Hair is a component that can be easily changed in order to alter the physical appearance
of a person.
Haircuts, hairstyles, and even hair dyes can change the perceived age and modify an onlooker’s
perception of a person’s personality and traits.
Men and women are both equally and obsessively conscious about their hairstyles.
In one study, it has been shown that young adult males prefer longer hair on women and
children seem to adore long hair and associate positive features with it such as vitality
and cheerfulness.
Unsurprisingly, according to another research paper, the hair on the scalp can profoundly
affect an individuals’ physical appearance, but as I’ll dissect in this video, potential
aesthetic gains are dependent on face shape and facial features.
This video will be about female hairstyles and research while the next in the series
will be for males to give each topic a decent amount of coverage.
Mesko and Bereczkei conducted an experiment with 77 female subjects with a mean age of
21.9 and a range between 18 to 29.
Photo portraits of the subjects were taken with the hair pulled back from the face and
fixed with clips so that the length and style of the hair were not visible.
This image identified as the "basic" face was used to judge the attractiveness of subjects
on a 1-6 scale by 30 young men.
Based on their judgments, 20 individual faces were selected from the 77 females and categorized
as the 10 most attractive, and the 10 least attractive women.
Following this, a computer program was used to lay different hairstyles on the basic faces
of the selected 20 women.
The hairstyles used were mainly short, medium-length, long, disheveled and an unkempt knot.
However, hair color was kept constant (brown), which was the commonest hair color in Hungary.
Each of the selected 20 women were then presented with 4 different hairstyles (basic face +
3 hairstyles) to a different group of 82 males, who were then asked to judge the attractiveness.
The effect of hairstyles on attractiveness was calculated by subtracting the scores of
the basic face pictures from those of the haired ones.
For instance someone who was rated at 5/10 going to a 6/10 would associate that change
to the hairstyle independent variable alone.
Additionally, males were also asked to rate female faces on 10 different attributes; young,
dominant, independent, feminine, honest, intelligent, healthy, caring, emotional, and self-assured,
using a seven-point Likert scale.
In order to avoid bias based on facial attractiveness, only women that received equal scores for
“basic face” were compared with each other.
Long and short hair were used and each trait was rated from 1-7 and mean scores were separately
constructed for each group.
The results revealed that in general, long and medium-length hair enhanced the subjects’
perceived facial attractiveness and this increase was much more pronounced for women whose faces
were rated as less attractive.
It’s why someone with strong facial harmony like Ruby Rose can pull off the short hair
and make it such a defining part of her aesthetic, but for others cutting it all off can be a
regrettable choice.
From further analysis, it was also established that short and long hair had significant effects
on the perception of personality attributes.
It is evident from this experiment that long hair accentuates mature qualities such as
femininity, intelligence, dominance, and health, while short hair enhances juvenile personality
traits such as honesty, warmth, caring, and emotion.
Therefore, it can be concluded that long and medium-length hairstyles have significant,
positive effects on a woman's attractiveness, whereas other hairstyles (short, bun) will
not significantly influence the values of physical beauty.
They won’t act as a negative alone, but if you lack the gamine facial features needed,
it will work strongly against you.
The authors of that study believed that it agreed with the ‘good genes’ model which
is a recurring topic whenever we talk about facial aesthetics.
It suggests that facial traits that suggest strong genetic resistance and health such
as symmetry and dimorphism are seen as more attractive.
In this case, feminine dimorphism would imply having long, healthy hair which is physiologically
costly to grow and maintain.
Much like a male peacock and its tail feathers, it’s attractive because it’s so impractical.
Another psychological model to consider is Cunningham’s central face theory, where
Cunningham et al found that central facial features such as the eyes and chin are more
important than peripheral ones.
For women, this includes big eyes and a small chin and for men, wide vertically narrow eyes
and a wide chin.
From the Bereczkei and Mesko’s hair experiment we just covered, this agrees with the results
as the most preferred portraits had neotenous central facial features of big eyes and mature
peripheral ones such as long hair.
However, it should be noted that hairstyle by itself did not reverse the original evaluations
based only on facial features.
Different hairstyles did not greatly affect the physical appearance of the attractive
subjects as attributes such as health, femininity, and sexiness were highly rated regardless
of the hairstyle.
So it seems that their physical beauty is primarily decided by facial features, and
hairstyle only seems to have a secondary influence.
People of different cultures around the world have distinct differences associated with
hair and hairstyles for various reasons which could either be genetic, cultural, or religious.
The main limitation of this study was that it did not focus on such cultural and historical
factors.
It has been suggested that in females, expressive facial features that facilitate nonverbal
communication such as a large smile, dilated pupil, raised eyebrow, etc., are considered
to be more desirable as they contribute to the attractiveness of the face and can convey
feelings of excitement, arousal, friendliness and warmth.
Even though hair length and styles are not expressive features, they can alter how facial
expressions are perceived.
. To look at how different cultures respond
to hair, a study was conducted by Cunningham and colleagues based on responses of individuals
from four different ethnic-cultural groups to photos of women from more than 13 countries.
Hairstyle, as a variable, was expected to show a wide spectrum of results across cultural
groups as it could be controlled and more relatable according to the respective culture
and fashion.
According to the results, Asian, Hispanic, and White judges were remarkably consistent
in their judgments of attractiveness and provided similar ratings of Hispanic, Asian, and White
female faces.
Faces with juvenile features such as large eyes and small noses along with sexually mature,
narrower female faces with smaller chins; expressive, higher eyebrows, dilated pupils,
larger lower lips, larger smiles, and well-groomed, full hair received higher ratings from all
groups.
. The study also found that hair length and
width was an important factor for all of the judges.
Both black and white judges rated these two factors as having equal correlation to attraction,
higher than your stereotypical features such as cheekbone prominence or eyebrow thickness.
In contrast, non-Asians placed hair length and width at lower importance than Asians
but all still reasonably significant.
While these studies look at straight hair, many people of colour actually have curly
or kinked hair which is harder to determine as there’s a lack of cohesive research on
it.
Older women very commonly curl and cut their hair shorter to increase apparent hair density
which research has proven does work.
In one study by Bernhard et al it was strongly decided that curled hair made the wearer look
years older likely because of older women adopting it and thus by all of the fitness
theory less attractive than straight, but only by a small margin.
Instead all variants of the short hair, be it wavy or straight all rated equally low.
Now there’s a very clear limitation with this study in that it’s using blond, Caucasian
models who typically have straight hair.
The curly hair would go against the familiarity model of attractiveness for that group as
it’s something out of the norm and thus more unfamiliar.
In that same vain, curly hair on women of colour is seen as more attractive and better
suited as it shows up in those ethnic groups more commonly.
However, there is an underlying problem that people of colour face in wearing their natural
hair.
Studies have shown that curly hair is seen as less professional.
Hairstyles such as braids, cornrows, afros and dreads were recently added to the NYC’s
human rights guidelines to prevent discrimination.
Granted that wearing brightly pink mohawks to work is also unprofessional for just about
anybody, the analogy isn’t quite the same for black people with kinky hair as hair texture
was traditionally used as a means of justifying discrimination.
While getting a reverse mohawk like Bexy is an act of self expression and nothing more,
Afrocentric hairstyles are the ones best suited to the curly hair type and more of a necessity
than the former.
In a 2020 Duke University study by Rosette and colleagues, they found that black women
wearing natural hairstyles, such as braids, were less likely to get a call back in interviews,
were seen as less professional and received more negative evaluations which was repeated
in different trials.
In contrast, when working in a creative based job such as an ad agency this mattered much
less.
The authors noted that this could be part of the reason for women of colour in general
choosing to straighten their hair.
A University thesis by Kalen Kennedy explains this phenomena using Heilman 1983 ‘lack-of-fit
model’ where black women with afrocentric hairstyles are seen as more dominant and this
goes against the feminine status quo of being submissive in the workplace.
This is an oversimplification of a larger issue, but does highlight that hair is not
only a grooming tool of facial attractiveness but one of self-expression and social mobility.
So to summarize the content, there is a large body of work that supports the theory that
longer hair is seen as more attractive because it’s feminine.
People like Ruby Rose are not the exception, if anything they support the theory proposed
as hair is just another facial feature.
Someone with strong bone structure can pull off any look as I’ll explain in the next
episode on men’s hairstyles.
The specific way you style your hair, be it wavy or straight, is dependent on the familiarity
model.
Whatever hairstyle and colour is more commonly present in your ethnicity is the one that
would complement your features the best as that’s what the cross-cultural research
shows.
Judges are better at appreciating beauty when the participant looks like what they expect
the phenotypical face to look like.
For instance, for African women of colour, dark curlier hair, for East and South asians
straight jet-black, for northern Scandinavians, wavy blonde and so on.
Although not scientifically proven, I’d guess that someone with attractive facial
harmony may actually benefit from going against this norm in branding themselves as unique
which is exactly what Ruby Rose and Amber Rose have done.
This is very commonly seen in modelling where the faces look nothing like you would expect,
but for someone of average or low attractiveness the research points to taking advantage of
these ideal hairstyle traits to their benefit as it is effective.
If you would like to get your facial aesthetic analyzed, you can order a report at qoves.com
and see how your hairstyle influences your face.