Men (especially highborn men, who likewise had the time to care for it) have sometimes worn their hair long, and free Gothic warriors in Italy in the beginning of the last millennium were known as capillati or “long-haired men.” But, in general, their hair was expected to be shorter than the hair of women in their societies. Stenn also notes the practical difficulties of long hair: “In order to have long hair you have to have your needs in life taken care of.” So long hair is also a status symbol, especially when it comes to complex hairstyles that require someone else to help you do them, which “implies you have the wealth to do it.” It’s no coincidence that short hairstyles like the bob came into fashion during the 20th century, in regions where women were beginning to push back against the idea that they needed to be taken care of.Īnd, the implications of hair go the other way too. “You have to eat well, have no diseases, no infectious organisms, you have to have good rest and exercise.” “In order to have long hair you have to be healthy,” he says. Stenn, a former professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale who was also the director of skin biology at, believes that health is perhaps the root cause of hair’s significance. “ almost universally culturally found that women have longer hair than men,” says Kurt Stenn, author of Hair: a Human History. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “Doth not nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her.” Anthony Synnott, a sociologist who has written that hair is a personal symbol with “immense social significance,” found these implications in, for example, St. Roman women kept their hair long and tended to part it down the center, and a man devoting too much attention to his hair “risked scorn for appearing effeminate.” The Bible carried on the tradition.
It dates back at least to ancient Greeks and Romans, and according to archaeologist Elizabeth Bartman, even despite the Ancient Greek ideal of a “bearded, long-haired philosopher,” women in that society still had longer hair than men regularly did.
Though hair fashions may change season to season, the association between women and long hair is an ancient one.
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