Friend emailed me a link to a very old Onion article, made me laugh.

[gregh]

http://www.theonion.com/article/magic-ponytail-moves-on-after-bestowing-boon-of-yo-975

[Amapola]

BWAHAHAHAHA - good one! I love the Onion. :thumbsup:

[parkmikii]

Laughing at the article, but when I saw the title I went *wide eyes* as I thought it was something from the DeepWeb onion XD

[lapis_lazuli]

Haha! I love the Onion! :laugh: Thanks for sharing :thumbsup:

[Bill D.]

Seems to poke fun at older men who dare to have a ponytail like I do.

I've wanted long hair since I was nine years old, back when only girls and dirty, scary, reprehensible hippies (the attitude of the day) had long hair. I struggled for many years to accept my desires rather than being ashamed of them and futilely trying to repress them. By the time I finally was allowed to grow my hair longer, it never got to terminal before male pattern baldness started up. I had to cut it in 1981 to have a reasonable chance of getting a decent job in those days, but my desire for having long hair never went away. Much later I finally got up the courage to grow it long again, though it's only a pale shadow of the glory that it was at age 18.

But never mind all that- I guess my longstanding ponytail is just a silly laughable effort to pretend to be young. Along the same lines, that's also true for females- if you're my age and you have long hair, then you're not acting your age and you need to grow up. Hey- sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Long hair is only for the young, after all, and always has been across all cultures down through history. Anybody older who has long hair is just making a transparent attempt to be young again thanks to a midlife crisis.

And yes, I am sensitive about my long hair precisely because of these kinds of stereotypes that you all are heedlessly encouraging. I wonder how many people around me *assume* that I'm making a pathetic attempt to hold onto a lost youth, or that I'm expressing nostalgia for my early hippie days (which I never had but which some people may assume I had, thanks to common stereotypes).

Seriously, we don't need to be reinforcing common social assumptions that a person who has long hair must have motivation x for doing so. If you have long hair yourself, you really don't want to encourage that kind of thinking.

[Islandgrrl]

Funny, but I agree with Bill on this one. Men of a certain age with long hair really suffer from negative stereotyping. Feeding in to that stereotype does then a huge disservice.

[gregh]

Definitely no offense intended. While I am not particularly old at 42, I am not young. Combined with growing my hair out for the first time just in the last 2+ years has led to many jokes from friends and colleagues about my midlife crisis ponytail and trying to be young etc. My friend sent me this link as such a joke and part of the humor for me is how inaccurate it is. People never quite seem to get it when I tell them that my hair is not a phase. It may have taken me a while to get the guts to grow but I am fortunate enough to still have a full head of hair and plan to keep it long indefinitely.

[Amapola]

I guess I'm seeing this differently from you guys. How many people have their hair grow over night? To me at least the parody goes deeper than just saying, older men with ponytails are trying to recapture their lost youth. I guess I am actually seeing it as the opposite of that - older men with long hair are cool and always have been, someone who is not so cool is desperate and would try and have a ponytail grow overnight. :shrug: That's how I saw it, anyway.

ETA: Whoops! Posted at the same time as gregh. This was meant to go under Islandgrrl's post.

[MsPharaohMoan]

I once read about a culture that kept their children's hair short. Growing hair long was considered a privilege of a certain age/maturity. Not all cultures think long hair is for the young, but I will agree that in North America anyways it seems to be a youthful trait. It's too bad to hear personal stories of getting frowned upon for their appearances and loved that you encourage us to think about the message the article sends, Bill D.

[Bill D.]

Thanks for the supportive comments, Islandgrrl and MsPharaohMoan!

gregh, I wonder if your relatively younger age and generation make a difference. You're not old or close to old yet. Also, you're obviously far too young to fit the stereotype of the aging Boomer futilely trying to hold onto the youth that he thought he'd never lose. You also have a really great full head of hair. So maybe it's a lot easier for you to just laugh at the whole thing at this point.

[Unicorn]

Enjoy your hair Bill. Not everyone views older men with long hair as desperately trying to hold on to their lost youth. Those choosing to grow their hair after having it short for years I tend to view much as you've indicated. Finally able to suit themselves after a decades of having to suit others in order to earn a living. For those who've always had long hair, why suddenly cut short if they're happy with it?

Overall I tend to like longer hair on older men, though some carry it better than others. Usually those who wear it for themselves rather than for others.

I hope I live long enough to see a day when we're not coerced into conforming with our appearance, in order to just get on with our lives.

Based on another thread, I suspect op was poking a little gentle fun at himself to take the sting out of his own experiences of growing long hair as a man not in the first flush of youth, rather than poking fun at others

Unicorn

[Entangled]

My perspective is probably off and wrong, but I guess I read this with a longhair's perspective. I saw it as mocking the idea that growing long hair is "holding onto your youth" because hair is hair. But I guess it was written the other way.

[gregh]

gregh, I wonder if your relatively younger age and generation make a difference. You're not old or close to old yet. Also, you're obviously far too young to fit the stereotype of the aging Boomer futilely trying to hold onto the youth that he thought he'd never lose. You also have a really great full head of hair. So maybe it's a lot easier for you to just laugh at the whole thing at this point.
You're probably right. I definitely think having a good head of hair makes it easier to laugh. I most likely would not have even grown it if I didn't.

[Gaalsong]

I thought the article was funny, but I also understand your issues with it, Bill. Since deciding to grow my hair long very recently, I have been dealing with a slightly different version of this. I love to wear skirts and dresses, and for some reason I am afraid of looking frumpy or like a certain group of religious people who (in the stereotype) have long hair and wear denim skirts. It's funny because *I* love long hair on other women (and men for that matter), and I also think most women look beautiful without makeup, and that long GRAY hair is glorious, and I think skirts and dresses are pretty and feminine. I guess I am doing what *I* want to do, but I'm afraid of what other people think. Instead of just being comfortable with myself and my choices. :) Trying to work on that. But if it helps, *I* think men (older and younger) with long hair are awesome.