considered to be rejecting their role as English subjects and giving in to the Irish life. Irishman, in turn, scolded others of their race who moved into English culture by cutting their hair. Thus, hair length was one of the most common ways of judging a true Englishman in this period. Muslims in Christian areas were ordered to keep their hair short and parted, as their longer style was considered rebellious and barbaric.

A girl with long hair.

A long hair fad was widespread among English and French men in the 11th and 12th centuries, thought otherwise it was considered, mostly because of church endorsement, proper for men to have shorter, and women, longer hair. The fad was largely brought about by monarchs who rejected the shorter hairstyle, causing the people to follow. Wulfstan, a religious leader, worried that those with longer hair would fight like women, and be unable to protect England from foreign invasion. Knights and rules would also sometimes cut or pull out their hair in order to show penitence and mourning, and a squire's hair was generally shorter than a knight's. Unmarried women who let their hair flow out were frowned upon, as this was normally reserved for the unwed, although they were allowed to let it out in mourning, to show their distressed state. Long hair in the period of signifies youth and courtly behavior, and some scholars even suggest that in men it shows homosexuality, though this is disputed, as it was almost solely religious monks who connected long hair with woman-behavior.

Women often have a stronger inclination towards long hair than men do. Some feminists have declared long hair as "irrefutably feminine," while others, in an attempt to break the stereotype, argue for shorter hair. Other scholars have also remarked on how, without hair, a woman cannot be a woman. Long hair also symbolizes wealth, and luxury, as such hair is difficult to maintain. Often, men and women will protest the social system by adopting the hair length considered acceptable in the other sex: men growing their hair long, and women cutting it short, again pointing to the strong trend of long hair being a female commodity. Since short hair is frequently considered mannish, working women sometimes face a challenge in balancing between having hair long enough to appear a woman, but short enough to fit into the male-oriented business world.