Women: don't cut your damn hair

Athol Kay explains why it is a bad idea:

Dozens of times in my life I've experienced having one of those mild background crush feelings for a woman, instantly disappear as soon as she cuts her hair very short. I mean seriously, real feelings of attraction just instantly gone. Monday I was into you with your pretty shoulder length hair; Tuesday morning arrived and you walked in with it trimmed away to not all that much, and I have no more attraction to you.

Of course all her friends and coworkers just love her new hair style! Of course they would, she just botched her appearance and if she falls off the top of the sexy ladder, everyone else gets to move up a place. So like OMG I just love it!

I am among the many men who absolutely despise short hair on women. If a woman's hairstyle is described as "cute", I can just about guarantee that I'm going to hate it. Even when an attractive woman can pull it off, she almost invariably looks even better with long hair. Spacebunny has long, blonde hair, longer than it was when we met, and I like it just as it is. I would hate for her to cut it off. Athol is correct to point out the ulterior motive women have for praising women who chop their hair off, as it makes them look more attractive in comparison.

So why do women do it when so many men actively hate short hair? I think there are two reasons, one which applies to younger women and one which applies to older women. Because only a very pretty woman can look attractive in a short hairstyle, female logic tells the woman contemplating hair-butchery that if she cuts her hair off and can manage to pull off the look, then she must be extremely attractive. This sounds absurd to the rational mind, but remember, most women overrate themselves by at least two points because they rate themselves by their hottest-ever hookup rather than by the average of their past romantic record. And since she will inevitably be rewarded with praise from her female friends, she wrongly concludes that she has indeed pulled it off and is therefore highly attractive even as her attractiveness drops a point or two in the eyes of all the men around her.

The second reason is that women are much more concerned about hair health than men are. So, as they age and their hair turns grey and loses texture and body, they believe they will look better if they just cut it off. Which is ridiculous, at least as far as men are concerned, as evidenced by Athol's preference for his wife's "badly-damaged-with-an-accidental-bleaching-incident" hair to her healthy, natural, brunette hair. One need only to have lived in the 80s to realize that men could not possibly care less about the appeal of "healthy hair" what with all the perms, home-bleaching, and cheap hair spray that was de rigueur back then.

The unpleasant, but observable fact is that post-menopausal women who cut their hair off tend to look like short, squatty men, even if they elect to rock that inexplicable blue puff perm on top that is apparently meant to signify female status. Forget who is more attractive, who looks more female, this woman or this one? Guys of any age don't care how healthy a woman's hair happens to look if she looks like a freaking man; it's not as if men turn gay because Matt Damon's coiffure has a healthy, well-conditioned shine.

Anyhow, if you're a woman, let your locks flow long and don't trust any woman who encourages you to chop them off. The more hair, the more better.