Most Common Terminal Length?

[captaincrunch]

I read on here how to determine your terminal length based on your ponytail circumference and how much that circumference is down your hair. My terminal length was thigh length. What is the most common terminal length? Is it only a select few that can grow to floor length? Also, did anyone who used this method find it to be accurate once your hair grew to terminal length?

[cdonald2]

im watching this out of curiosity, ive always wondered what terminal was most common.

[Anje]

Given how many men out there can't grow hair at all, technically speaking the most common terminal length is probably bald. :lol: (And that's just talking head hair. Thankfully, most hair on our bodies has a very short terminal length!)

Which doesn't help at all!

I'd guesstimate that the average female in good health will probably find her hair doesn't go a whole lot more than classic, if she does everything right. Some people will get more length, some will get less. I could be wrong in that, though. Remarkably few people grow to terminal with protective styling and gentle handling, so it's actually pretty hard to say. Age will likely make a difference, too.

[Sparklylady82]

There is a terminal length thread and I asked if there was a way to determine ones terminal length. The consensous was that you can try but because there are so many factors you just have to wait it out and see :-) It would be neat to make a poll asking people who have reached terminal to unput what length they are at. Real people real answers. I just don't know if there are many?

[Marbid]

I would still guesstimate to be in the vicinity of mid thigh.... Most people i have ever seen with past classic length are extremely fairy tailed in the mid thigh and beyond, and i bet its been at that length for years. Although i know fairy tale does not always represent the end of the line. Sometimes its just a result of your hairs natural growth pattern when uncut and the hair is still growing. I still say... Mid thigh is a good healthy guess.n

[chen bao jun]

I don't think we'd ever get a large enough sample to know. Even on LHC, people who choose to grow their hair to terminal are a minority of a minority of a minority. (the people who ever post anything would be a minority on here--and we are a minority of the general public).
It would be hard to tell even based on historical photos and paintings, where available. Usually only the elite got painted or photographed until modern times and plus you would have the issue that in most societies, since forever, women did not show their hair (especially not after marriage) so even when you see someone with loose hair, they wouldn't necessarily be 'typical'. And of course to grow optimum terminal hair, health would count and nutrition would count as well as genetics, which would be at least in part race or ethnicity based. That is, a significant amount of upper class Japanese ladies in the 10th century must have been able to grow their hair past floor length, since it was an ideal for them, but how long could Western European ladies grow their hair in the 19th century? the Sullivan sisters were considered to be so amazing for hair length that they were a sideshow and could sell hair growing potion (suggesting that their length was unusual) and they just hit the floor, it did flow behind them like a chain).
And my observations, are of course not scientific, the points I just brought up don't prove anything one way or the the other.
I just don't think you'll be able to find out what 'most' people's terminal length is, but you can probably find out what the average terminal length is of those people who have managed to reach terminal so far on the LHC in 2014 who feel like responding to a question about it. However many people that is. That in itself might be interesting though. I don't know that it would help you to find out what YOUR terminal might be though--you'd have to grow and find out.

[captaincrunch]

What does "fairy tailed" mean?

[meteor]

What does "fairy tailed" mean?
It's basically untrimmed ends that develop on their own, without any trims and/or "dustings", so they might look thinner and/or differing in length, because different hairs are at different stages of their growth - every day we shed and grow new hair, so naturally forming hemline has a "fairytale ends" quality to it.

[meteor]

I don't think we'd ever get a large enough sample to know. Even on LHC, people who choose to grow their hair to terminal are a minority of a minority of a minority. (the people who ever post anything would be a minority on here--and we are a minority of the general public).
It would be hard to tell even based on historical photos and paintings, where available. Usually only the elite got painted or photographed until modern times and plus you would have the issue that in most societies, since forever, women did not show their hair (especially not after marriage) so even when you see someone with loose hair, they wouldn't necessarily be 'typical'. And of course to grow optimum terminal hair, health would count and nutrition would count as well as genetics, which would be at least in part race or ethnicity based. That is, a significant amount of upper class Japanese ladies in the 10th century must have been able to grow their hair past floor length, since it was an ideal for them, but how long could Western European ladies grow their hair in the 19th century? the Sullivan sisters were considered to be so amazing for hair length that they were a sideshow and could sell hair growing potion (suggesting that their length was unusual) and they just hit the floor, it did flow behind them like a chain).
And my observations, are of course not scientific, the points I just brought up don't prove anything one way or the the other.
I just don't think you'll be able to find out what 'most' people's terminal length is, but you can probably find out what the average terminal length is of those people who have managed to reach terminal so far on the LHC in 2014 who feel like responding to a question about it. However many people that is. That in itself might be interesting though. I don't know that it would help you to find out what YOUR terminal might be though--you'd have to grow and find out.

I agree with this. I also feel that even people who we may feel have reached terminal could still be false terminal, if they ever use scissors on hair (for example, to trim or improve the hemline).

The only people I would consider to be great candidates for this sampling would be the ones who do not let scissors ever touch their hair and also keep hair protected (contained). For example, for cultural or religious reasons...

Maybe Sikh population would be interesting to examine: you could even analyze terminal length by gender, age, etc in that case, but of course it would be a very narrow group...

[chen bao jun]

Also, they are just one ethnic group and it probably wouldn't tell you much about people who aren't Sikhs.
I agree it would be interesting, though. Even though you couldn't reach firm conclusions.
We DO know its possible for a human being to reach over 18 feet of hair, still attached to their scalp (i.e. not dreadlocks) because of Xie Qiuping, but a) I don't know if that's her terminal and b)she most probably is like the people who live to 120 years old--its possible, but highly, highly unusual. There is also Dai Yue Qin at 14 feet. And when Chinese women hold a long hair competition, they all have longer hair than their height, but I didn't see anyone else at 18 feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4-h7FKN_o

I agree with this. I also feel that even people who we may feel have reached terminal could still be false terminal, if they ever use scissors on hair (for example, to trim or improve the hemline).

The only people I would consider to be great candidates for this sampling would be the ones who do not let scissors ever touch their hair and also keep hair protected (contained). For example, for cultural or religious reasons...

Maybe Sikh population would be interesting to examine: you could even analyze terminal length by gender, age, etc in that case, but of course it would be a very narrow group...

[Silverbrumby]

I can't wait to hear. I have a short terminal. I'm pretty sure of that. I've been here for about 4 years and in that time trimmed back to APL several times to get a blunt hemline. Each time it grew out it fairy tails at BSL. I've not cut it since Jan 2014 and now I have about 20 hairs reaching but not quite making MBL. My fairy tailing starts a couple of inches past shoulder.

I'm pretty sure for a woman my terminal length is unusual. btw, I have a lot of hair actually on my head at the scalp. Ponytail of 2.5 and it drop off to 1/4 inch 3 inches from the bottom.

Also no heat, styling, mostly updos for the past 4 years. No bleach or another other damage before that. I currently find about 10 split ends a month to dust.

I shed about 50 to 100, 150 a day.

[AmberJewel]

Interesting thread idea. I'm hoping for mid-thigh, myself and will be watching this thread to see what others say about it.

[Dragon Faery]

It would be very difficult to give any sort of "average" terminal length for hair. There are simply too many factors, and not enough people experimenting to see what their personal terminal is. Plus, true ultimate terminal on any person requires hair to be damage-free from root to tip (to eliminate breakage) and uncut for the entirety of its growth cycle. The growth cycle of individual hairs varies (sometimes widely), but is often stated as around 7 years. This is a generalization, though, not hard data. So the only way to truly find out your terminal is to keep yourself in the peak of health and do nothing damaging to your hair, ever, and not cut it at all, for about 10 years. That's a huge and difficult commitment. :)

[Kelli Kat]

I can't wait to hear. I have a short terminal. I'm pretty sure of that. I've been here for about 4 years and in that time trimmed back to APL several times to get a blunt hemline. Each time it grew out it fairy tails at BSL. I've not cut it since Jan 2014 and now I have about 20 hairs reaching but not quite making MBL. My fairy tailing starts a couple of inches past shoulder.

I'm pretty sure for a woman my terminal length is unusual. btw, I have a lot of hair actually on my head at the scalp. Ponytail of 2.5 and it drop off to 1/4 inch 3 inches from the bottom.

Also no heat, styling, mostly updos for the past 4 years. No bleach or another other damage before that. I currently find about 10 split ends a month to dust.

I shed about 50 to 100, 150 a day.

BSL is my terminal as well. I've gone 7-8 years with no trim and thats as long as it gets.

[Panth]

I agree - you'll never figure it out. Partly because so few people ever chose to grow their hair to terminal and partly because so many people have false terminals that they don't realise are caused by their haircare. I also think it's quite likely that genetics plays a major part - e.g. as Chen said, Asian long-hair competitions commonly have the winner with hair to ankle or longer. Caucasian super-long-hairs are generally more in the knee-to-ankle region. Black super-long-hairs are perhaps more likely in the classic region (though there are so few of them that that estimate may be wildly wrong).

I also disagree that you can only know your terminal if you've never trimmed for the entire growth cycle of your hair. Some hairtypes, e.g. fine, weather very badly even with "perfect" haircare and daily protective updos. Some people, e.g. Spidermom, from memory, get greater length-gain with trims because the trimmed end weathers less. Other people have less weathering-prone hair so trimming results in less length-gain. Of course, even if trimming is better for length-gain for your hair, you still need to optimise the amount and frequency of trimming. That can take many, many years to optimise and, given the long growth cycle of hair, it's entirely plausible that you'd never be able to optimise it as the time-disconnect between making a change and seeing a difference would be so great it'd be really hard to figure out which changes were best.

Anyway... my guestimate that average terminal for Caucasian populations (lets say female, so we ignore the effect of male-pattern balding, and also say female in good health and pre-menopause to exclude age- and illness-related hair loss) ... hmmm ... I'd say classic? Or perhaps thigh.

[chen bao jun]

I agree with Panth, and also with Dragon Faery--though even ten years might not do it so far as finding out what your own terminal is. This Xie Qiuping has been growing for 30 years. And there are members on this forum who thought they reached terminal and then got growth again, I believe after 10 years.
It has been harder and harder to figure out what terminal for a given population is, also, because of damaging hair treatments coming into style as part of 'modernity' in more and more parts of the world. As things such as heat, dyeing, chemicals etc. make more and more people look 'stylish' (but also destroy their hair) people seem to decide, rather than that they are destroying their hair, that their terminal lengths are shorter. People of African descent make a fascinating case study for this, since due to various historical reasons, they have been altering their hair (and hence destroying it) for a longer time than any other group. With the result that, until very recently (internet) most black people have believed that we have a genetic terminal somewhere around shoulder length--and that only the lucky ones will grow even that long. There are definitely enough cases now (mostly on the internet, still rare in real life) to show that that is not true--but it would still be very hard to say what terminal length for most people of African descent is likely to be. For one thing, its skewed by the fact that if you study the United States and the Caribbean, a whole lot of race mixing has gone on, so people have ancestry of other races that they may not be even be aware of, that creates different hair types on people who otherwise have the same appearance--and some of these hair types are stronger than other ones. Another thing is simply that the fact of being so curly means hair will not appear to be the length it actually is, unless artificially straightened. Yet straightening will destroy the hair. It's not hard to google around and see women whose hair appears to be shoulder length or less, who can pull on a strand and show that they are actually at waist. But you'd never know it, to look at them.
Over at the LHCF, where many women have been growing their hair carefully for years, there are a large amount of black women with curly hair types at waist or hip, when straightened. So I would guess that a lot, if not most of African descent hairtypes can grow at least that long. Those who keep their hair natural tend to hover around bra strap or mid back, natural (which probably means they are also waist or hip, stretched). But I am sure that there must be some who can grow longer--and also, a lot of these ladies started growing at the same time, so maybe in a few years the average length over there will be classic? Who knows.
In our society, though, a lot of women don't want classic length hair, other than us on the hair boards. That's one thing that definitely stops us from knowing how long hair can grow, the fact that so few have the desire to find out.
Here is an article on a lady from India. Her hair is considered amazing at 6 feet 10 inches, in India, where among the non-modernized women long hair is still very desirable and you quite normally see knee length braids. Again, ethnicity does play into this, somehow, although not as simplistically as people tend to think. One thing I've always been very curious about, for instance, you see so much longer hair routinely on Eastern European women than on Western and Northern (such as Scandinavian) ones. Is it something in Slavic hair that makes long hair so much more prevalent in Ukraine, Poland and such places, or is it just that culturally, until very recently, it was desired more so that women grew more. I don't think they have very different genetics and the hair type doesn't seem different.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Mumbai-woman-sets-record-for-longest-hair/articleshow/20722735.cms

[AmethystLily]

I agree with everyone. A lot of people, especially curlies and fine-haired people, don't even know what their true terminal length is let alone reach it. They don't even give their hair a chance because they may not know how to care for it properly, or they're following a damaging trend/style, or they may have heard remarks about how "bad," "unruly," or "unmanageable" it is. That's begun to change though now that the internet offers a wealth of healthy hair care info.

[Sparklylady82]

Alot of women from my church NEVER cut their hair and the terminal length varies so greatly. It seems that the majority either have a short terminal length (around BSL or shorter) or a longer terminal length. Amongst the ladies with a longer terminal length I would say somewhere between classic and calf length is average. These women I speak of are in their 30's to 40's and have never ever cut their hair.

[Panth]

One thing I've always been very curious about, for instance, you see so much longer hair routinely on Eastern European women than on Western and Northern (such as Scandinavian) ones. Is it something in Slavic hair that makes long hair so much more prevalent in Ukraine, Poland and such places, or is it just that culturally, until very recently, it was desired more so that women grew more. I don't think they have very different genetics and the hair type doesn't seem different.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Mumbai-woman-sets-record-for-longest-hair/articleshow/20722735.cms

My theory would be that Eastern European populations have a lot of genetic influx from, e.g. Mongol invasions. So, although they are often blonde and blue-eyed, they are not genetically identical to more westerly Europeans. One thing you see with Eastern European hair is that they generally have much greater thickness than Western/Northern Europeans. And that's despite often having poker-straight hair. They also seem to more often have M or C strand thickness. Greater hair density and greater strand thickness = more resistant to weathering = greater maximal length, even if their average anagen phase is identical (which it isn't necessarily).


Alot of women from my church NEVER cut their hair and the terminal length varies so greatly. It seems that the majority either have a short terminal length (around BSL or shorter) or a longer terminal length. Amongst the ladies with a longer terminal length I would say somewhere between classic and calf length is average. These women I speak of are in their 30's to 40's and have never ever cut their hair.

This is very interesting. However, I would caution that there's a very big difference between "never cutting" and "actively trying to achieve maximal length". There's plenty of things you can do to create a false terminal without ever going near scissors. (Indeed, for some people a moderate amount of trimming actually increases the achievable maximum by reducing weathering.)

[Panth]

Sorry, double post.

[chen bao jun]

Interesting theory. This may perhaps be true of some parts of Russia, where you the gorgeous blue eyed blondes with Asian eyes and high cheekbones, but the Mongols definitely never got as far as Poland, and Polish women can really have a lot of long, thick hair.
I agree about 'never cutting' not being the same thing as actively trying to reach maximal length. And mechanical damage can be the devil and its VERY possible to have that with virgin hair that you are not having trimmed. I know this from experience. Just before finding LHC, I had had my hair natural for 12 years and never had a haircut during that time and it was getting shorter and shorter and more and more damaged. It was actually in worse shape than it was when I had had it chemically relaxed (certainly it was breaking off more). I had no clue about how to moisturize it and did not know a thing about gentle detangling. I also thought that protective styling meant taking it in and out of a million small braids daily. (Had no idea that there was such a thing as too much manipulation). As I said, my hair kept get shorter and I didn't know it was breaking off--which can very much happen when you aren't cutting hair.

My theory would be that Eastern European populations have a lot of genetic influx from, e.g. Mongol invasions. So, although they are often blonde and blue-eyed, they are not genetically identical to more westerly Europeans. One thing you see with Eastern European hair is that they generally have much greater thickness than Western/Northern Europeans. And that's despite often having poker-straight hair. They also seem to more often have M or C strand thickness. Greater hair density and greater strand thickness = more resistant to weathering = greater maximal length, even if their average anagen phase is identical (which it isn't necessarily).



This is very interesting. However, I would caution that there's a very big difference between "never cutting" and "actively trying to achieve maximal length". There's plenty of things you can do to create a false terminal without ever going near scissors. (Indeed, for some people a moderate amount of trimming actually increases the achievable maximum by reducing weathering.)

[Silverbrumby]

Alot of women from my church NEVER cut their hair and the terminal length varies so greatly. It seems that the majority either have a short terminal length (around BSL or shorter) or a longer terminal length. Amongst the ladies with a longer terminal length I would say somewhere between classic and calf length is average. These women I speak of are in their 30's to 40's and have never ever cut their hair.

Thats good to hear and I'm definitely in the bsl terminal category.

[cathair]

I agree - you'll never figure it out. Partly because so few people ever chose to grow their hair to terminal and partly because so many people have false terminals that they don't realise are caused by their haircare. I also think it's quite likely that genetics plays a major part - e.g. as Chen said, Asian long-hair competitions commonly have the winner with hair to ankle or longer. Caucasian super-long-hairs are generally more in the knee-to-ankle region. Black super-long-hairs are perhaps more likely in the classic region (though there are so few of them that that estimate may be wildly wrong).

I also disagree that you can only know your terminal if you've never trimmed for the entire growth cycle of your hair. Some hairtypes, e.g. fine, weather very badly even with "perfect" haircare and daily protective updos. Some people, e.g. Spidermom, from memory, get greater length-gain with trims because the trimmed end weathers less. Other people have less weathering-prone hair so trimming results in less length-gain. Of course, even if trimming is better for length-gain for your hair, you still need to optimise the amount and frequency of trimming. That can take many, many years to optimise and, given the long growth cycle of hair, it's entirely plausible that you'd never be able to optimise it as the time-disconnect between making a change and seeing a difference would be so great it'd be really hard to figure out which changes were best.

Anyway... my guestimate that average terminal for Caucasian populations (lets say female, so we ignore the effect of male-pattern balding, and also say female in good health and pre-menopause to exclude age- and illness-related hair loss) ... hmmm ... I'd say classic? Or perhaps thigh.

I disagree with this. In a kind of nit picky way. If you have cut the hair, even S&D then I don't think you can know true terminal length because it's not as long as it ever had the potential to be. It's just not the full length that has grown out of your head in one growth cycle.

I do agree that most people will probably gain more length if they do trim, because it will reduce wear on the ends and stop them breaking off prematurely. But that has nothing to do with terminal length. If they break off then it is false terminal.

It might just be that it is impossible to protect them so they can reach terminal length while living your life.

I am skeptical that terminal length can truly be reached by anyone and even more skeptical that anyone could ever measure if it had really happened.

I've thought about this a lot, when thinking about when or if I should ever trim. I think I got to around 3 years before I absolutely needed to S&D (or knew the technique existed, one of the other). So I have screwed it up already and would have to reset the clock. I know I would have to get to at least 7 years to have no cut hairs on my head. I think I could go a little bit longer than 3 years now, since I almost never wear my hair down, even at night which has made a lot more difference than I expected.

[Sparklylady82]

This is very interesting. However, I would caution that there's a very big difference between "never cutting" and "actively trying to achieve maximal length". There's plenty of things you can do to create a false terminal without ever going near scissors. (Indeed, for some people a moderate amount of trimming actually increases the achievable maximum by reducing weathering.)
Very true! There is a big difference.

[Panth]

I disagree with this. In a kind of nit picky way. If you have cut the hair, even S&D then I don't think you can know true terminal length because it's not as long as it ever had the potential to be. It's just not the full length that has grown out of your head in one growth cycle.

I do agree that most people will probably gain more length if they do trim, because it will reduce wear on the ends and stop them breaking off prematurely. But that has nothing to do with terminal length. If they break off then it is false terminal.

It might just be that it is impossible to protect them so they can reach terminal length while living your life.

I am skeptical that terminal length can truly be reached by anyone and even more skeptical that anyone could ever measure if it had really happened.

I've thought about this a lot, when thinking about when or if I should ever trim. I think I got to around 3 years before I absolutely needed to S&D (or knew the technique existed, one of the other). So I have screwed it up already and would have to reset the clock. I know I would have to get to at least 7 years to have no cut hairs on my head. I think I could go a little bit longer than 3 years now, since I almost never wear my hair down, even at night which has made a lot more difference than I expected.

You're quite right. What I should have said is "maximum achievable length". I agree - true terminal is impossible. There's no way you're going to get even to a true terminal of BSL without losing at least a little bit to weathering.

[mira-chan]

My theory would be that Eastern European populations have a lot of genetic influx from, e.g. Mongol invasions. So, although they are often blonde and blue-eyed, they are not genetically identical to more westerly Europeans. One thing you see with Eastern European hair is that they generally have much greater thickness than Western/Northern Europeans. And that's despite often having poker-straight hair. They also seem to more often have M or C strand thickness. Greater hair density and greater strand thickness = more resistant to weathering = greater maximal length, even if their average anagen phase is identical (which it isn't necessarily).



This is very interesting. However, I would caution that there's a very big difference between "never cutting" and "actively trying to achieve maximal length". There's plenty of things you can do to create a false terminal without ever going near scissors. (Indeed, for some people a moderate amount of trimming actually increases the achievable maximum by reducing weathering.)


Interesting theory. This may perhaps be true of some parts of Russia, where you the gorgeous blue eyed blondes with Asian eyes and high cheekbones, but the Mongols definitely never got as far as Poland, and Polish women can really have a lot of long, thick hair.
I agree about 'never cutting' not being the same thing as actively trying to reach maximal length. And mechanical damage can be the devil and its VERY possible to have that with virgin hair that you are not having trimmed. I know this from experience. Just before finding LHC, I had had my hair natural for 12 years and never had a haircut during that time and it was getting shorter and shorter and more and more damaged. It was actually in worse shape than it was when I had had it chemically relaxed (certainly it was breaking off more). I had no clue about how to moisturize it and did not know a thing about gentle detangling. I also thought that protective styling meant taking it in and out of a million small braids daily. (Had no idea that there was such a thing as too much manipulation). As I said, my hair kept get shorter and I didn't know it was breaking off--which can very much happen when you aren't cutting hair.

Live zombie thread! Live!

Just popping in to help answer the Slavic hair thing, being from the area. In the region, having a long thick and even (very little tapering) braid was one of the ideals of beauty for a long time. Enough so that it was a factor that influenced marriage choice along with showing what skills you had. Poland very likely has had similar traditions pre-20th century when it comes to hair. This ideal persists today a bit and those who don't fit it, tent to cut their hair shorter. Those that do for the ideal, are more encouraged to keep hair long, so you see more of it. Most of the hair I've seen has been lightly wavy 1c/2a range not poker straight too.

My best friend, also from a Slavic area, has hair that grows fast, without taper with a very fine texture. Her hair would be in the "Ideal" range. My own hair is too tapered to be "Ideal" and I've been encouraged to trim to the point where tapering starts. With old traditions I would have less issues with the taper as ribbons were commonly braided into the hair all the way past the ends of the actual hair, which hid the taper and protected the ends of most, not all as, orphans had to stop braiding earlier and leave the ends free in some traditions. This is for unmarried women, married women would cover all of their hair.

[Lady Stardust]

Live zombie thread! Live!

Just popping in to help answer the Slavic hair thing, being from the area. In the region, having a long thick and even (very little tapering) braid was one of the ideals of beauty for a long time. Enough so that it was a factor that influenced marriage choice along with showing what skills you had. Poland very likely has had similar traditions pre-20th century when it comes to hair. This ideal persists today a bit and those who don't fit it, tent to cut their hair shorter. Those that do for the ideal, are more encouraged to keep hair long, so you see more of it. Most of the hair I've seen has been lightly wavy 1c/2a range not poker straight too.

My best friend, also from a Slavic area, has hair that grows fast, without taper with a very fine texture. Her hair would be in the "Ideal" range. My own hair is too tapered to be "Ideal" and I've been encouraged to trim to the point where tapering starts. With old traditions I would have less issues with the taper as ribbons were commonly braided into the hair all the way past the ends of the actual hair, which hid the taper and protected the ends of most, not all as, orphans had to stop braiding earlier and leave the ends free in some traditions. This is for unmarried women, married women would cover all of their hair.

This is really interesting. My dad was Polish and lived on a small farm. The village is now part of Belarus, close(ish) to Lithuania. My dad was born in 1924 and was deported to Siberia in 1940 so his time there was quite short, really. He told me that his mother had “very long hair” and I tried to establish how long he meant by that. He couldn’t really remember (we had this conversation when he was about 94) because he said he didn’t pay strict attention to these things, but after some discussion we settled on around waist length. Dad said his mum wore her hair in 2 plaits and would just wash it in the sink with soap. They didn’t have running water and relied on a well (and consequently my dad didn’t know the Polish word for “taps”, which came up when a cousin came to stay with us!)

I don’t know if she wore ribbons in her hair but photos I’ve seen of traditional dress always involved ribbons and flowers. When I was growing up (in the 70s and 80s) all the Polish ladies I met had long hair. It was very much part of the culture still that ladies kept their hair long, at least for the people I knew.

I would say 1c/2a was a good kind of average for the ladies I knew too. My dad and my cousin say my hair colour is like his mum’s, but I’ve only seen a black and white photo of her. My natural colour (before age related fading!) was chestnut brown with red and gold highlights.

Sorry if this is a bit of a thread derail. My dad died recently and it’s nice to remember :heart:

[Dark40]

I would say from thigh to mid thigh length would be my terminal length.

[mira-chan]

This is really interesting. My dad was Polish and lived on a small farm. The village is now part of Belarus, close(ish) to Lithuania. My dad was born in 1924 and was deported to Siberia in 1940 so his time there was quite short, really. He told me that his mother had “very long hair” and I tried to establish how long he meant by that. He couldn’t really remember (we had this conversation when he was about 94) because he said he didn’t pay strict attention to these things, but after some discussion we settled on around waist length. Dad said his mum wore her hair in 2 plaits and would just wash it in the sink with soap. They didn’t have running water and relied on a well (and consequently my dad didn’t know the Polish word for “taps”, which came up when a cousin came to stay with us!)

I don’t know if she wore ribbons in her hair but photos I’ve seen of traditional dress always involved ribbons and flowers. When I was growing up (in the 70s and 80s) all the Polish ladies I met had long hair. It was very much part of the culture still that ladies kept their hair long, at least for the people I knew.

I would say 1c/2a was a good kind of average for the ladies I knew too. My dad and my cousin say my hair colour is like his mum’s, but I’ve only seen a black and white photo of her. My natural colour (before age related fading!) was chestnut brown with red and gold highlights.

Sorry if this is a bit of a thread derail. My dad died recently and it’s nice to remember :heart:

My condolences to you and thanks for sharing the lovely story. :) From what I know your dad's mom wouldn't have worn ribbons after marriage, and two braids is traditional for married women. One braid with ribbons for the unmarried girls. Also my maternal grandmother was from a close area to your dad, Vitebsk area of Belarus, and she was 4 years younger than your dad. It's nice that your hair is similar to your grandmas. Mine looks like that of my paternal grandmother, I've been told. I've done rain/well water hair washing when we were in the countryside in the summers in Russia, with shampoo by the time I was around, but mom used soap when she was younger. Sometimes a bit of oil was used afterwards for smoothness.

[Bonsai]

I'm from Poland, so...

We have typical Slavic hair - very thin, very thick and (for many of us) quite durable.
Personally, I have waist length hair. I always cut them in a ponytail - at the base of the pony I have 8.5 cm ... and at the end of the pony I have 7 cm. It seems to me that the loss of 1.5 cm by about 40 cm in length is not too much. And I know I can have better! I really believe I can have hair over 10 cm thick and the absence of any damage, cracks or splits gives me hope for perfect tailbone hair. All that with loosing 150-200 hairs per day (what is absolutely normal in Poland).

Plus, we just like long hair! It is slowly starting to pass (when I was a child, every woman had a braid to the waist!), But ... there is no Polish man who would not look behind well-groomed, long hair!
Absolutely "Asian genes" have nothing to do with Polish hair. I know maybe a few people with hard Asian hair (even if they are blonde). Our biggest mistake is wearing loose hair. Really, few of us "torture" our hair with dyeing or heat (not to mention permanent treatments)

[Lady Stardust]

My condolences to you and thanks for sharing the lovely story. :) From what I know your dad's mom wouldn't have worn ribbons after marriage, and two braids is traditional for married women. One braid with ribbons for the unmarried girls. Also my maternal grandmother was from a close area to your dad, Vitebsk area of Belarus, and she was 4 years younger than your dad. It's nice that your hair is similar to your grandmas. Mine looks like that of my paternal grandmother, I've been told. I've done rain/well water hair washing when we were in the countryside in the summers in Russia, with shampoo by the time I was around, but mom used soap when she was younger. Sometimes a bit of oil was used afterwards for smoothness.

Thank you, and thank you for sharing this information with me.

[ynne]

(...) When I was growing up (in the 70s and 80s) all the Polish ladies I met had long hair. It was very much part of the culture still that ladies kept their hair long, at least for the people I knew. (...)
My condolences! It must be really hard now. Connecting through the culture is lovely.

In a neighbour Slavic country – Czech republic – I can say thick APL-to-waist hair is still really common these days (usually worn loose or in a ponytail in person's 20s–30s), hip is still not too weird I think, but I rarely see hair longer than that.

[Lady Stardust]

Thank you ynne :blossom: