Long Hair

Long Hair Returns to Fashion

In the late 1960s long hair, headbands and holes in jeans were the style for young men. By the mid-70s I had finally caught on. I wore my hair long, typically wore a neatly folded red or blue bandana and proudly wore my one pair of Levis jeans with gaping holes in the knees, leaving my Sears brand Toughskins to gather dust in the closet.

I remember it being normal in those days to battle the older generations about my hair. Most wanted it cut, but in the end I was given control of my own look. One day my parents decided that I was required to get a haircut. I was taken, along with my brothers, to the same barber who cut my father’s hair and his father’s hair. As a young boy, with great ritual, the three boys were marched in to this family barber for our regular haircuts. Today, I viewed this man as the evil enemy armed to the teeth with scissors dead set on making me a social outcast.

When I was seated in the chair I boldly instructed the barber to give me a haircut that didn’t look like a haircut. He repeated back my words with a questioning tone. Yes, I insisted. He considered my bush of thick wavy locks before proceeding to do more thinning and less shortening. For a guy who made his living at keeping hair short, he was sympathetic (and wore his hair a bit long as well). His best efforts went unappreciated, however, and I moped around for days in morning of my lost locks. Years later he would recount this day as if it was yesterday—clearly one of the more unusual requests he received in an otherwise mundane profession.

When my kids saw photos of me in my long hair phase 30 years or so later, they were nauseated. They didn’t find me funny, just plain old embarrassing. I’m not sure what happened to my image of myself, but I had to agree. What used to be critical to my self-image looked silly 30 years later.

Today my hair is corporate length. My forehead is the only thing growing long and instead of holes in my jeans I have a hole in my hair on the top of my head. While my long hair days have past, the long hair fashion seems to have reemerged with some of today’s young men.

The urge to explain how silly long hair is for men is overwhelming. While logic suggests that it is inconvenient and needs more care than short hair would have meant nothing to me 30-years ago, so I resist but expect that their children will be teasing them at some point.

My children however have no interest in growing their hair long. The thought that they might look as disgusting as their father is enough to set their own fashion trends. We have friends on the other hand, whose Dad was kept to a buzz cut through much of his youth and these are the kids truly itching (against their father’s will) to grow their hair long.

I can’t explain how fashion begins or what takes old of any young person. I miss the days when my issues were about too much hair instead of too little. I scold myself for thinking many of today’s youths look silly and I pray that my boys will share my belief that long hair isn’t nearly as disgusting as tattoos and piercings.

Greg Harris

August 9, 2006