new thread
i'm curious as to what prompted all of you to have long hair. was it a specific person? was it spiritual?
for me, it was a friend of my sisters influence. (though she doesn't know it.) when i was 8, my sister had a native american friend who had the most beautiful, shiny black hair that went to her knees. the first time i met her, i went to my mom and said, 'i want hair like nita's.' my hair barely reached my shoulders back then. but that was it for me. i wanted nita hair - although i've never let it grow past my waist.
since that time, i cut my hair short once (up to my shoulders). i cried for a week afterwards and was depressed until it hit mid back again. my long hair has become a big part of who i am. i feel strange when i even just put it up in a bun.
so, tell me your stories, guys! i want to know!
p.s. to the moderators. can i get a portrait put up? i really want to feel like one of the gang. :)
i like this one...
Hi Nic,
for me, it was a natural response to the weirdness or our government. Ok, I am a war protester, and, have also always wanted long hair, which in my youth, was also a sign of protesting another war. That is still not enough, because it is a negative reason.
I just think that men look so much more handsome with the full-on growth of their hair, not restricted by governments or churches' views on what is right. People know what is right for them, and the natural growth of hair for men is a thing of beauty. Guys who can cope with what is involved in growing long hair, are patient, gentle and classy. I am sure, all here would agree!!!!
Almost every guy here looks so improved by their full length of hair, it is amazing. For me, it is what is right, god-given, and hot. I am glad to be finally in a job which appreciates long hair on men, and welcomes it.
-Daniel
In my case it sort of happened that is, I gradually fell into it. I never liked getting my hair cut real short but did it without thinking about it much, then I got the idea to ask for specific small lengths trimmed off. Because the time between cuts didn't change, my hair gradually got longer. I was starting to grow it out without realizing it at first and had no goal but I liked the way it looked. this went on for about 6 months. I still liked it and thought, what the hell, I'll take it one day at a time and see what happens as an adventure. It was fun (and cheap and anything that's both fun and cheap I like). How many things are there that you can do by not doing something? I made my next haircut appointment for four months in advance to allow for a lot of time. By the time the date came up I had decided to just let it go. I canceled the appointment and never went back.
I just liked the look of it. I've gone as short as a crew cut, but I always felt more "comfortable" with long hair. It just seemed more natural to me.
I'm an anticlimax. At first, I just didn't want a haircut.:P I hated how my hair looked after a haircut, so I avoided getting one for as long as I could. I'd never thought about having long hair at the time; I wasn't really thinking about my hair much at all then, except when I was dodging the trips to the barbershop.
Now, over two years later, my hair has become an integral part of me, a fifth limb, as I believe Troy Polamalu once said. I don't even think about having long hair most of the time, just as I don't think about having legs or arms, for it would be absurd to imagine myself in any other way. I'm flexible, so I know it wouldn't be the end of the world to get a haircut, and when my hair is being particularly nasty to me, I wonder if I should just get rid of it. But I know that I love how I look now, whereas I never cared for myself with short hair. More importantly, I feel more in touch with Mother Nature and the divine, more in touch with others, more in touch with myself. Though I'm very shy, I like standing out because of my hair; it's a symbol that I'm not just another face in the crowd.
Ultimately, it might just be hair, and we humans are exaggerating dead follicles into satellite links to God. But there's a Buddhist saying about how once we change on the outside, we do on the inside as well, and I can attest to that. And if none of that matters, I just like how I look more now, and happiness is rarely a bad thing.
Peace
I don't want to sound like a cliche but my main inspiration was Metal Music along with actor Antonio Banderas. When i saw desperado, I immediately wanted long hair. Now that i am in the process, I have realized what i was missing out on. I think me will never wear short hair again :-)
well, to tell the truth...it was like some subconcious part of my mind...I've wanted to have long hair as far back in life as I can remember.
But the thing was that every time I tried there was always something that made me cut it again. Most of my life, it was because of my mother and that she didn't want me to have long hair, so she made me cut it when i was little.
When I was around 17 1/2, I decided that I was gonna grow it no matter what punishment my mom gave me. The Christmas of that year, we were going on a trip to Puerto Rico(I now live there) and my mom wanted me to cut my hair (it was at awkward stage's harshest moments) and told me that if I cut it, she promised to let me grow my hair after that. So I did it. But officially started my long hair journey from that last haircut.
Hi Gio,
What part of PR do you live in, if you don't mind me asking?
I live in La Parguera and work in Mayaguez.
anotherDavid
I live in Bayamon.
Nic, welcome to our little (and still growing!) society!
Very good querie you posit. Definitely for spiritual reasons. Definitely. If you, or anyone else, would like to see just HOW spiritual my connexion IS to my long hair, cut and paste this:
http://WitchVox.com/vn/vn_detail/dt_pa.html?a=usny&id=248671
That's my personal profile webpage at the Witches' Voice website. And although my avatar there pictures me with short hair, it was only an interim phase to my intended goal, waiste length.
They list literally thousands of personals, services, essays, stories, poetry, and pertinent events from the worldwide Neo-Pagan community. Hey. Maybe you'll dig it so much that you'll join, too. And, like here, it's gratis. Enjoy surfing around.
Yours in longhaired camaraderie and "Saoirse agus Anam!",
Quenyan (+;-)}
I read the info on your site but couldn't find out how long hair and your spiritual beliefs were related. Could you explain?
Quite a few reasons :)
1) It looks better on me than short hair cuts.
2) Long hair works like a shield against streotyped people. I no longer have to talk to someone for a few hours to find out how prejudiced they are. Likelihood is they'll either make a nasty comment, and label themselves an as*****, or simply stay away. That way the people I talk to all day I know are at least not prejudiced in one aspect of life.
3) Eventually when I get enough muscle, long hair will look even more awesome.
4) You can feel it in the air!
5) I can pretend to be a computer programmer (I was at one stage but stopped).
6) I now get comments from my teachers like "You look like a russian wrestler" (from my old geography teacher and class tutor) which is comical and nice :P
7) My sister in law has awesome waist length hair, so at least someone in my family has long hair.
8) You can head bang!
9) Save money on haircuts (a moot point really).
10) With long hair you can do a load of interesting styles, brains, etc. Something you can't do with short hair, because there it all depends on the cut.
etc. :P
Brains!? OUCH!!!!!!!!
lol :P
I grew / am growing my hair out because I randomly decided one day that I would listen to myself instead of everyone else and grow it out long.
More reasons:
It feels nice in the breeze.
It makes me feel like I accomplished something.
People think I'm a musician and a computer geek (which i am).
People call me caveman (from the Geiko commercial)
Girls love to play with it (as annoying / painful as it sometimes is ;) )
There's a lot more hair to decorate with red stripes for robotics competitions.
Head banging
Plus, anything else that I can't think of.
Matt B
TRUE THAT!
SMART = SEXY
I THINK THAT GUY IS HOT! (stop laughing)
PAINFUL? WHAT KIND OF GIRLS ARE YOU HANGING OUT WITH WHO CAN'T HANDLE HAIR?!
MAN, HAVE I GOT A STORY ABOUT THAT...
I did it because I am attracted to long haired men, and I guess I wanted to be someone I am attracted to. For some reason long haired men has this strange pull for me... its like a siren's call or something.
You know, I can relate to this. My first experience of this was when I was 13 and saw the movie the NeverEnding Story. I fell in love with Atreyu who was both beautiful and the embodiment of so many virtuous and noble qualities... (see pic)
Once I was in my latter teens I decided that who I wanted to be was a fit, strong, somehow powerful man with long hair. At peace with himself and his nature. Still working on all that, it's probably a life long process, however I feel for the first time in my life that I am approaching "who I want to be when I grow up".. it's a strange feeling.. but a very good one.
I saw that movie too and it hurts me when something bad happens to him. I know looks means nothing compared to one's action but I always feel this strange attraction towards long haired men.
The reasons I wanted long hair. Let's see...
1. Anime/video game influence. Many cute girl characters are depicted with long, beautiful hair, and many of my favorite male characters such as Vincent Valentine, Magus Zeal, Baron DeGhost, D, Sephiroth, Mousse, Alucard, pretty much the entire Belmont clan, etc. have long hair, many of them exceeding waist length.
Seeing as how many of these characters were in the first animes and games I ever watched and played, it most likely had a psychological effect that drew me towards favoring long hair.
2. I find very long hair highly attractive, and very short hair highly unattractive.
3. It goes ever so well with capes, cloaks, and trench coats.
4. I had always imagined, drawn, and dreamed of myself as having long hair.
5. I can hide half of my face with it, which is good when I feel shy or disoriented.
6. It has a peaceful, natural, beautiful, powerful, stunning, charismatic look to it.
isn't it funny how the toughest fighters are depicted with long hair, but in real life guys with long hair are called sissies? that's never made sense to me. do you think anyone would ever walk up to jackie chan and tell him to cut off his shaggy do? (that's an ass kickin' i'd pay to see)
People are so hypocritical. Wrestlers, rock stars, and more than enough fictional characters have long hair and millions of fans, and yet most of those same people would tell a guy in real life to get a haircut and call them by derogatory names.
Like I've said before, I don't think anybody ever told Sephiroth, Alucard, Magus, Vincent, or Simon to get a haircut. If anybody did, they probably found themselves quickly impaled by the Masamune of Jenova's child, sliced into fine ribbons by a damphir with a Crissaegrim, cut into two halves by a mystic with a scythe, filled with gunshots, bitten, electrocuted, and/or chainsawed in half by a tormented ex-turk, or find their bones flying every which way after being oblitherated by a particularly powerful vampire hunter with a whip. Yeah...
Note, also, that Alucard's unreleased form has relatively short but shaggy hair, and as he releases the various stages (control art restrictions, I think it was called), becoming vastly more powerful, his hair grows a good deal longer. It's obviously not an absolute, but the idea of hair length being proportional to power is interesting, to say the least.
Even in Dragonball Z, the third Super Saiyan form is characterized by very long hair, and if we decide not to include GT in the Dragonball canon (which some might very well not do), we can say that it also displays this equation of proportion.
Yay for anime.
Peace
Hi nic,
First of all, I am so gald you have decided to join our community, your photo is a lovely one, and you are 100% welcome here.
To join, there is a form to fill out, Oren will look after your request to get you listed. The form is here.
As to why I started growing my hair, I had moderatelylong hair most of my life, then cut it off when it reached it longest, mid back, in 1999. In early 2004, I started to grow it again, it was a kind of a spur of the moment thing, and actually was just after a dream where I had long hair again. I have not looked back since a trim in April 2004.
All the best,
David
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From the movie "Smoke Signals"
Well, I always thought that boys and men with long hair looked better than with short hair. I never liked haircuts, but I didn't think *I* would look good with long hair. I liked long, straight brown or black hair. My wavy blond hair had a mind of its own, and it was just easier to get regular cuts to try to keep it "straight." On top of that my religious background looked down on long hair and beards.
I started thinking about having long hair myself after seeing it more in movies like "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and "The Lord of the Rings." I watched "Smoke Signals" [screen capture above] more recently after I had decided to let it grow.
Over a year ago I left my lifelong religion, tired of all institutional efforts to control what I do with *MY BODY*, and I haven't had a haircut since. I don't care what other people think. I am learning to love myself as I am, not what I wish I was, and not what other people think I should be. And it only took 39 years to get to this point!
anotherDavid
I want long hair because i think it looks cool, i was mostly inspired by movies and games:)
First .... welcome to the board. Glad to have you here.
I'm growing one heck of a mane for a couple of reasons.
The First one .... it will probably help me as I work with kids/teens that feel like they don't fit into society ... .....neither do I really.
Second; Uncle Sam can't make me cut it anymore ... this war simply needs to end...my 2 cents
Be Blessed...
Tristan
I've never tried it before, so i want to see what i look like with long hair. If i like it, i'll keep it.
It was also a kid in my year called josh whos got awesome hair, though i feel a bit weird saying that now...
I just wondered how I would look with longhair and I liked it so it keeps growing. Over the years (14 or 15) I wonder how much money I saved in visits to the barber. :)
Kevin
Dunno really, I guess i am a rocker from young and always will be, and also it just fels 'natural' and rigtht.
But from a young age then yeah it would be admiring rockstars.
cheers, Hairy Man
My hair is connected to my nervous and circulatory systems and it hurts and bleeds if I cut it.
Combing it must be fun, then.
I have to apply a local anesthetic and take it slow.
A really bad, expensive haircut from a guy named Guido !!
Also, Star Wars', Jedi Master, Qui-Gon Jinn was an inspiration !
Stormy
Well, I will just say I'm in a transition, but enjoying every step. I'd say the conscious idea first appeared in discussion with the driver heading to my interm church's youth group at the time. We were talking about hair and she randomly mentioned that I'd look more artistic with long hair. I didn't really ponder it (I am froma Baptist background), but later when I got a "yearbook" of sorts back, I saw my pictures and realized that my hair hadn't changed in over 10 years! I had already made one transition in my appearance in high school (I now wear almost exclusively Hawaiian shirts), so I decided I was brave enough to do another (I'm not exactly popular). Other big influences were my fascinations with both the Medieval Ages and Christian Classic Rock. Both brought me to a belief that hair was perfectly fine on guys, plus it could look respectable. Then I found you wonderful people, and so it begins . . .
Good morrow all,
-Christian Epp
Howdy Nic ;)
I had always wanted to grow my hair out when I was a little kid but my mom and her parents felt that only little girls should have long hair so I was taken in for weekly cuts until I Was 8. At that time I moved to Oregon to live with my Dad and Stepmom. They were much more supportive about me growing my hair out, they were constantly encouraging me to be comfortable with myself, trying to let me be my own person. So I gradually grew it out by just going longer between trims until I was 12 and my hair was down to my jawline. Unfortunately in October of my 12th year my Dad had an accident and passed away. I went in to get my hair cut a couple days before the service and felt like getting it cut short like my Dad's hair used to be. My step-family wasn't too happy that I decided to cut it so rashly but they understood the reasons (I wanted to be closer to my dad by trying to look like him). After the service I was "encouraged" by my blood relatives in California that I should move back so that I could be with them. Anyway . . . hehehehe I got a bit off track there LoL. Once I got back home to live with my Mom and her parents the regular hair cuts resumed. It wasn't until this past year that I started growing it out without regard to anyone elses opinion on what I should do to make them think I look better. So here I am, 1 year later with shoulder length hair ;) I have also made a vow that I will not cut my hair, at least not until it is waist length (I'm sure I will need to trim a split end or two by then hehehe)
Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it *Grin* Take care Nic!