Both short and long. Let’s make the female mullet a trend!!
I have never had short hair. When younger, my hair was long. I would love for it to be very long. But my hair is typically a couple inches past shoulder length. The reason for that is that my hair is very thin (inherited trait from my Dad’s side…where the men are bald and the women have very thin hair). As it gets longer, it looks thinner and so I have to keep it trimmed. I like it all one length, though stylists seem to want to layer it and I don’t wish to. It is a rather simple style, parted on the side and with some bangs to one side. My mother used to like to say I still look like I’m 12. I just don’t want highly styled hair. I actually hate my hair because it is so thin. I blow dry it straight usually because I prefer it that way, though have been told it looks good and thicker when I wear it naturally wavy (I just got back from Europe where I was unable to blow dry my hair and so had to wear it natural). In humid weather, even if I do blow dry it straight, the humidity tends to make it wavy quickly anyhow. But wavy also looks shorter. I don’t think I will ever have short hair. It just doesn’t seem right for me, even though it looks good on others. I wish it was very long, but I guess I have medium length hair (some consider this long).
I dislike the current trend for most girls and women of many ages to have long hair. Some face shapes do not look good with long hair. Also so uninteresting! I also dislike shaved heads on men. I prefer balding men to show the hair they do have and not their generally unattractive skulls. Long hair is anything near to past the shoulders! Once hair is that long it doesn’t matter, the face is framed (and pulled down) by the hair. I don’t understand women spending the time and energy taking care of long and extremely long hair- it has weight and no style.
There, I’ve said it. I don’t care what the other 90% thinks- their conformist problem not mine.
Whatever happened to women’s lib? Long hair seems to be catering to being sexy for men and being gender identified. Most long hair does nothing for facial attractiveness.
^^^I have long hair, and I am the last person to go for trends, and even less so to attract guys. I wear long hair, because I like it, and because I don’t need to do anything with it, not even blow dry. I really don’t care whether it goes with my my face or not. It’s not my goal to look the most attractive according to to some ‘standard’ - it’s all skin-deep anyways - I go for what I like!
wis, perhaps you need to have my hair. Its inbetween straight and wavy. I had to leave house very early this morning for a conference, so i washed it last night, and slept with 2 braids. I woke to wavy hair. Had I not washed it, it would have been half back or ponytail. When my hair was shorter, it took a lot of work.
the only time it has been more than a few inches below shoulder length was when i let it grow for my g/f, who lost hr hair to cancer. I wore it up most of that time. I agree that very long hair in an older woman drags down the face. I also did not have bangs until a few months ago. My Pilates teacher told me that bangs are Botox for older women.
What does long hair have to do with feminism or not? I keep it long-ish cuz i like it. I feel I am bucking the sexist, middle-aged women should have short, conservativel dyed hair trend. So there.
Here’s my dilemma…bangs or no bangs? I grew out my bangs (sheer laziness last year). So now it’s very convenient to just pull back my hair into a bun or pony. But honestly, I’m not really wild about my long, thick, graying, wavy in all the wrong places, hair do. I told my DD I was going to cut bangs again and she said no. The difference is that she actually looks good with no bangs so she doesn’t get my dilemma. Convenience, or being comfortable in my own skin? Hmmmmm. Not sure which is more important.
Not sure what long hair has to do with women’s lib, and really I don’t see anything wrong with men preferring long hair on women. I prefer men with short hair.
What is not my favorite now is all the girls wearing long, flat ironed hair. I can hardly pick my d out of a crowd from a distance.
My hair was perfect for the 80’s. Big and voluminous. And why on earth did it take so long to invent the flat iron anyway? Isn’t it essentially just a flat curling iron? I look like I have thicker hair than I do because of the sheer volume of frizz.
LOL, seriously, wis?
My long hair is for me and the bald kids I donate to. Actually my partner would prefer shorter hair but it’s my hair and not his and he knows better than to say anything about it.
@wis75 we are on different ends of the spectrum. I love long hair and think it is youthful. I would not wear my own hair long if I didn’t like the way it looked. I couldn’t care less about what the current trends are. What is important is how it looks on me.
I think many middle aged women lop their hair off for convenience and it has no style whatsoever. Short hair takes time to style and my observation is that falls by the wayside once the hair is cut short. At least with long hair you can do a variety of styles - blow it straight, curl it, sweep it back into a pony tail or do a side braid. My hair is mid back and straight and it takes 5 minutes for me to blow dry after I shower.
And I actually love a shaved head. On the right guy it is a very powerful look.
My hair is very short and I get compliments on it all the time. I hated it when I was growing up because it was curly and everyone had long, straight hair. Now I love it. It requires no care at all. I wash it, run my fingers and a little leave-on conditioner through it, and I’m good to go. Of course, there’s the expensive haircut and color every 7 weeks… My hair is horrible longer. It grows straight out like Bozo. I’ve tried a couple of times to see how it would work- it doesn’t.
MOfWC, I think your hairstyle is lovely. And the best part is that it looks good even in the middle of a marathon. 
Last week I went through many photo albums and scanned a zillion pictures. I could see all the attempts I made in my youth to grow my hair out. I gave up on that at least 20 years ago. My hair is very thick and wavy and it’s good short with the right cut.
So every 6-8 weeks I go to Chinatown and my guy cuts it for $8 (I tip double!). Last time in the next chair was a Chinese-American woman around my age getting a perm and she laughed that she was spending lots of time and money to approximate what my hair looks like. I told her that when I was young, I only wanted straight, silky hair. Oh well. You can’t always get what you want, right?
At age almost-67, I am getting some salt-and-pepper on the sides but no dye for me–at least not yet.
I like wearing my hair long (to the bottom of my shoulder blades) but without bangs. I have more style options when my hair is long. If my hair is like my mom’s, I won’t have to worry about the color. She had some white hair in her mid-80’s (at her temples, mostly), but she still had a lot of the original color left.
Our weather doesn’t get much above 100, and if it is that hot, I am wearing a nylon baseball cap, or other sun hat, to protect my head from direct heat. ( I tend to overreact to heat. Last summer, I had heat exhaustion, I soaked my head and drank lots of water, but that was after the fact- it was partially that I was already probably dehydrated, as we had been camping in an area with pit toilets, so I really didn’t want to use them anymore than I had to. I’m also on meds that affect temp regulation. A good thing to ask about, as living in a moderate climate, Drs don’t think to mention)
Short hair is much better for heat, IMO. The weight & heat of longer hair is unbearable.
I cut and color my own hair. It is wavyish, and grows unevenly, so I am often trimming a little at the back, or using a razor to lighten it. So it’s confusing when I get compliments on my hair from people I don’t see often. ( I was a hairstylist in a former life)
They say " I really like it! It looks different!". I have to stop and think what I did differently.
:-/
Some people look much better with longer hair. If you have a larger head/body, it helps to balance it out.
But I would agree that as you age it helps to have it lighter in color, as well as density, so as not to drag down your face. Some women (& men), can look like they are trying too hard to be youthful.
Then again, some look like they don’t know or care what they look like.
My older daughter has fine straight blond hair, and has been wearing it short since college and looks adorable.
She also looked adorable with long hair. The only time we really had trouble with her hair was when she was younger and I had to put it in a bun for ballet at PNB. Lots of hairpins.
Youngest has the hair of a Breck model. I still can’t believe I am related to either of them. :x
I think short hair can really bring out your features, although it is true that there are limited ways to make it look different, if you stay away from color, clips, blow dryers & slime. But if you don’t care about that, or if you are like me and you use cosmetics to change your look, then maybe you don’t need that flexibility. My hair is longer on top & shorter in back, so I can still do a lot with it.
I also let it go grayish blond, but since I often don’t wear makeup, and have blond lashes & eyebrows, I am coloring it back to the strawberry blond color, I had as a teen, but a bit lighter.
I can’t stand bangs either. I used to have shiny straight hair that would not even stay curvy even after a perm. So the most I have is shoulder length long hair. I think it’s the gray hair that makes me look old and not the length, so I will dye my hair every 3-4 months.
Question for you ladies who wear your hair short: do you have cowlicks? If so, how do you deal with them?
I have really bad cowlicks- a few in the front, a few on my crown, and even a few at the base of my skull. Before I grew my bangs long, they would only cover ~1/3 of my forehead because my bangs were going everywhere. My hair stuck up badly when I had short hair. With long hair, it covers them up pretty nicely but I still have some bumps when I put my hair into a looser bun or pony tail (which is my hair style 95% of days… the other 5% it’s down).
I’d like to cut my hair short at some point just to try it but I don’t want to have to deal with the cowlicks. Any advice or should I just stick to the long hair? (If relevant- I have VERY thick, VERY straight hair… you can’t do much with my hair because it won’t hold a curl and it’s silky so a bit hard to style.)
I just solved the problem by going asymmetrical; short on one side, shoulder-length on the other 
I don’t agree with most of what @wis75 said, but she is correct that very long lank hair is not usually very flattering. My daughter has worn long - to the middle of her back - hair for years, parted slightly off center. While she has beautiful, luxurious, and shiny hair - the hair itself is gorgeous, I’m not really crazy about how it frames her face. She just recently went to my stylist, and he cut in a few long layers. It looks so much better - more stylish and the hair really bounces and is not weighed down. Long hair needs to be trimmed almost as often as short hair - the ends need to have a fresh cut on in order for the hair to look healthy and have a bit of bounce.
Romani, I would have to see your hair to be sure, but ask your stylist about using a razor to lighten the areas with the cow licks, so you can make them work for you. Depending on where they are placed, you can use them to give your hair more movement. You may need to use a hair dryer. Hair dryers aren’t evil, they actually can make your hair look healthier.