Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think in todays culture, longer hair is less common now than probably ever before.
I was able to put my hair in a small ponytail, looked like a karate ponytail and it looked like a had short hair again when I looked forward...didn't like that much!
I'm just gonna grow it out another 2 inches or so. My other buddy has longer hair than me and he wants it to be 2-3 feet. He always had it in a ponytail too. At this length now, I can slick it back, part it to the side, ponytail, or even put it forward if I want to emo it out...its a fun length.
Just by the looks of things, mens hair is perhaps the shortest it has been since 1965.
Though you never saw hair covering part of the ear in 1965 except on young Beatles fans that lived in California and had permissive parents and school rules for the time.
Guys (in USA) with long hair in the mid sixties and earlier back to 1956 when Elvis broke out simply wetted it back over the ears with some product like Vitalis, Brylcream. Hair touching and covering the top of the ear was a definite no-no.
Troublemakers and truants in Jr. High & Highschool in the late fifties through about 1965 were routinely punished by requiring them to receive whitewall ROTC close cropped sides and back though length on top was allowed for so the boys looked like new prisoners. I doubt that this punishment would be allowed today, but in mainstream America, circa 1965 and earlier in schools, the teachers/admin/ would send guys to principal's office if their hair was too long. I don't know exactly how they dealt with them but most returned back with crew cuts if not a prison inmate whitewall do likely performed by a principal or coach or rotc instructor. This kept the young men in my class on guard of not violating hair length policy or risk suffering a serious scalping. ACLU would be all over things like this today, but long ago this was common along with hitting (paddling) misbehaving students.
Close cut, approx 1/4" or less , non scissored sides and back hair seems to be the most common today among men.
It makes JFK look like he had a lot of hair.
JFK had very nice proportions in side and back length and volume on top. He also probably helped usher in the DRY LOOK era which began in USA about 4 1/2 years after he was assasinated. Greasy product and wet look products for guys vanished for everyone younger than 55 from about '68 until about '88 or so.
From 1970 until 1976 in the USA, most men had awful looking, bushy long mal proportioned stringy or helmet type hair that was too long and badly cut, unless they were going to a hairstylist that could cut balanced proportioned equal length layered scissor cuts, or the longer stylish David Cassidy type styles. Adding to the bad barber hack jobs of the early seventies, most guys didn't use the new hotcomb styler blowdryers or gun style blowdryers that had become common. By 1973 most stylish guys in US were getting decent cuts from stylists and drying their hair so it looked nice. It took probably until 1976 that everybody else in uSA got up to speed on proportioned blow dried styles that looked nice. Hippy hair began to fade away in 1975 as shoulder length and beyond stringy locks on men morphed into above the shoulders barely beyond the entire ear layered fluffy styles.
Mens hair would never again get that long as seen in the 1970 to 1975 era and my goodness that is a good thing because things got too shabby looking, though living through the time with a husband who had medium to short hair for the era, it didn't seem like hair on guys was that absurdly long, though in retrospect it was. My husband's hair covered the entire ear at one point in the early seventies, like Sonny Bono. He had a Mark Spitz/Sonny Bono mustache too.
I never let him get to the point of growing it like Leon Russell or Gregg Allman as in the late sixties during college if you were working, in a decent job for a student, employers wouldn't tolerate extreme hippy hair. Only way in '69 or '70 was to tend bar or play in a band. By 1971 he was already out and and earning big bucks as an young engineer wearing suits and ties, and though long hair (pre 1968 BEATLES ) was acceptable with wide lapels and crazy wide ties, wearing stringy long hair that was beyond shirt collar was not accepted.
One needs only to look at college annual yearbooks from 1965 to 1978 and see how fast things changed from 1965 to 1969 and after 1974 the hippy look gave way to cleaner more balanced looking, better cut long styles. By 1978 mens hair had universally returned to at least showing the earlobe and not covering more than 3/4 of the ear in most cases.
Very short clippered hair styles on white males only returned for most non-military/non civil servant/non-police officers in the very late nineties. Punk/new wave types circa 1982 and skin-heads in the eighties sported buzzcuts but it wasn't until higher top fifties flat tops became popular again in the Reagan era, that stylists and barbers really began using the clippers often again since before The Beatles arrived on the scene. Military style hair became more acceptable for non military fellows in about 1986 right after Top Gun movie and The Right Stuff astronaut movie. The military regulation length styles/cuts guys were sportin in the eighties and through most of the nineties were not the 1/8" stubble sides and backs or whitewalled high n tights that are common today. The ones then seen were regulation length but closer to the limits that were allowable, and were blow styled on top.
Mowed down scalped styles would not gain favor until the end of the nineties, except the KOJAK bald do that became common for bald or balding men by 1991 or 1992.
Buzzcuts came back for good in the nineties and since then mens hair has been going shorter.
It is now shorter than it was during the mid sixties.
Short and clean cut is the best look for most guys. They do need to get cuts every week and a half if they opt for really short cuts, otherwise they grow out scraggly and look unkept because if you opt for a 1/8 or 1/4" sides and back , you'll likely get nearly 1/4" growth in two weeks and that is tremendous grow out on such a short style and makes it look bad, unless at least trimmed if one is growing out a short style.
Upkeep on a short haircut is mandatory if a guy wants to look nice with one.
Nothing looks worse than seeing someone with a short neat style let it go beyond past due for a week or two and then cut it back. It becomes like a lawn that needs to be mowed frequently before it grows unsightly.
If you can't deal with this, don't decide to go shorter than a short scissor cut style. Once you go serious duty with the clippers, the maintenance interval time frame gets shorter too.
Seventies game show host and early seventies game show host hair can likely go three weeks (21 to 27 days maximum) . Over the ear scisssor cuts and you are talking 21 days maxiumum (19 to 21 days). Clipper cuts and you are looking at 14 days(two weeks max). Go to a high and tight and your looking at 5 to 7 days maximum. Short flat tops will require going to the chair once a week. These assume that a guy keeps up the style and doesn't let it go ragged. Some men might have slower hair growth but these are not out of the ordinary.
No wonder that your stylist likes doing the short clipper cuts that are close cropped. They are very quick as compared to the scissored layered styles during the shampoo cut style blowdry era of the seventies and eighties. She sees more clients (male clients) in and out of the chair in an hour than ever before. Plus, you return to visit her sooner because you are back in the chair again in half the number of days as the old days. She likes the additional business, and you probably look better too because of the short do. In fairness though mens haircut pricing is lower relative to what it was when it was more time consuming for your stylist when they probably needed half an hour to shampoo cut and blow dry your modified Keith Partridge look.
I like short hair on men. Not skinhead short, but as in around top of the ears length.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
