In case you've ever wondered why western women traditionally have long hair, there's a fairly
simple explanation. Sex. Which is the simple answer for pretty much everything that humans do.
When you look at the history of women's hair styles, the hair itself remains pretty long
throughout the ages, what changes is what we do with it, how we put it up, how we might
cover it or not. Which leads to the question then of why there's been so little variation
up until the twentieth century of women's hair lengths. Like I said at the top of this
video the answer usually traces back to sex. Ask a group of evolutionary psychologists
why women tend to grow their hair long and they would say simple, it's an outward sign
of a woman's fertility in the same way that we think of beards, mustaches and chest hair
as an outward sign of a man's virility. Perhaps we are more innately inclined toward growing
our hair long but that beauty norm has been reinforced over and over again by a lot of
cultural factors as well. If you just look at Christianity, Islam and Judaism, there
are all sorts of directives about women and their hair. In the Bible for instance you
have the verse in first Corinthians about women's long hair being their crowing glory.
And in Islam of course you have the tradition of women wearing hijabs and niqabs to cover
their hair in public. Also in Judaism, married women will traditionally cover their hair
in public. Historically speaking you have that either or of unmarried maiden and her
long flowing hair versus the married woman with her hair pulled up and possibly covered.
Clearly we have long hair being interwoven over time into this overarching femininity
construct which includes things like the acceptable sexuality and sexual behavior of women and
also our social status. It is quite telling when you think about all of that that you
don't have women cutting off their hair in mass until the 1920s with the rise of the
so-called new woman. A more politically-minded and less bathtub gin guzzling cousin to the
flapper of the time, the new woman was radically challenging women's place in society, saying
you know what, I want to be able to vote, I want to be able to work, I want to be able
to get education and I want to be able to strive toward equality with men and one way
that this was outwardly symbolized, this new way of thinking for women and there place
in the world was by cutting their hair off, not because as some people claimed at the
time they were trying to emulate men and de-feminize themselves completely but rather it was a
way of physically shedding off that old woman of the Edwardian and Victorian past. As epitomized
by the former beauty icon the Gibson Girl. Fun fact you also see a similar hair trend
happening among young women in Japan at the same time. That was happening then, why now
is it still headline news if a female celebrity gets a pixie cut. First of all you have to
remember that the bobbed hair trend of the flapper era was exactly that. A trend. Sociologists
today say that even in the twenty-first century a woman cutting her hair off is still such
a deliberate act. It is seen as flouting that kind of normative female sexuality that we
for centuries have reinforced over and over again as the standard. I realize I've been
speaking in broad terms in this video and by broad I should just simply say white and
western, one thing that I didn't bring up in this video because frankly it's a bit more
of a complex conversation that I would maybe want the consultation of other people on before
I go there is the intersection between female beauty standards, hair and ethnicity. That's
something that we need to talk about as well, I'm just not entirely sure yet how to talk
about it. So maybe you can offer some suggestions below. My short-haired ladies out there, props
to you. Why is my hair not short. Because when humidity strikes, my hair puffs.