Page 6 | To wonder why do few girls have short hair nowadays

Chewystick · 2021-12-05T00:52:00+00:00

That’s it really. When I was at high school (80s), half the girls had short hair. However, I can only think of one girl my DDs (who have long hair) have known through school who had short hair and she has long hair now. When did short hair fall out of favour?

0blio · 05/12/2021 07:46

Thank you @EnidFrighten that video is amazing!

kowari · 05/12/2021 07:47

I have short hair and it's so much easier and quicker in the mornings than when it was longer, takes a minute after a shower. I get it cut every six weeks or so for £14.

ShortDaze · 05/12/2021 07:48

My dd has a very short pixie. Only girl in her whole primary school with hair that short. One of less than a handful with hair shorter than shoulder length.

She has to persuade younger children that she is a girl quite regularly- they argue to her face that she must be a boy as she has short hair and wear trousers. That’s how strong the gender stereotypes are.

Oddly, there are not boys with long hair, then there are girls with short hair.

AnyOldPrion · 05/12/2021 07:48

Ot’s fashion, but I have a daughter in her twenties, who has now embraced short hair with relief. She would have been bullied when younger, so kept it long, and that’s sad. I think there’s way more pressure on children to look the same these days.

I’m amazed at the number of people saying long hair is easier to look after. Doesn’t it get tangled and take ages to dry? Mine’s very short now. Washing takes a couple of minutes, rub dry and run a brush through and it’s done. I will never go back!

ShortDaze · 05/12/2021 07:48

More boys with long hair (ignore random not)

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 05/12/2021 07:49

@MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry

Is it a problem?

In itself, it's not a problem. However, some people see short hair and immediately think 'boy'. This has led to some numpties assuming a girl with short hair must be trans or nonbinary, especially if she is gender nonconforming in other ways. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think this trend for girls and young women to have long hair has been going on for more like 20 years, or even 30. When my children were little in the 1990s it was already unusual for little girls to have short hair, but also less unusual for little boys to have long hair.

Darbs76 · 05/12/2021 07:49

It was the fashion in the 80’s, now it’s definitely not. I had that haircut and because I begged to have my long hair cut my mum refused to let me grow it for years, I remember one night before the hairdresser came waking up in a dream screaming no. I feel quite bitter about it still. My daughter can have her hair however she likes, but she would only ever have it long right now

AnyOldPrion · 05/12/2021 07:51

She has to persuade younger children that she is a girl quite regularly- they argue to her face that she must be a boy as she has short hair and wear trousers. That’s how strong the gender stereotypes are.

Forgot to say, my short haired daughter gets really sick of being asked her pronouns and of people assuming she’s trans. The current obsession with gender stereotypes is out of control.

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 05/12/2021 07:53

Because there is massive pressure on girls to present themselves in the hyper-feminised ways that they see on SM. There was a thread a couple of days ago from a poster whose daughter kept getting asked if she was trans because she had short hair and wore trousers to school. I'm not trying to derail onto trans issues - my point is that expectations of how girls should appear are rigid,, and any girl who doesn't conform will get hassled.

Growing up in the 80s, most girls went through phases of having hair long or short. We had more freedom to experiment than girls do now.

tiredanddangerous · 05/12/2021 07:54

Purely from my observations of the kids at the secondary school where I work, I would say that short hair is coming back in. It seems to be a trend in year 9 upwards.

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 05/12/2021 07:54

Cross-post with @AnyOldPrion

hugr · 05/12/2021 07:55

@CountessOlenka

Girls are much fatter these days. You need cheekbones to look good with short hair.

I'm fat and looked great with short hair

Xmasprrssiehelp · 05/12/2021 07:55

Well looking back at the 80s it wasn’t the golden era for fashion was it

I am in my 30s, mostly all my friends have shoulder length hair or long bobs, my friends in their 20s wear it a bit longer.

I would feel older if I had a short or pixie cut. My mum in her 50s has one - she was a teenager in the 80s so it’s just purely generational

ParadiseLaundry · 05/12/2021 07:55

I’m amazed at the number of people saying long hair is easier to look after. Doesn’t it get tangled and take ages to dry? Mine’s very short now. Washing takes a couple of minutes, rub dry and run a brush through and it’s done. I will never go back!

It does take longer to dry and style but (for me at least) mine is curly and only needs to be washed once a week. I only brush it when washing as it goes frizzy and if does start to look messy I can tie it up. I think longer hair is a bit more forgiving, if you have a shorter, specific style it might need styling every day. That's just in my case though, I'm sure other people would feel differently about it.

bumblingbovine49 · 05/12/2021 07:56

@CountessOlenka

Girls are much fatter these days. You need cheekbones to look good with short hair.

What a fucking ridiculous thing to say. I was a fat teenager in the 80s and I had short hair for a long time. I looked great !

The amount of denseness of this thread is astonishing. In the 80s we had more sexism to contend with than nowadays. (though we still have a lot now as evidenced by this thread)

This meant we could play with gender norms and rebel without it being a threat to our internal sexual identity. For some teenagers it was also an expression of their sexual preferences.

How we present ourselves to the world , especially as teenagers is often about our identity and expressing who we are but as a society we have absolutely failed to give our young teenagers strong internal anchors which are what they need so that normal rebellion and comparison against these norms do not end up threatening their existence

Parenting 101 for teenagers tells us that adults need to be a strong anchor - a kind one of course but strong nonetheless ' against which teenagers can throw themselves .

Nowadays adults are so unsure of themselves that teenagers are lost . They can't even cut their hair short as girls or grow their hair long and wear make up as boys without it signaling they are transgender !!

This is about a hell of a lot more than 'just fashion' which has always been about a lot more than just clothes and what looks good anyway.

Fashion is an intrinsic aspect of our culture and the constraints we are putting on our teenagers ( particularly the female ones ) in terms of how they can express themselves without it threating their existence as women are really worrying to me.

Allaboutyou222 · 05/12/2021 07:56

@willithappen

What even is this thread 😂 People have long hair because they want to! Or they have short hair because they want to Quite frankly not sure why it bothers anyone the length of other peoples hair

I don’t think people are bothered are they? It’s quite an interesting discussion.

connorkendallromanshiv · 05/12/2021 07:58

@ParadiseLaundry

I’m amazed at the number of people saying long hair is easier to look after. Doesn’t it get tangled and take ages to dry? Mine’s very short now. Washing takes a couple of minutes, rub dry and run a brush through and it’s done. I will never go back!

It does take longer to dry and style but (for me at least) mine is curly and only needs to be washed once a week. I only brush it when washing as it goes frizzy and if does start to look messy I can tie it up. I think longer hair is a bit more forgiving, if you have a shorter, specific style it might need styling every day. That's just in my case though, I'm sure other people would feel differently about it.

Agree 100% with this.

I went out last night with second day hair, wouldn't have happened when I had short hair a la Frankie

YouGotThisKeepGoing · 05/12/2021 07:58

Less acceptable to have a home haircut and hairdressers are expensive

ArabellaScott · 05/12/2021 07:58

I wonder if it is to do with ever stricter stereotyping of what is suitable for girls and boys - there is a comparison of girls' toys from the 70s and one from recent times, and the latter is entirely pink and glitter, frills etc. The 70s toys were far more mixed - just toys, basically, not 'girls toys'.

Straight long hair is almost 100% uniform at the moment. I see very few young girls who deviate from this style.

Exhausteddog · 05/12/2021 07:59

Girls are much fatter these days. You need cheekbones to look good with short hair.

sashh · 05/12/2021 08:00

The day before I started high school my mum sat me down and cut my hair short, very short.

That wasn't uncommon. I hated short hair and as soon as I had a choice grew it.

Schools were not so fussy over hair either. I went to an RC girls school run by nuns. Uniform was strict and changed half way through the year. You would get a detention if your top button wasn't fastened in 'winter uniform' and the same for wearing a jumper in 'summer uniform', but the only time they seemed to bother about hair was a) they banned rats' tails and b) they banned the spray in colours because they were being sprayed in lessons.

I donate my hair to 'the little princess trust' so every 2-3 years I have short hair, then I grow it. I'm lucky, my hair isn't curly but has a bit of a wave so if it's in a bob, I add a bit of mouse and comb it when it's wet and I have a perfect bob until I wash it again.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 05/12/2021 08:05

@EIIa

You’re all looking at this the wrong way - everyone had short hairs in the 80s because Of Princess Diana.

Celebs (media types not pop stars 😂) would copy that then we would follow suit

I found a class photo- ALL the girls had proper short hair

I am the same age as Diana and I can say with confidence that there were plenty of young women with short hair long before she came to public attention. It was more common in the late 1970s for teenage girls and women to have short hair than long, and amongst older women long hair was unusual. The late 60s and early 70s were the time for very long hair on both sexes (the hippies were the most obvious trendsetters here). As the 70s went on that went out of fashion. Diana may have played a part in delaying the change back to long hair. She died in 1997. I wonder what she'd have looked like now, at age 60.

It's so depressing to see women trotting out the nonsense that natural unstyled hair looks 'gross' and falling in line with the cosmetic industry's line that women must spend huge amounts of time and money on their appearance just to look OK. I know some men have been sucked into this too, but there is still a huge gap between what's expected of women and what's OK for men.

I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't recall this relentless pressure then on little girls to like pink, and Disney was not a big commercial influence. Obviously there was no internet, so no social media. People had a lot less money so there was no chance of buying a pink pram for a daughter and then ditching it for a blue one when a son was born. Plenty of problems back then, plenty of outright sex discrimination, but we've regressed in other ways.

lljkk · 05/12/2021 08:08

Agree that hair extensions have a lot to do with the wider styles in fashion.

Prescottdanni123 · 05/12/2021 08:11

I have shoulder length hair. Anything shorter than that just wouldn't suit my face shape.

HaaaaaveyoumetTed · 05/12/2021 08:13

I can't think of a single girl in my year at school (left 20years ago) that had short hair. 2 had a Bob, but that's as short as it got. We had no social media (I lived in deepest, darkest Cumbria, we didn't get dial up until 2002!) and no hair extensions.