Wearing hair up, or loose?

[HappySeaCreatures]

I've always worn my slightly mad, wavy hair loose. My mum braided it for school when I was a child so when older I associated loose hair with being grown up, liberated!

In the past few years I have noticed that I look better with it off my face a bit, like a loose topknot or ponytail. Or a french braid. It is thick enough and takes a shape well, so it's easy to do.
But then I noticed we often consider updo's and clips, scrunchies and pins as what we use on a bad hair day. I wonder why we associate tying it up or back with something negative?

Would like to know how you wear yours? Do you associate a hair tie or clip with crappy hair days or is it your go to style? I wonder if the media has an effect on this. Do you think there's any kind of cultural pressure to wear hair loose as a sign of attractiveness? I am curious! Any thoughts?

Traditionally, in Western europe countries, loose hair was for the unmarried women.

Once a woman married the hair would be braided.

Hence, we still associate long flowing hair with youth and tied back hair with maturity.

Not all hair works well loose though. In my family our hair sticks out a bit, so defies gravity, lol. It is lovely worn up because of the thickness but I always avoided it. Might buy a few clawclips and huge scrunchies

I think even my mum's generation were advised to cut and style with maturity, so didn't see a lot of them with long or loose hair after 16.