Getting recognized

[Belisarius]

Do other people here have the experience that they weren't recognized by old friends due to having longer hair?
I ask this, because it has happened to me twice the last few weeks. I used to always have really short hair, but the last few years I have been growing it.
And now I met some old friends whom I hadn't seen in quite some time, and I did recognize them, but they didn't recognize me.
I must admit that I had my hair loose an down and it is quite curly which you don't see when it is 1 cm long.

[Iylivarae]

For me, that only happened like once, but it was even my neighbour :D She didn't recognize me from the back, when I was walking down the street, for I wore my hair down.

Mostly, I am wearing it up, so noone sees how long my hair is. I've also done that when it was shorter, and I haven't kept my hair shorter than APL for quite some time, so I think that most people only know me with "longish" hair...

[Carolyn]

There are very few people who have seen me with hair shorter than shoulders. A few relatives and classmates. So no one in my life now would do that. But I've done it to other people. There have been a few times where I've had to rely on other clues such as voice and conversational hints to help me recognize the person.

[MissManda]

This hasn't happened to me. . . yet. I'm pretty sure it will eventually, though. There are some people who are used to seeing me with either short or permed hair, so seeing me with my long, straight hair might be a shock!

And that's not counting when I decide to henna! :D

[Anje]

Can't say it's happened to me, but my hair hasn't been shorter than shoulder length since I was a small child.

[Kris Dove]

Yes, and same when I cut it short and dyed it black.

[CrisDee]

Having just chopped all mine off in March, I've of course had the opposite problem, which is a bit strange considering I wore my hair up most of the time when it was long. Virtually nobody at work recognized me at all until I spoke (apparently I have a distinctive voice). And I think my neighbors thought my husband was having an affair with this different looking woman that was always around the house ;-)

[rogue_psyche]

Hasn't happened to me, but I've gotten the, "Wow, your hair has gotten long!" from people who haven't seen me since I was keeping my hair at APL. It always makes me grin. :D

[Konstifik]

Nope. But I really hope it will happen one day. :D

[Masara]

It's never happened to me :( I always wear my hair up, so maybe people don't really notice a difference. I get instantly recognised by former pupils who knew me with two inch long hair and haven't seen me for four years.

[Madame J]

I had something similar happen to me a few weeks ago. I went to a grad student workshop, where I got to see some of my friends that I see rarely since we work in different groups (one works at the LHC (the physics one)!). Since my second year of grad school, I've always had a very layered hairstyle, of varying lengths, but now my hair is grown out enough that I could pull everything back into a very sleek wrap bun. My girlfriends walked right by without recognizing me and only saw me later because they heard me talking to someone.

[Belisarius]

Wow, so it does happen to women too. Was that weird for you?
It happened to me again this afternoon. And she was also right beside me waiting for the red light on our bikes.

[theboredelf]

Most people know me with long hair. As my fiance put it, "If they knew me when I had short hair, I probably don't want to know them now!" I have had acquaintances not recognize me with it down because they've only ever seen me with my hair up, though.

[Stephichan]

I hennaed my hair this summer and the first day it was done, one of the people in my old lab didn't recognize me at first (from the back). Then, when the fall semester started, I had at least two people tell me that they hadn't recognized me at first because of the change in haircolour. What's funny is that people I haven't seen in a longer amount of time didn't even notice (or maybe just didn't mention) the change.

[SolSara]

I'm on the other end, I have a hard time recognizing people with changed hair styles. :rolleyes: I'm not very good at recognizing people by faces, and I've realized that hair and voice are my key features when concluding whom I am looking at. It's more common to have seen women with a variety of styles: up, down, cut, with/without bangs, changes in color and so on, but men usually just keep one style. So when I see a man with a totally new style I get very confused. A woman with a new style mostly had something similar in the past. Hair down at shoulder length isn't that different from hair down at hip length, visually.

If you meet someone you know, and they don't seem to recognize you, try smiling and saying something. The smiling face is much more individual than the blank one so it might help them see you are. :) And laugh about it, it's not that they don't remember you, it's just that they know you with short hair and your not one of their guys in the long-hair-category. :)

[TiaKitty]

A lot of people don't recognize me with my hair down. I guess that means I wear it up a lot.

I always wonder, do I look better to them with it up or down?

[rchorr]

For me, it was quite to opposite. I've had people NOT recognize me because my hair was under a hat. I even had one guy get kind of panicy when he thought I had cut. :)

RCHORR'

[Hydrilus]

I've had friends barely recognize me since I've always had much shorter hair than where I'm at now but it's not always that they don't recognize you, it might also be because they DO recognize you, but can't remember your name!
I've had this happen to me plenty of times...someone walks up to me, "Hey man how's it goin!? Long time no see..." and I'm thinking "oh crap oh crap oh crap what is their name WHAT IS THEIR NAME!?" haha...:D

[Alaia]

Nah I recently came across one of the people I knew in school (wasn't even a friend of mine, she was just an acquaintance!) and they recognised me straight off. Of course, my hair was shorter then, but not much shorter. Plus, it was in a bun so didn't obscure my face.

I'm the one that has trouble recognising people I haven't seen for a long time (I couldn't remember her name! But she couldn't remember mine, so it was okay :p).

[burns_erin]

For me, not so much friends, as my patients. This morning I had a couple I had not seen in about a year and they asked me "Your hair has not been long all the time has it? Because we saw some stranger with long hair and "knew" it was not you." But then they first met me when my hair was in a bob and now it is almost waist.

[Áine]

It's happened to me actually, quite a few times. But my hair is only one of many things that has changed about me, since high school.