Why are men so turned off by women with short hair?

[MissTessmacher]

Just idly musing.

I recently cut my hair quite drastically. Changed my photo on OLD to one with the new do (previous photo was very glam/pin-up style with shoulder length hair).

I've gone from a very steady average of 10-15 messages a day to zero .

It's not the first time I've observed this phenomenon. The few times before I've cut my hair very short I have noticed it's like a cloak of invisibility when it comes to men.

Anyone care to enlighten me? Is it because women with short hair are considered unfeminine? (What a crock of shit if so).

[SocialConnection]

@SecretWitch My mother has been telling me for 30+ years I should have short hair like I had to have when I was a child. This may be one of the reasons why I still have long hair at 57, now I get to say how it should look. That plus the compliments and the erotic potential. Anyway ...

I remember reading a study of men who have mistresses. They overwhelmingly reported that their mistresses had longer hair than their wives.

[NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace]

This is me. Shaved on a number zero with about a week's growth.

Sometimes I conform to gender 'norms' and sometimes I don't. I'm as 'feminine' as the next woman much of the time

I'm pretty sure that most men hate my look but .... meh. I'm settled comfortably in the Happy Singleton group

[SomeDyke]

"someduck poor you, eh !"

Could someone please enlighten me as to why comparing dykes to waterfowl is supposed to be amusing?

Water off a ducks back, I've been called far worse. Quack, quack.......

As regards the social origins of notions of attractiveness, I was reminded of the link between Kim Kardasian, and Sarah Baartman:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35240987

"Personal taste" shifts and changes, as I think I said elsewhere the biological, evolutionary links seem to be for symmetry of face versus asymmetry, average more attractive than outliers, and smooth skin texture. But given the way that many human cultures have seen fit to adorn faces, from lip plugs, neck rings, filed teeth, cheek scars, to the ever-changing vaguaries of make-up, from elizabethan women with shaved foreheads and bleached skin, to current trends, there is too much variation and fashion here to just shove it all under the carpet of evolutionary psychology/biology.

[cadnowyllt]

someduck poor you, eh !

[itllallbefine]

are women exempt from this patriarchal, evolution busting, social conditioning, or do they still just value men as people ?

[itllallbefine]

[SomeDyke]

"It really is just personal taste!"

Except it really, really isn't. What is considered attractive or unattractive is cultural, not just personal, so no surprise that what men find attractive is as affected by patriarchal culture as everything else.

And of course, totally expected that this should be denied.

And we have an excellent example of how superficial male notions of attractiveness are -- a few ounces of dead keratin, not even your own with hair extensions, or not even actual hair! But then we already knew about the male capacity to find even very obvious surgically-implanted bags of dangerous chemicals attractive. How many more examples do we need that it really doesn't have much to do with women as people, but just what they can imagine us to be.............

[TashaYar]

Okay, but the thread has moved on to more general discussion of the issue (which is what I was commenting on) rather than just that example.

[Holowiwi]

I was referring to the OP who has simply had less messages (which is fine) not messages saying she is now ugly why did she cut her hair (not fine). In her case no one has called her unattractive she is just receiving less attention.

Of course there will always be someone somewhere saying such and such is unattractive.

[TashaYar]

"No one has said women with short hair are unattractive etc"

Actually, a quick Google shows lots of men saying just that. I have a pixie cut, and I've had it said to me.

No-one, OTOH, says men don't have the right to find short hair unattractive. But see my previous post for the differences in how that can be stated.

[Holowiwi]

No one has said women with short hair are unattractive etc. 1 person has stopped getting messages since cutting their hair and so what those men have every right not to like a certain look just like everyone else.

[TashaYar]

I think the difference lies between:

"I don't fancy women with short hair" (personal, subjective, taking ownership)

and

"Women with short hair are unattractive/deliberately making themselves look worse/unfeminine" (claiming objectivity, stating opinion as fact, being insulting).

[PalmerViolet]

No one has said that anyone has to be 'more PC' about what they find attractive.

SO glad some bloke sharing his wank bank pics resurrected this thread.

[mercifulTehlu]

But it's crazy to claim that people should just be more pc about what they find attractive. It really is just personal taste! I seem to find men of average height with dark hair and pale eyes attractive. No idea why. I just don't fancy blonde men. It's not a vendetta. I just don't. I can't help it. Almost every man I've ever been very attracted to had dark brown hair and blue eyes and wad marginally taller than me. I don't see that as being much different from men preferring long hair.

[rascayoo]

I'm a man and the fact is not that a woman with short hair is a turn off, it is that almost every woman can turn me on just for always having her hair longer than mid back (see attachments, one with a woman who turns me on just seeing her hair and another with a woman who doesn't turn me on without long hair) and not just for the look because their interest on having her hair much longer than mine turns me on more than the simple fact of having long hair. For example:

www.lovelyish.com/2011/05/26/guys-view-why-i-find-women-with-short-hair-unattractive/#comment-659447

This woman is a real turn on for me, she wouldn't date a man with long hair and she is really interested on keeping her own hair very long. That means that a man who is dating her has no option than having his hair much shorter than hers and that's what turns me on, her power of making men go without their hair while she is showing off her hair.

[SomeDyke]

I think what I was getting at was the whole notion of attractiveness! That certain visual cues just either do it or don't do it for someone, and there is no blame cos they can't help it, and no one apart from feminists seems to question this much.

Okay, a bit mixed up with the 'I just am attracted to the same sex' 'excuse' for lesbianism, and whatever your views on the innateness of that, at least being attracted to the same sex is more than just attracted to the fairly superficial visual clues that are used to indicate 'female'. It's where substance (i.e., you're female, you're a scientist, a novelist, a steam-punk fan......) of what makes someone attractive becomes replaced by the purely superficial (you've got blonde hair, you've got long hair, etc).

What you look like as opposed to what you do and who you actually are.

[IrianofWay]

I don't for a moment beleive that every woman who has long hair does it because it suits them...because it doesn't. Long straight hair looks great if it's beautiful, healthy, shiny and smooth and if you have delicate slim features. I have a round short face and when it was long it stayed smooth and shiny looking for about 10 minutes and it made me features heavier - I had cheek bones but they show themselves to best effect when I don't have heavy curtain of hair hanging around them. ! And looking around my fellow women I am not alone. But because it its the default style for 'feminine' women that is what many of them choose. It is odd.

[VestalVirgin]

Although the claim, 'I just don't find it attractive/I just find x attractive', is often used (by lesbians in my examples), to explain why someone insists on a girlfriend with long blonde hair, or won't go out with a black woman, or won't go out with a fat woman.

I get why maybe lesbians are doing this, but men are not usually pressured to go out with women they don't find attractive, so that can't be the reason, can it?

[SomeDyke]

"And people can't help what they do or don't find attractive, whether that's down to socialisation or not."

"and if we find something unfamiliar, we might just not find it attractive."

Okay, that is the key for me, this feeling, most;y subjective, that we find something attractive or not. Whether it is ourselves or others. Claims that people can't help it -- I just think back to, say, the fashion trend of the eighties, or seventies, or some other embarrassing era, where things we might have considered attractive or desirable then, we would now find hideous. Very few attractive things are even labelled timeless. It's all mutable, once you get beyond the clear-skinned, looks younger and symmetrical stuff. Which is basically biology (have you got good genes, no significant parasite load, sexually mature but not too old and decrepit to reproduce successfully?).

Although the claim, 'I just don't find it attractive/I just find x attractive', is often used (by lesbians in my examples), to explain why someone insists on a girlfriend with long blonde hair, or won't go out with a black woman, or won't go out with a fat woman.

It's the whole trained fascination with appearance and 'attractiveness', there's yer problem!

[PalmerViolet]

That might be an interesting piece of research Athelstane.

There's all sorts of other things that we do unconsciously due to influence from all kinds of different places. I'm sure there has been research done on some aspects of it, probably this as well.

[AthelstaneTheUnready]

I've had my hair long most of my life, but very short on three or four occasions. Reading this thread, I realise that every time I've cut it short has been after a dodgy relationship and actually must have been some internal desire not to be noticed by men, or give off any sort of availability/feminine/swishy signals.

So clearly I must think that long hair is come hither, and short hair is fuck off, but I had no idea I thought that way. Currently it's now jaw length and now I have no idea whether to grow it, cut it again, or change my attitude...

[RufusTheReindeer]

sue

I love her hair, i had mine cut a long long time ago and it didn't look much like hers but now it is about 3 quarters black/dark brown and about a quarter grey more people are commenting

I almost cant wait to go completely grey, sort of a jamie lee curtis/judi dench look

[SueTrinder]

I have hair in a similar style to jamie lee curtis, tiny little "sideburns"

Oh, she's got gorgeous hair, my hairdresser cuts my Mum's hair when she comes to visit and he does it like JLC when her hair is particularly short and it looks amazing (Mum's got gorgeous grey hair as well, here's hoping I inherit that gene).

Do you know, the funny thing is the women whose hair I like the most do seem to have short hair, probably just because it stands out these days when the fashion is for long hair. The DDs both have bobs and they get lots of compliments on them from adults. Everyone loves a bob on a little girl. But they both have the shortest hair of all the girls in their year at school.