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 live near a senior school. I call them the ‘hairy girls’. Very little by way of trend-buckers.

To me, it looks like it is more difficult to deviate from a sanctioned norm, that is constantly reinforced on social media. You could say most girls just happen to like having long hair parted in the middle but I'm dubious about that.

No, they didn't. I have the school photos from my secondary school years (1972-9) to prove it. You might be right for the very early 1970s but not for most of the decade.

Because it is pretty and fashionable.

Yes but what a faff compared with just brushing my long hair and not worrying about the bit that kinks out as I've been lying on it.

I had short hair in the 90’s and was bullied for being a boy.

I also remember Winona Ryder discussing being beat up for looking like a boy with short hair in school.

But why do you think them having long hair isn’t a choice?

Yep, fashion while young. Then personal choice. I have always had long hair, my sisters- 3- had short hair short or mid length hair.

You're making the same point as each other, I think. There is research that shows that in girls' schools more girls study STEM subjects and generally do better because they are able to get the teachers' attention without boys dominating the classroom.

These are the rules from DS's school. Any creativity regarding individual style has been knocked out of them, so identikit hairstyles it is then.

"Hairstyling should be smart, plain and simple (not an extreme fashion statement). Unnatural hair colour dyes, shaved patterns and extreme cuts are not acceptable. If
in doubt, please contact the school before allowing your child to change their hairstyle. The school’s decision on the acceptability of a hairstyle is final"

In my day, Chris Whatshisname came to school with a blonde mohican with green tips that he'd superglued together. Don't get that anymore do you?

Gender stereotypes are really in at the moment. Both in the traditional sense and in the gender ideology sense.

Children often police gender stereotype expression amongst their peers and the traditional and gender ideology viewpoints kind of bounce off each other. There's a lot of "you can't wear x because you're a boy" and "are you a girl now? (Because you're wearing x)". It's quite tiring so I completely understand why many kids choose to conform, sadly.

Its easier to manage long hair now. There's better styling spray/mousses, better shampoo and conditioner and straighteners are cheap. 30 years back only certain hair types were easy to keep looking good with long hair, and there weren't YouTube videos for teens to learn to do hair from so unless their mums were good with hair it was harder to learn to do.

I’ve noticed this as well, this trend is there for quite a while. I think it’s fashion plus easier to make different styles with them.
if you have shoulder length hair you can’t do a ponytail for PE or similar activities as they are too short. And you need to wash them more often. And they only look good if they are good but then if they are good you can easily wear them long and look trendy.
I don’t think short hair necessarily scream “a boy” , it depends how short is short. A lot of women I know have shorter hair but none of them could be mistaken for a male even on a dark night. But they all are older women who are less influenced by trends and thinking more about practicality.

Yes that's true.

But this trend has been (give or take) going on for all this century so far. That's 25 years which is long time for a trend usually. It also coincides with the rise in internet and social media. Of course, there may well be little connection...

Ah ok I didn’t know that. How awful.

This^ spot on

As an aside, my autistic dd (now 29) has seen photos and film footage of 80s girls and women, when I was a teen, and was astounded that we had short, medium and long hair. And she's not particularly gender stereotypical in most ways.

Exactly. Fashion is by its nature transient. The long hair thing is more than that.

I've just looked at my high school photo from 1985 and only 2 out of about 40 girls have hair longer than chin length. Plenty of perms though.

Yes, exactly. DD scrapes her hair into a pony tail as she walks out of the door. Not sure a hairbrush is involved most days

"I had long hair growing up because we had no money for a regular hairdresser"

Same here. My mum did two styles with the kitchen scissors - basin cut or trimming of long hair and long hair was preferable to the basin cut.

Yes the 1980s were perms a go go!!

I never had one because I had naturally curly hair 😁

But I’ve read on here that it’s normal for a shower to take 20 mi utes when you have long hair to shampoo and condition and detangle, whereas mine takes all of five minutes. So it’s swings and roundabouts really.

You’d think not.

but the statistics still tell us more boys study maths, physics, computer science etc, while girls skew towards English, psychology, biology etc.

this is negated somewhat in girls schools where the proportion of girls choosing maths and physics is significantly higher.

because those girls don’t have their peers influencing them that only the boys do x subject…

It's fashion although it has been like this for a very long time now. When I was young in the 80's I remember a college tutor bemoaning the fact that we all had short hair. She was telling us how much more feminine we would look with longer hair, she was old ( in our eyes) so we paid no attention.