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Why did you guys start growing your hair and when?
I decided to grow it at the begining of my Freshmen year of High school because i wanted a change and always had a liking for long hair.
Michael, for me it was:
I had shaved my head for too many years and wanted to go long again - the only stumbling block was the time it takes, but it's really worth it.
I just wanted to see what it looked like, I had a mullet years ago, but wanted to try the all one length look.
Had to do it before the years wouldn't allow me, but now I am definately a longhair for life.
~ Dave
I started 15 months ago. For 2 different reasons. First, I´m very much into heavy metal so of course, I want my har long. And secondly, I´ve been dreaming of having long hair for years, and now finally decided to go for it!
In 7th/8th/9th grade, I always hated haircuts, because I liked to have a little bit of length, like at least a few inches, but my parents always made me get it cut when it got to be 3 or 4 inches long. They eventually let me let it grow near the end of my freshman year (around April 2005). I wasn't really thinking about really long hair, I just didn't want to get a haircut. So, long hair just sort of happened, and I like it.
Originally, I started growing to relax it.
But after a while, I gave up on that dream, messed with my curls and dye. Then I got into the LHC (long hair community) and had the biggest desire to have long air to play with so I started growing it out.
My last haircut cost as much as the gross national product of a third world nation......and it was horrible !!
Never liked getting haircuts anyway.....
Hair for me up until recently was just something that grew for a few months then got cut, probably due to my parents. So I just got curious and decided to let it grow.
Plus it just seems like the natural, right thing to do and now I really like it...
Kirby
My first memory of getting a haircut was when my father took me to the local town barber shop around age 3 (as best as I can recall). All I remember about it was that I was kicking and screaming and crying and my dad telling me to sit still and shut up... It wasn't long after this experience that my dad bought a "Home Barber Shop Kit", --- which gave my dad full control at-home to butcher my hair (and which I ended up hating even MORE - lol)!!
My dad being an ex-Navy guy (in the US military, stationed over in New Guinea, the Philipines, and generally in the South Pacific during WW1), mandatory summer crew cuts for me and my 4 brothers was a typical way for many men of my dad's generation to think boys should "enjoy" looking like. Unfortuanately for me, I absolutely HATED short hair, --- i ALWAYS wished to have it long, in fact... from as far back as I could remember.
Coming of age during the late 1960s, and graduating from High School in '71, every guy I can remember that had "long" hair back then (mind you, it was NOT nearly as "long" as most of us here at MLHH now have...) was usually one of the "cool" guys in school, --- and coincidentally, the BEST-LOOKING as well (lol)!!
How could long hair NOT be something I would greatly wish for as well? As one MLHH regualr ONCE said here A long ago: "I had a burning desire for long hair, --- and I do mean, BURNING!"
Does that answer your question?
- Ken in San Francisco
Michael, The first time I grew it long I had just gotten out of the service and really was ready for a change from the super short look the Army demanded. Attached is a photo from about 1977.
peace, jonalbear
I grew mine starting when I was 15, because it was the hip thing to do. That was in 1972. Then I decided to grow it really long in the early '80s, after a girl told me it was only long for a guy and not really long.
I started growing it at the end of High School, mostly because it pissed off my mom (it still does)...then I found out I like it.
It came upon me gradually. I never liked haircuts but got them for the same reason I mow my lawn: I don't like doing it but don't think about it much and get it over with because there doesn't seem to be an alternative. One day I realized out of the blue, that if I told the woman who cut my hair exactly how much to take off and where, and watched her to make sure she did what I wanted, I'd get less cut and it would look better. I tried that and it worked. After that, every 8 weeks or so I told her the same thing. but because the time between haircuts did not shorten, my hair gradually got longer since less was getting cut. I didn't realize it at the time but I had begun growing it out, albeit with trims. After 5 or 6 months it was getting pretty long but I still liked it and at what became my last haircut, I told her let's do something crazy and schedule my next one for 4 months in the future. (I half expected to bail out and get it cut sooner.) It became an adventure and was something new, exciting and fun--a cheap mid-life crisis. At the same time, my political and social beliefs were changing and the hair kind of went with that. I decided to take it one day at a time and somewhere in there, around 7 or 8 months after I started, I began to get into hair management trouble and thought to google around thinking a website for guys with long hair would be just the sort of off-beat thing someone would have on the internet. That's how I found mlhh etc. and wound up letting it grow.
This question comes up often and every chance I get I like to respond to it.
I always loved long hair and I always wanted long hair. I always resented being circumcised as an infant and as I got older I wanted a way to express my feelings and I found that the way to do that was to do the very thing that I loved and that was to grow my hair. The very people that hate long hair are usually the ones that favour circumcision. I prefer the natural look. Think about it, it is the religious whackos that hate long hair and it is the religious whackos that keep up the practice of circumcision. I have always stated that long hair and circumcision are closely related, at least here in the U.S.
BTW, when I was growing up, I was always told that only homosexuals had long hair. Ummmmm...Ok, I knew when I was 7 that I was gay! Well, I have finally found peace, but, it took 40 years.
Blaze your own trail.
jeffrey.