It's weird, the number of men who think short hair on women is appalling. Not just not attractive on that particular woman, but philosophically inadvisable.

Yeah, was (am?) married to one of those. He HATED it when I got it cut short. Became one of thee zillion things we just didn't talk about.

I thought I liked my hair long until I chopped it. Now I love it short. I'm "growing it out" but not by much. I had it really short for a while and now I want a little bounce.

I am SO. DARNED. TIRED.

Or maybe they just like having long hair. A lot of people actually do.

Raises hand...I do!

I'm gonna re-lock this in a minute, but I had to share.

So, the I took the little girl I'm watching this week to the Museum of Science yesterday. She loved it THIS much!

Someone posited the theory that women with short hair were displaying "too much" independence by refusing to spend the extra time and energy that taking care of long hair requires (YTime/EnergyMV) and that it was a sign of pernicious feminism and assault against The Way Things Should Be(TM).

Hubby says deep down men want something to grab their woman by to drag them to the cave. I tell him he was raised by wolves and not fit for polite society. He smiles and says, "Of course I was, you met my mother."

My own hair stops looking healthy and happy just past my shoulders. If I grow it out to the bottom of my shoulderblades, it gets tatty. Down to mid-back, and the last 9 inches are a split-ended raggedy thinning mess.

JZ is me. I definitely felt the pressure to have long hair and desperately tried to achieve it many times, but it just doesn't suit me.

Or maybe they just like having long hair. A lot of people actually do.

Though, again, every time I've seen you and every picture of you that I've seen -- you have great long hair. It's healthy, it's shiny, the ends are even, it has shape and it bounces and sways and moves when you do, and you know how to put it up and how to make it look good when it's down. A lot of the women on WNTW are like me--whether or not they like having long hair, their heads are clearly incapable of growing long hair that looks like anything but ass. I really did love my long hair, but eventually I had to admit that the best I could ever manage with it was Ehn, okay. And I didn't love my long hair more than I loved feeling like I looked really pretty and polished and put-together.

That's the baffling part, that someone would prefer indifferent or, sometimes, outright ugly and uglifying hair to healthy and pretty hair.

There are women on WNTW with ratted-out, broken, product-damaged hair that's practically breaking off in the stylist's hands as he touches it, women who look markedly more gorgeous when he just pulls their hair back away from their faces, and they still flip out at the suggestion of anything more than a trim. And, 95% of the time, if they do submit to a drastic cut (usually still at or below the shoulder, so still not short), they end up loving it, tearing up, and saying they feel free. One woman, in mid-cut, said, "I feel like I've been waiting all my life to have the nerve to do this."

Sometimes it's definitely just loving having long hair, but, as Plei noted, sometimes there's also a lot of difficult baggage attached.

I had long hair until eighth grade. My parents wouldn't let me cut it, and I hated it long. It was thick and heavy and snarled too easily. I finally convinced them to let me cut it about the same time I started wearing pants and got my ears pierced. I think it was the start of my downfall into sin and rebellion and the start of them realizing it was futile to fight me. Go me. Or something.

women with short hair were displaying "too much" independence by refusing to spend the extra time and energy that taking care of long hair requires (YTime/EnergyMV) and that it was a sign of pernicious feminism

I've been thinking I need a new tag line. "Pernicious feminist" seems just about right. Thanks!

I had some really bad short haircuts as a kid. So I kept my hair long for quite a while-- I look younger with shorter hair. And at the moment -- the grey 'roots' ar eover 2 inches long

Trying to decide if I will dye it, or leave it alone, or go to someone for low lights ,or have my regular hair dresser come here and dye it. I don't really enjoy the process of dying very much

My mom told me that a short haircut combined with my round physique would make me look like a pinhead. (And she wasn't even a Ramones fan.) Eventually I got a chic, sassy, short bob, and tons of complements. So naturally mom denied ever suggesting such a possibility as pinhead-dom.