What’s So Bad About Long Hair?

Actually, nothing.

However, it does seem to crop up as a subject of discussion on a regular basis – for example, here, where a young man is facing discrimination at school. Of course the guys over at the Long Hair Hyperboard are always picking up on the matter. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

Getting back to the boy at school, the usual nonsense sooner or later arises and I quote:

Hair is meant to be short, just like fingernails.

My response is suitably short, sweet and cutting (sic). Hair is not meant to be short – it is if anything meant to be however long it grows before it stops growing, just as nature intended. We cut our hair to conform to fashion or what is decreed by society to be the acceptable norm. It is not meant to be anything.

Simple anthropological research will tell us that shaving heads was something the victors did to the vanquished, owners to slaves and armies to soldiers. This has the same symbolism – these people no longer have mastery over their own bodies; it is a powerful symbol of control. Long hair is an equally powerful symbol – one of freedom, rebellion and self determination; the unbowed, undefeated warrior. This is someone who does not conform to society’s expected rules and needs to be tamed. Men are conditioned from early childhood to conform and language colludes in this subjugation – we have expressions such as “clean cut” and “clean shaven” on the one hand and we have “unkempt” on the other. Yet unkempt simply means uncombed (although language has corrupted that to mean “untidy”). Interestingly, if one has really short hair, it does not need combing. Therefore, it is the short haired man who is unkempt…

Anyway, I digress. Professionalism in the workplace is frequently used as an excuse by the control freaks who believe they have rights over other peoples’ bodies. Yet I work in a corporate environment. I wear a suit and tie when working, am neat, tidy and clean. I am also good at my job, which should be the most important factor. Yet this did not stop one individual telling me a few years back to cut my hair as this would be more professional. I made a decision that day. I decided to stop cutting my hair.

Interestingly it is women who comment most. It was a woman who thought telling me to cut my hair was acceptable behaviour. And, usually (more frequently) it is women who stop to remark on my hair – often with a hint of envy. Yet women suffer the short hair = professionalism nonsense too. Who decided this? Why? The old anthropological reasons no longer apply – we are not subject to the Roman empire any longer – or are we? And how does a haircut make someone more professional? Professionalism is about behaviour. Certainly presentation matters, but a clean tidy appearance is all that is necessary – anything else is just style and that is a personal thing.

So where does all this lead? That people in power will try to exert that power in subtle ways to enforce conformity and subservience. Well, we knew that already. Yet those same people want the product that a creative, lateral mind produces. They do not see the connection between the two – that it is the radical free thinker who allows creativity to follow its own unbound path that often leads to the solution they seek. The same person who, likely as not dresses a little differently or dare I say it, has long hair?