"Why women have long hair" - interesting video

[Breanna]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1acEHz7FRM

I saw this on howstuffworks.com and thought you all might find it interesting, it has some neat facts about society and the accepted "gender roles" at different times.
(though this is about why women generally have long hair, I know that's probably not why any of us grow our hair. Forget gender roles, we just look rad ;))

[cathair]

Well, if there was going to be a reason why I would cut my hair, that would probably be it. It's a good one. But I don't wanna :D

[Chocowalnut]

That's what people are always saying.. sex is our motivation for everything. Maybe on a very primitive, basic unconscious level, sure.. but really, I want long hair because it's beautiful, feminine, and reminds me of fairies, elves and such :p

[dottodot]

I liked this video! It's interesting to see how evolutionary psychologists explain why women grow long hair. I'm even more interested to see what they say about men who grow long hair as well? Hmmm. Is it also a sign of virility? I would think so. Anyway, big shout out to those ladies back in the day with their short and sassy hair, making a statement and fighting for women's equality and allowing me to vote, get an education, etc. all the while, my long and luscious hair whipping misogyny in the face.

[SkyChild]

Chocowalnut you're kind of proving the point, are you not, in saying that's it's beautiful and feminine? :P

This is funny, but frankly - who cares why we want long hair? Who cares why previous generations of women had long hair? Maybe in ancient times they wanted short hair but it was a huge taboo, like they were dressing as boys and going to be disowned.

I also think it's weird how she says beards, moustaches and chest hair are outwards signs of male virility. I can't think of anything worse than a huge hairy man beast grunting at you "Come hump me, grunt grunt" YUCK

It maybe evolutionary psychology but I'm in denial about it :P

[Chiaroscuro]

I didn't hear many facts here except the biblical quotes. There is another possibiity for the advent of short hair. Just like pants and plain white shirts versus skirts and ruffles,, maybe women wanted the "simpler" upkeep of short hair versus the elaborate updos of the late 1800s and 1910s.

Sex is the last reason for my long hair. I grew it out initially just to have enough length to arrange. Also, I'll say it is fun to play with, and beautiful and feminine.

And I just have to say it--her presentation was so jarring and unfeminine---it made it really hard to listen.

[Chocowalnut]

Chocowalnut you're kind of proving the point, are you not, in saying that's it's beautiful and feminine? :P

This is funny, but frankly - who cares why we want long hair? Who cares why previous generations of women had long hair? Maybe in ancient times they wanted short hair but it was a huge taboo, like they were dressing as boys and going to be disowned.

I also think it's weird how she says beards, moustaches and chest hair are outwards signs of male virility. I can't think of anything worse than a huge hairy man beast grunting at you "Come hump me, grunt grunt" YUCK

It maybe evolutionary psychology but I'm in denial about it :P

Lol, meh.. I can see the point of view but I just don't think wanting long hair automatically means you are doing it to get laid. Not to mention all the women who grow their hair for religious reasons. :p

[Chiaroscuro]

Lol, meh.. I can see the point of view but I just don't think wanting long hair automatically means you are doing it to get laid. Not to mention all the women who grow their hair for religious reasons. :p

Agreed. I see a big differerence between feeling beautiful and feminine for myself versus being sexually attractive to others.

[Majorane]

What I don't get:
-long hair is fertility symbol/feminine/youth
Little girls can have long hair, while being infertile and not feminine yet. And post-menopausal women can rock the long mane, too. Sure, hair is an indicator of general health, but only one of many indicators. I have been badly malnourished for a period in my teens but still received comments on the shiny of my hair, for instance, while I was neither fertile or healthy at that time. (also, henna is my friend.) Hair certainly is not a sign of fertile age, and not a very big reliable fertility symbol either.

-long hair is feminine
For relatively long periods in history, not only women but also men had long hair. Long tresses =/= feminine. Men can grow long hair too and have been doing so for centuries, without being considered feminine for it. So, if the cultural influence of centuries is soooooo strong that even now we would consider long hair to be girly, that would thus also mean that long hair on a guy is very masculine, too. And we all know that the general opinion on that is not so.


What I think plays more into it, is that hair just grows out of your body. And is natural. And also pretty. Sure, not everyone finds hair pretty, but it plays such a big role in universal beautystandards in almost all cultures during almost all time periods, I am assuming here that hair is something we humans are programmed to find attractive. Maybe not in a pure sexual way but it has a nice feel, it shines, and admit it, it's pretty crazy we have one tiny piece on our body that grows this amazing pelt!
So, hair = cool, keeps you warm, and can be used to distinguish between social classes. Why would you cut it? Especially if you take into account the adversity to body modifications that was in the west for a long time. Tattoos, piercings etc were taboo for centuries over here. (Sure, corsetry can be considered body modification, but that has always been a bit of a weird child in the bm spectrum.) So, cutting hair would maybe be seen as a weird way to change ones appearance. I think a lot of people way back then didn't even really consider it, like they wouldnlt have considered making a hole in ones nose to hang a dangly from or painting the skin with inks. Cutting of hair? Preposterous! Why would you do someting so crazy? Like that, you know? Especially if you put deities in the mix. "God created me this way so I'll not cut my hair off, that would be against His design." (for some reason very little people think that way about nails, though. Or earwax.)

Also I highly doubt that no-one had their hair short in centuries yonder. There have always been rebels (tattoo's for instance have always been put on people by people, even when it was considered vulgar and crazy) and I am sure that there have been people with short clipped hair back when - by choice. It would probably have been considered weird and strange and thus not much written about, though.

Or maybe it has to do with male pattern baldness? Sort of 'males get that, but girlies don't, let's grow girls, come on last one at classic is a toad!"?

I don't think it's just one reason or easily explained in one short video, why we consider hair to be feminine. And I'd love to know more about cultures where women cropped their hair short! If they exist. Surely they do.

[starfire]

Interesting video. In fact, I ended up spending hours watching the rest of her videos! Dangit youtube. Where did my night go?

[dogzdinner]

I also think it's weird how she says beards, moustaches and chest hair are outwards signs of male virility. I can't think of anything worse than a huge hairy man beast grunting at you "Come hump me, grunt grunt" YUCK

Surely if this was supposed to be attractive as well then their would be more male celebs with hairy chest and beards??

I think its more simple then that. Women have long hair coz they like long hair!:) Most psychologists over the years have been men so of course they are going to think women do things to attract a mate. The truth is that women are just as likely to dress nicely when going out with the girls!
Personally I find long hair comforting, easy care and keeps my neck warm in the winter!

[Majorane]

Surely if this was supposed to be attractive as well then their would be more male celebs with hairy chest and beards??

I think its more simple then that. Women have long hair coz they like long hair!:) Most psychologists over the years have been men so of course they are going to think women do things to attract a mate. The truth is that women are just as likely to dress nicely when going out with the girls!
Personally I find long hair comforting, easy care and keeps my neck warm in the winter!
Well, there were a lot of celebs with hairy chests a few decades back, and in the '80's I think, a 'stache was perfectly okay.... I think that that is also a matter of fashion. Like female body hair is, too.

....coz I don't mind my hairy Italian chest to snuggle up against, ya know.... :eyebrows:

[LadyCelestina]

The hairy man beast actually sounds yum yum :eyebrows: I love nice thick body hair on men,it looks so ...masculine. My DBF has the most amazing chest hair! but he isn't proud of it.

I also very much disagree that long hair makes men look feminine.The 'femininity and hair' is just and old-fashioned myth.

[LadyCelestina]

Surely if this was supposed to be attractive as well then their would be more male celebs with hairy chest and beards??



By the same logic:
Surely if long hair was supposed to be attractive there would be more female celebs with beyond WL hair?

[Bene]

Ah, Kristen. On her podcast "Stuff mom never told you", they did an episode about long hair a few years ago. I sent them a fairly long email about having long hair and they read a good chunk of it in the following podcast with their listener responses :)

[dogzdinner]

By the same logic:
Surely if long hair was supposed to be attractive there would be more female celebs with beyond WL hair?

I think the medias definition of long hair is APL to WL though. Any longer and as far as popular culture is concerned you would either be a folk singer or climbing out of a tv in an asian horror movie!!LOL:D

[brickworld13]

Well, there were a lot of celebs with hairy chests a few decades back, and in the '80's I think, a 'stache was perfectly okay.... I think that that is also a matter of fashion. Like female body hair is, too.

....coz I don't mind my hairy Italian chest to snuggle up against, ya know.... :eyebrows:


The hairy man beast actually sounds yum yum :eyebrows: I love nice thick body hair on men,it looks so ...masculine. My DBF has the most amazing chest hair! but he isn't proud of it.

I also very much disagree that long hair makes men look feminine.The 'femininity and hair' is just and old-fashioned myth.

I do enjoy a nice hairy man beast. Especially when the hair is soft. :eyebrows: It's nice for snuggling into and warm. On the flip side, I also enjoy hairless. It just depends on the person. If they can grow it, great. If they can't, also great. Know what I mean?

[Stray_mind]

Since i am a demisexual, i never do anything for sex... I never try to physically seduce people. I change my appearance not to seduce someone, but to look acceptable for myself.. I grow my hair, because I MYSELF find it pretty (though now i consider cutting it short again), i put certain clothes on because I find them good looking... I never try to please people with my appearance... Everything i do, i do to feel comfortable with my looks myself.

[Breanna]

Anyway, big shout out to those ladies back in the day with their short and sassy hair, making a statement and fighting for women's equality and allowing me to vote, get an education, etc. all the while, my long and luscious hair whipping misogyny in the face.
haha yes! This made me smile.

I liked all these comments, and I agree that everybody has their own personal reasons for liking long hair, I guess the video just generally meant why women having longer hair than men is the social norm? Idk. It's cool though that with fashion trends, social norms kind of fizzle out and lots of new things pop up everywhere, and everybody gets to look cool and unique in whatever way they want.
And I guess the "hair=sexuality" thing only makes sense if you consider that, historically speaking, most societies are mainly patriarchal, and what The Man likes is is how it will be (gag). But really who cares what men think?? I think my long hair is sexy to ME but I don't give two farts if some guy likes it or not lol.
And personally, hairy grunting man beast does sound totally unappealling haha. I'm just not into body hair (except maybe armpits...), my boyfriend has absolutely no chest hair, and that's how I like it, smooth enough to eat breakfast on ;)

[LadyCelestina]

I think the medias definition of long hair is APL to WL though. Any longer and as far as popular culture is concerned you would either be a folk singer or climbing out of a tv in an asian horror movie!!LOL:D

Haha :lol: You are right,in that world,the medium lengths and shorter long are considered long and very long.I think the trendy for male body hair is a little bit of a stubble on your face and mostly shaven elsewhere.But that X is trendy doesn't mean Y isn't pretty :D Even though yes,celebs are supposed to be the best and averagest out of averages :D

[Chocowalnut]

Since i am a demisexual, i never do anything for sex... I never try to physically seduce people. I change my appearance not to seduce someone, but to look acceptable for myself.. I grow my hair, because I MYSELF find it pretty (though now i consider cutting it short again), i put certain clothes on because I find them good looking... I never try to please people with my appearance... Everything i do, i do to feel comfortable with my looks myself.

This exactly. Same here I want to look good for myself.

[chen bao jun]

I am probably going to offend many, but this is why 'sociology' 'behavioral psychology' etc. are 'soft' sciences. You can basically just make something up and so long as you use the right science-y sounding buzz worlds ('evolution', etc) and if you are writing a paper, quote a lot of other peoples' 'theories (i.e, their unsupported silly opinions) and say it in a serious sounding voice, you are good to go.
If people in general (the vast majority) did not want to attract the opposite sex, there would not be a human race anymore. Period. Full stop. All societies think of ways to clearly distinguish women from men so that you can tell at a glance which is which and thus easily be able to figure out who to mate with and procreate. Nature does this, of course, and in warm climates, you can simply go around without clothes on and it will be obvious but in colder places, hair is as good a marker as any. In a lot of the societies where men do have long hair, its styled in a different way than women's hair or they are unshaven, with beards, or something of that sort.
It really is that simple.
As for the 1920's flappers ('new women' were actually their mothers, that's a term for the bicycle riding, tennis playing, archery shooting belles of the 1880's and 1890's), yes, they cut their hair short, very short. It was not styled like man hair. They compensated with headbands, long earrings and lots of lots of makeup (their mothers thought 'paint' was for scarlet women and was a bad thing) and you would not mistake a flapper for a boy or man, even if she did give up corsets in favor of this crazy underwear that flattened her chest out completely--I saw one of those contraptions once and was shocked). I actually think flappers had less to do with true women's liberation (equal pay for equal work) than with the desire to shock older people and with trying to have fun after a devastating war that left ruin and destruction--and no men to marry--everywhere in the Western World except for the US. And of course, the craze for short hair was very useful for the economy, as it had to be styled, as long hair does not, which meant jobs for hairdressers, jobs for people working to make permanent wave machines and bobby pins and for people writing fashion magazines--you get the general idea. It is STILL very useful for the economy--do you know how many jobs would be instantly lost if all women started being do-it-yourself LHCers wearing their natural hair?

[LadyCelestina]

:lol: you are not offending me,(and sorry for constantly lurking this thread :o) that bit about sociology cracks me up :D It's priceless :D I might paraphrase it in my history homework just to make the whole history department freak out :D

[Majorane]

Chen, as someone who has studied several soft sciences and dropped out but let's not focus on that I find your statements hilarious and absolutely not offending. It's generally how I felt about a lot of mumbo-jumbo I got taught at school got written: hey let's use big words to voice an opinion and maybe they'll take it for truth! Hahaha. You are cool.

[MsPharaohMoan]

LadyCelestina, if you want to really shock them you might take a quote from a former history teacher of mine. He made me promise to never study sociology because it was the bastard child of psychology and anthropology.

As for the comments on social sciences being soft sciences, my palm seems to be glued to my forehead.

[captaincrunch]

Thanks for posting this video.

Chen I found your perspective interesting. Thanks for sharing your perspective on the history of short hair.

[Amapola]

OK. To ****ME****, the title of the thread is basically "Why half the human population do something they don't actually do" because of course not all women have long hair. And not all men have short hair. I am seeing the (very human) tendency to first of all have things in two parts: either long hair or short hair! As if there are only two choices, when we all know there are way more choices than that. And as if "male" and "female" are the only alternatives. When they are not. And as if every single person who might (or actually might not) fall into the descriptor "female" all have long hair. When they clearly do not. And to furthermore have very short and simple answers to things when the issues are actually quite complex and in real life have very complex answers.

Each single person is an individual. They may, or may not, fit into pre-conceived ideas of duality like this. But most of us don't. Because honestly, human beings are individuals and they all do things differently and frankly I see that as a tremendous strength and I try always not to pigeon hole people and put them in there with the pigeons. It never seems to work in real life. :flowers:

[koolkittychick]

That was an interesting video, but, truth be told, the young lady was offering an explanation that painted the human experience in VERY, VERY, broad strokes. Not even mentioning how the African/kinky-haired experience factors into this (and she was VERY wise to admit her lack of knowledge in that area), there are many cultures around the world, many of which are much more populous, whose cultural experience does not adhere to this reasoning (most of Asia and the Mideast, anyone?). Even in Western culture, the notion of short hair on men being desirable was a fairly recent development, only in the last 150 years or so. So as Chen intimated, while the "sciency" terms and ideas she throws around sound like they make sense on the SURFACE, at best, it would take much, much more than a 4-5 minute video to even do justice to the emotional, cultural and procreational motivations behind a woman's choice to wear their hair a certain way.

[tokugawa.miyako]

I think when the woman in the video says that women grow their hair long because of sex/sexual attractiveness, she's talking more about unconscious reasons than conscious ones. She's also talking about the group behavior of people in the western world. Regardless of individual choices, there is a tendency in our society to associate certain qualities with long hair: beauty, femininity, youth, etc. I'm not sure that these stereotypes derive directly from human sexual desires, but it's possible, I suppose. I respect all of the individual reasons why a woman might want to grow her hair long, but even though woman have much more freedom of choice when it comes to hair length than they used to, society still definitely has opinions on how women's hair should be. I can't tell you how many articles and blog posts I've seen clucking about how unfortunate it is that women these days cut their hair short. :rolleyes:

[Frederikke]

Interesting video. The really interesting thing would be to look at mens hair through the ages though. I mean theirs have been worn long and also as a sign of luxury etc. for centuries too but then with the classicism there was a return to Roman soldier (short and practical) hair.

[Catatafish]

Ferderikke, she made one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yKrzHAGj2c

I thought it was interesting that they put doilies on the couches because of the stuff they put in their hair. I always wondered what they were doing on couches. I might use some myself when doing my next pre-wash coconut treatment!

[dancingrain91]

Many Native American cultures believed cutting off hair had some detrimental effect on the soul. Male and female members had uncut hair.

Western Europeans cut their hair quite a lot actually and while having hair in the range of waist to classic was common, longer hair wasn't as common as it was a bit of a burden. Men generally had hair at least to their shoulders. Europeans were extremely violent though so men (and probably women) who often fought hand to hand or in close quarters would shear off their hair. Unless they were just that good. Long hair is easily grabbed and used to subdue a person.

Eastern Europeans were a bit more obsessed with the extra long hair. I'm not well versed on male styles except that in Baltic States men had whatever hair they wanted. Same for the North. Since those areas are very egaltarian, men with hair to their feet isn't necessarily considered any weirder than women with hair the same length. (At least they are both equally weird) Not wearing professional clothing when banging about in public however is apparently extremely weird. (This whole section is based off what I've learned from my Finnish relatives and my one Russian friend. If it isn't a true representation I do apologize)

The Far East for sure was obsessed with long hair. I'm not at all surprised that the woman with the longest undreaded hair is from this region. They made special silk kimonos solely for women to drag their past floor length unbound hair on in Japan. I would generalize that all of the Asian countries I have friends from have some obsession with long hair. Maybe not Korea. But they have amazing skin so it's all cool.

I really don't know about Africa. I have never seen a straight off the boat African woman with long hair but that's rather anecdotal and the natural community has a fair amount of success with having some really long hair. I saw a woman the other day whose natural hair stretched to thigh length and it was beautiful.

I might be missing some groups but I don't know much about them. I have long blonde hair and feel like a woman from a Nordic fairy tale or myth. It actually leaves me feeling strong instead of uber feminine or girly most of the time.

[CousinItt]

I don't hold much stock in evolutionary psychology. I always wondered if lustrous hair is a sign of health and therefore fertility, why is it only a sign of fertility for women and not men? Aren't we women as equally hard wired to procreate? Shouldn't we also be attracted to only men with long hair (and not just chest hair as is suggested in the video).

Hairstyles seems to follow societal rules and regulations and fashion for the most part. We will never know how many cultures accepted or promoted short hair for women, since western beauty ideals have been exported via colonization, often wiping out cultural ideals that came before - one example is in Thailand, where men and women wore their hair short until one of their kings adopted western ideas of modernity and encouraged women to grow their hair long.

[Alun]

I'm not very convinced by this, but then I wouldn't be. I think that women have tended to have longer hair than men, but for large parts of history shoulder length hair on a man was considered short, and women didn't cut their hair atall.

There is no doubt that the Roman legions are to blame for modern ideas of men having short hair, and shaven chins too, although they seem to have copied the ancient Greeks. Let's not forget when she mentions Corinthians that Paul was a Roman, and IMHO was just echoing Roman perceptions of what they thought was normal, which is not a very good guide atall, when you take into account that barbarian was originally just their word for a guy with a beard! Nevertheless, what he said has tended to stick, probably because of the place of the Bible in Western society.

As I'm neither a Christian nor a Roman legionnaire, and have never been in any army, I'm d*mn*d if I'm cutting my hair any time soon. I am a liberal atheist and mostly anti-war, so I guess I fit in with people who think like I do.

As for body hair and beards, there's no doubt that they are markers of being male, up to a point. These days most men don't have long hair or beards, and some go further and remove hair in other places. Having long hair and a beard does cause criticism from some, though. I blame the d*mn*d Romans!

[cherrybird]

I don't hold much stock in evolutionary psychology. I always wondered if lustrous hair is a sign of health and therefore fertility, why is it only a sign of fertility for women and not men? Aren't we women as equally hard wired to procreate? Shouldn't we also be attracted to only men with long hair (and not just chest hair as is suggested in the video).

snip

Whenever evolutionary psychology is mentioned I generally don't believe what I hear. I find a lot of people guess why they find a particular feature attractive using sexual selection, and they neglect to consider cultural trends or personal preference. That's where you get hypotheses like "women don't need to be as funny as men" and "men tend to like long hair and women tend to like chest hair".

[LadyCelestina]

LadyCelestina, if you want to really shock them you might take a quote from a former history teacher of mine. He made me promise to never study sociology because it was the bastard child of psychology and anthropology.

As for the comments on social sciences being soft sciences, my palm seems to be glued to my forehead.
Oh :D Well then I have to make sure it's not in an essay for mr.V.,who just recently enlightened us that 'history is a sellfull wh***' :D For similar reasons why sociology is a bastard child :D Perhaps there is a pattern there somewhere? :D

[truepeacenik]

I'm not very convinced by this, but then I wouldn't be. I think that women have tended to have longer hair than men, but for large parts of history shoulder length hair on a man was considered short, and women didn't cut their hair atall.

There is no doubt that the Roman legions are to blame for modern ideas of men having short hair, and shaven chins too, although they seem to have copied the ancient Greeks. Let's not forget when she mentions Corinthians that Paul was a Roman, and IMHO was just echoing Roman perceptions of what they thought was normal, which is not a very good guide atall, when you take into account that barbarian was originally just their word for a guy with a beard! Nevertheless, what he said has tended to stick, probably because of the place of the Bible in Western society.

As I'm neither a Christian nor a Roman legionnaire, and have never been in any army, I'm d*mn*d if I'm cutting my hair any time soon. I am a liberal atheist and mostly anti-war, so I guess I fit in with people who think like I do.

As for body hair and beards, there's no doubt that they are markers of being male, up to a point. These days most men don't have long hair or beards, and some go further and remove hair in other places. Having long hair and a beard does cause criticism from some, though. I blame the d*mn*d Romans!

I have fully grown body hair and I am definitely female, and according to partners, attractive.
My fuzzy pits no more makes me male than a clean shaven man becomes female.

I much prefer my beloved exhusband's comment:
"We are mammals, dammit, we are supposed to have hair."

[LadyCelestina]

^^^Well but that is common sense we women have some body hair, but hirsutism = more testosterene = masculine

[CousinItt]

Those hormones that cause men to get hairy are also linked to male pattern baldness, but I don't hear evolutionary psychologists making the case that men keep their hair short to mimic baldness because sex.

except for a generation of women who grew up with captain Picard, baldness isn't usually top of the list of what women seek in men (although bald is beautiful my sweet, sweet jean-luc).

[Majorane]

Those hormones that cause men to get hairy are also linked to male pattern baldness, but I don't hear evolutionary psychologists making the case that men keep their hair short to mimic baldness because sex.

except for a generation of women who grew up with captain Picard, baldness isn't usually top of the list of what women seek in men (although bald is beautiful my sweet, sweet jean-luc).

You win my internet for today, for A+ reasoning and most of all, Picard! Yeuy :3

[CousinItt]

You win my internet for today, for A+ reasoning and most of all, Picard! Yeuy :3
I'm a winner! :happydance:

[hannabiss]

Replying to the comment on the first page about men and body hair.(phone won't let me quote) personally I like hairy men. And men who shave their body are a big turn off. To each their own I guess.:shrug:

[Sharysa]

Yeah, I don't even have to watch the video to know that this woman has only a surface-level knowledge of hair length in society. Someone mentioned the scads of cultures that have celebrated long hair on both genders, so I'm not going to repeat it. Long hair on women MIGHT have some sort of subconscious biological reasoning, but "LOL WOMENFOLK WANT TO ATTRACT TEH GUYZZZZZZ" is total crap. I grow my hair for these reasons:

1) Because I like styling it and feeling like a medieval princess.

2) A little bit for my beliefs/religion. The Irish gods enjoy all the good vibes stuffed into my hip-length hair from taking good care of it. They strongly dislike the thought of me cutting it, but as long as I have a non-stress related reason to cut my hair, they won't stop me.

3) It's easier to manage on a day-to-day basis. Detangle, braid, leave it alone unless it's gotten too fuzzy.

4) Because I feel better with long hair. I have a history of depression, and having long hair (plus the consistent routine, no doubt) is much better for me than having short/average-length hair.

As for hair on guys, it's similar to my preference for face hair: I prefer shaved guys, but I will gladly drool over a guy who can rock body hair.

[Estrid]

I didn't watch the entire video since the first thing I heard was "sex". *lol* I am asexual (and aromantic). I want long hair because it looks awesome and you can do fun updos. :grnbiggri And long hair looks good on guys too, but what do I know, maybe she's speaking of how it was thousands of years ago when we were more ... primitive? Maybe silly to even post here since I didn't watch the entire video :p

[Madora]

I have trouble with that title "Why Women have long hair". Not because of the WHY but because of the description "Long".

Heck, once Irene Castle, the famous dancer, started the short haired craze by bobbing her hair, ladies couldn't get to the beauty parlour fast enough to get the "bobbed" look, the "in" look of that era! It spread like wildfire across the land, around the world. There were holdouts, of course, but by and large, short hair has remained very prevalent, with a few changes, over the decades.

The only time "long" hair was in the spotlight was during the 40's, when Veronica Lake, a popular star of the era, sported the most gorgeous crop of silky, long blonde "peek-a-boo" locks this side of Lady Godiva. For a short time, ladies did everything in their power to have hair like Veronica's! During WW2, the War Dept. had to ask her to encourage her followers to wear their hair up because too many female defense workers hair were falling victim to getting caught in machinery..with horrible damage to the scalp and hair as the result. She made a cute video showing how she wore her hair to protect it (though I doubt she was ever in a defense factory with machinery..except for the photo op)! Once those glamourous locks were up and covered, Veronica's popularity faded. Her Hollywood time was over and she faded into sad obscurity.

And since then there hasn't been any real "long" hair enthusiasm. When the movie "10" came out (with Bo Derek) the craze for braided styles swept the country...but again, there was no concentrated effort to "grow your own". And of course that braid craze died away too, replaced by the latest "in" thing.

Just look at the recent craze for "long" hair. Oh, it looks divine! So sleek! So colorful! But 98% that magnificent mane is comprised of hair extensions! There's no push for actually growing long, in a healthy fashion. Everyone wants long hair..YESTERDAY. They don't want to (or can't) take the time to grow it long naturally.

If the history of hair (in all its forms, but mostly manes) interests you, then I highly recommend Wendy Cooper's illustrated and informative book "HAIR. Sex, Society, Symbolism (Stein and Day, New York, 1971). Crammed with b/w illustrations and pictures, and full page color photos, of all types of hair, men and women, long and short. Fascinating! Especially lovely long hair photos of an advertisement of a hair tonic showing a beautiful girl brushing out her knee length hair and an exquisite illustration of a princess named Zoulvisia letting down her floor length red gold hair so her lover can ascend her tower. Warning: many pix not PG rated!

ETA: Forgot to mention the Hippies. They had their time in the sun. Not my bag (personally. I saw too much filth on Haight Street month after month..for several years, while riding the bus to school. Golden Gate Park's eastern entrance was a crying shame after they took it over. As you can tell, I'm not a fan of hippies..especially when you have two camped out in your house entrance, peeing in the corner!). Ugh! I know there were plenty of perfectly nice hippies who treasured the earth and tried to make the world a better place...but I never met any of them.

[LadyCelestina]

I must be quite the odd kid since I AM attracted to balding men :couch:

[CousinItt]

I must be quite the odd kid since I AM attracted to balding men :couch:
You're not odd. My point is just that evolutionary psychology is seriously questionable. Human sexuality and what attracts us is complex. We don't understand the psychological underpinnings of our desires, so trying to explain it in the way evo psych does is akin to telling a 'just so' story.

[Panth]

Evolutionary psychology, like most evolutionary theory, has much more relevance at a population / species level. At a species level, any species attempts to reach maximal "fitness" (whatever that is at any particular time - it varies depending on the environment!). That doesn't mean that there will not be individuals who cover the whole range within that trait, from super-adapted to terribly maladapted (because, again, fitness depends on environment and a species needs a range of phenotypes within any trait, so that if the environment changes it's not up a certain creek without a certain paddle, also because genetics is not perfect and because modern human technology means that a lot of what are evolutionary technically maladaptive traits can be retained, e.g. Cystic Fibrosis used to be fatal in infancy, so too did Type I diabetes in many cases). It also does not preclude genetic drift - when there is less pressure, there will be less need to keep tightly to any particular trait and thus a broad range of phenotypes can emerge, not because they are adaptive but because they are not maladaptive and thus not weaned out.

Of course, this also ignores the massive, massive effect of culture, which basically amounts to species changing their own environments and makes the whole notion of "fitness" even more malleable and, arguably, less relevant.

Both evolution and psychology are far, far more complex than "SEX!". But, of course, the Western culture is obsessed with sex, so...