To wonder why all girls have long hair?

[Mightymoog]

Just driving past the secondary school at home time and every single girl had long hair. Different colours, some wavy, some straight, but every last one of them had long hair.
Where are all the short cuts or even mid length.
when I was at school (admittedly many moons ago )there was a huge range from short and spiky to mid length bobs to long.
just a little something I've been musing on for a while and prepared for people to tell me the local school is an aberration of long hair lovers

I was pretty clear I wS talking petsonal observation and different schools may not correlate.

It's probably down to reinforcement of gender stereotypes we've seen in the last decade.

I think it is (and has been for sometime) just the fashion.

To be fair it is also now a lot easier to have nice long hair - there is no way I would have long hair without the help of straightners and hot stylers etc as my natural hair is much more dragged through a hedge style!

Fashion

Easy to look after

Cheaper as no need to cut so often

I remember going for the chop in the late '70s/very early 80's and had a Purdy cut 😁 My mum insisted it was a Pageboy.
Then it was the Human League/shaved on one side/huge fringes (constantly being flicked) followed by perms, followed by Bonnie Tyler back combing-
One style I wouldn't touch was short with a' 'tail.'
My friend had 3 tails for years. 😂

I wonder why we still in this day and age insist on nit picking everything girls do even if it's something as utterly normal and uninteresting as having long hair.

What were your observations on the boys hair?

Homogeneity was always a thing as a teen. They have always gone round looking like clones in their friendship groups whether it be goths, street look etc.

DD has beautiful long hair, doesn’t do social media, doesn’t follow trends, wear make up, not interested in boys (or girls) at the moment. She just likes having long hair.

I actually came on to say this but was distracted by others’ posts!

Boys seem to seem to have degree of long hair, too - at least my boy and mates do. Some long enough to be in a ponytail. Again, not on social media

Long hair looks so much nicer and more feminine on girls. This is a personal opinion that not everyone is required to agree with but clearly many do these days.

I do find it unusual that long hair has been in fashion for about twenty years and the look is the same amongst the girls in my area and I see hundreds of young people every day.

Lots of celebrities have long hair but plenty have different styles eg short bobs or coloured hair or cropped hair or quiffs etc. and they change their hair a lot.

When I was small my mother and all her friends had a shortish perm. I grew up thinking it was something you did when you got married!

Long hair is cheaper to look "good/fashionable if you're not dying it - shorter styles require more frequent hairdresser appointments/hair cuts but you can trim long hair/swishy ponytail styles yourself to fit in.

My DD has long hair because (a) she likes it and (b) it's easy to style and keep out of eyes for sport with a plait/ponytail. Growing out shorter hair is much less practical to manage. Other plus with long hair is you can disguise lack of effort with an "up" style but shorter hair needs done properly for everything...

The choice for teen girls at the moment seems to be Kardashian with the works, or 'non-binary' with the TikTok 'wolf cut'. I feel sorry for them.

We live, despite everything we tell ourselves, in a much more conservative and repressive age than previously with regard to sex roles.

Almost everything has gone backwards for women, apart from things which benefit men.

But no one assumes a man with long hair to be trans!

As I said, I wasn't critiscising, just observing.
I wassn't observing the boys. may do that tomorrow and report back if I've upset you by leaving them out

Long hair requires a lot of maintenance to keep it looking in tiptop condition though.

It’s far easier to have long hair than in the past. Conditioner wasn’t something I used until I was older. Styling and conditioning products are now everywhere.

Absolutely this
Basically you're saying 'why are people doing what they want?'

Long hair is not easier to look after. It gets tangled and needs a lot of combing and brushing. If you leave it to dry naturally it takes ages, but of course most women and girls with long hair nowadays don't do that and spend money on special equipment to dry it, straighten it, style it etc etc. It does look pretty awful if the ends are not regularly trimmed, so you don't even save that much on hairdressers.

Also, why on earth is there any requirement for women and girls to look feminine? Back in the 1970s when I was a teenager we were starting to get past this depressing nonsense. The counterpart, of course, is the expectation that boys and men will look masculine. All of this leads to horrible bullying of those who fail these stupid tests and are considered effeminate if male or butch if female.

Nowadays this also leads well-meaning but dangerous idiots to ask about gender identity and to imply that those who don't look like the stereotype might need irreversible and damaging medical treatment to give them a body that lines up with their 'pink or blue brain'. Fortunately there are signs that this trend is on its way out, and good riddance.

I think it’s ok to observe a trend and wonder about it. I don’t call that ‘nitpicking.’

sweet lord why are people so stroppy on here?
Again, a musing on a lack of variety; I didn't say " why has everyone got long hair it looks shit"

I went to an all girls school in the 80s and there was a mix of long and short hair and in between, so fashion had nothing to do with it otherwise it would all have been the same. Or there were lots of choices within "fashion". Whereas now I have also noted it is all long hair.

When DS saw my class pic from the 80s (sixth form so no uniform) he said "I thought you went to an all girls school?" He assumed the girls with short hair were boys. (We were practically all wearing jeans). Because no girls in his year have short hair.

How is it nitpicking to observe something and wonder about its cause?

My gym overlooks a secondary school field and I often find myself wondering what happened to the different groups. When I was at school, you could easily spot goths, emos, arty, sporty, townie... I don't care what teenage girls do with their hair but it is interesting that they now all look the same.

Fashion. In 1982 nearly every girl in my school had a human league short wedge haircut.