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Women almost always have nice looking hair. Why don't we simply do as they do? Use expensive products, use hair straighteners every day, get trims every 6 weeks, etc etc. I get sick of advice like this:
-no trims until it's as long as you want, despite the presence of split ends and other damage
-no blow drying or straightening, it will make your hair look bad
-no coloring/bleaching
-use weird oils and treatments
-only wash once a week
-NO SILICONES, they leave residue (the residue is the desired effect guys)
-bad hair day? cover it up rather than apply some sort of management product
It just doesn't make sense to ignore the wisdom of those who truly know long hair.
As far as I know, most women have damaged hair and pretty dry ends etc from all the products and colouring. I´ve heard of many men that get comments like: "Ahh, you have such greaty hair! How do you do it?". And what do they do? Nothing! They use none of the "high tech" products.
My hair is just as good as the girls, and I use only conditioner and shampoo.
What? The advice is similar on the LHC, where the user-demographic is women for the most-part.
they know that it grows, it's hair. When it leaves the head its dead, after that what you do to it can wreck it or kee it nice looking.
Most of all it is in the genes your born with amazing hair or somewhere bellow that.
Trims just are that ...trimming hair to make it even, it does not grow even (for most)
expensive products have been debunked for years, but if you like it so be it.
I don't think there is any big secret to hair. it grows :)
Paul
I bet you would find that many of us do exercise care with our hair that follows a path perhaps more down the middle than these two extremes.
I would NEVER wash my hair only once a week. I wash it every day, and condition, and the products that I find work best for my hair are pretty expensive.
I do typically get my hair trimmed 2-3 times a year to keep the appearance neat across the bottom, otherwise, all hair the same length.
I would also NEVER straighten my hair if it were terribly curly. As it is my hair is wavy. I subscribe that we should learn to love the kind of hair we actually grow. Occasional experiments with straightening and curling is one thing, but routine is pretty damaging.
I don't care for messing looking, ungroomed hair on a man any more than I would on a woman.
Bob
Most women are envious of the condition of my hair. Trying to get there quicker and not being happy with mother nature is the way of this consumer society. I'll stick to the way "I" do it and let THEM be the ones with color, heat and chemical damage.
It really depends on what you consider long. To grow it to only shoulder blade length, you will likely get there even without taking good care of it. Your hair quality will be poor with a lot of damage. The average woman has hair of about shoulder blade length, and yes, many of them torture their hair with dyes and hot hair dryers. As a result, most of those women have to settle for hair of that length, due to damage.
OTOH if you want really long hair, you need to take good care of it. My hair is 2 1/2 to 3 times as long as the typical woman has, and yes, I take good care of it.
Scott
...
Most of that stuff came from the advice of women longhairs who truly know long hair. Stuff like that will onlyl make your hair damaged (though cones after sometimes favored).
If you want to fry your head, be my guest. Ignore our advice. It's not like we can STOP you, or even care to. XD
Women are all the time telling me how beautiful my hair is and then turn around and try to give me advice on how to take care of it, should trim it etc... AFTER they've asked HOW I do it?? Most women don't make much sense to me anyhow but all I tell them is *My hair is twice as long as yours, It got that long by NOT doing it your way.
I wouldn't follow anyone's advice on hair care unless they had hair as long as or longer than mine! Women I know that have hair as long or longer than I do typically take care of it the same way.. Wash/Condition and leave alone!
If one wants damaged / dry hair... then follow the advice of most women ;-P
Tom
All I wanted to say has been already said.
Follow your way ! Is it what you want to hear ?
... but of course, I'm certainly in the wrong way :)
Vivien
I think a lot of those women you described have hair that looks fake ... like Barbie Doll hair. The products give their hair an alien luster.
AN EXAMPLE:
Have you ever used that liquid stuff on your car windshield that causes the rain to bead? It's really cool at first. But when it starts to wear off your windshield is constantly "fogged" with the stuff. You can't get it off. The only way to fix the problem is to put more of the liquid stuff on. Your windshield is addicted to the liquid!!
I think the hair products and routines you described do the same to your hair. It looks great at first. But then, it starts looking bad until you apply more products and routines. Your hair becomes addicted.
I don't want that kind of beauty for my hair. I'd rather have the REAL beauty that comes naturally ... so I don't have to be chained to fake chemicals and rountines.
DavidH
i'm pretty sure this was my favorite quote from this whole message. those who 'truly know' long hair don't straighten or blow dry daily. nor do they use chemical dyes or bleach.
take another look. the women who use all of those products generally don't have hair past thier shoulder blades. and what they do have isn't all that healthy. it's not possible to grow healthy hair much further than that with the use of all of that crap. that's how my hair was back in the day when i did stuff to it all the time. since i quit, my hair grows quite long and people compliment it all the time. i say what i say because i 'truly know' long hair.
This is more or less what we preach all the time on the board
just let it grow and leave it alone. So many people have to play
with their hair. "I want to straighten it, I died it black, I
did this, I did that." When people have to experiment it
frequently ends up a disaster. Read a bit further down at
wintersuns post, and by far not the only "Oh no what have I done"
post.
We've even had a person who had to cut his hair due to issues
with dyiing it black and after re-growing for over a year he did
it again. When one does silly things like that expect your mates
to take the piss, beacuse they will.
Let your hair grow as it is if you have to fiddle with it prepare
for the worst.
Kevin
People grow their hair long for all kinds of reasons. What is important to me is that my hair look the way I want it to look. Everything has a trade off and I am totally comfortable with my daily washings, use of silicones and trimming.
The all natural let-it-be school of thought is perfect for some, but not for me!
I don't recall that I was giving YOU any advice.
Kevin
And I don't recall saying that YOU were.
Meow!
Meow? That must be how they talk over at the Long Haired Cathouse.
Kevin, you must NOT start the can opener.
Bill
You're too kind Bill, too kind. >:P
Hey, I try to be!
I was just pointing out that "meow" means nothing over here, so you may want to use some other phrase to express what you wanted to say.
Bill
And here I thought you were accusing me of being a "lady of negotiable virtue" :P
Yikes no! I was just playing around with the various meanings of the word "cat". All "meow" means to me is it's time to feed the cat.
Bill
The Long Haired Cathouse?!?!
OMG, that's the funniest thing I've heard all week!
Umm. It really depends on your goals. If you are aiming for midback or shorter, and your growth rate is approx. normal, you can get away with a lot of less than gentlest routines (bleach and dye, straightening, hot blowdryer...well...not so much) but what products and routines you use probably won't make a great deal of difference.
If you are aiming for lengths like classic...well, you will probably want to look for the very gentlest routines, whatever those may turn out to be for your hair.
And I will argue that there is an amazingly large amount of incredibly damaged hair on women...at lengths not much past pixie sometimes.
Friends,
Look carefully. I see some long haired women, but more long haired men. Women tend to avoid traditional shingled up the back cuts, but have various kinds of fluffy layered styles that look stereotypically feminine, but are in fact short.
Men call these lengths the awkward stage, because they do not go through the steps to fluff it out. In fact most men do anything possible to avoid fluffing it out.
Men tend to want a sleek look if they have long hair.
More I could say on this topic, but count. Most women have differently styled short hair than most men. But are there really more long haired women than men?
In spite of the tyranny of the fashion industry which decrees that men's hair must be "mussed up," I still see more long hair on men than women.
I think a movement is underfoot, and our cultural expectations may be blinding us.
Mercy! Even the Paul Mitchell ads in a recent Sunday NYT featured a man with a tail.
Caledonian
The answer is that there are guys here who really don't care what their hair looks like (regarding the condition of their hair). Their main (and sometimes only) goal is just length, regardless of how bad it might look.
But I opine that this is exactly why so many people have a bad opinion about long hair on men.
Heck, I wouldn't like women with long hair if most of them had hair like the majority of longhaired guys I see where I live.
I get comments from women telling me something like this..."There are very few men with long hair who actually take care of it. I usually don't like long hair on men, but yours is beautiful. If more longhaired guys took care of their hair like you do, it might change my opinion." I usually take such comments as compliments.
But each man is entitled to do whatever they want with their hair.
But it's difficult for me to believe when I see a guy with long hair in awful condition that they actually think it looks good. But they must. Why else would they continue to wear it long?
I want to say "either take care of it, or please cut it!"
I think the same of the very few women I see with long, non-attractive hair.
I agree with the original poster. Most women have great looking hair even while growing it. Most men don't. The difference is how they care for it.
Stepping off my soapbox now..............
Most women who do that have artificial looking hair and if they ever go a day without straightening it, it looks terrible.. their hair is in such poor condition that they have to straighten it or it looks dreadfull.
Ryan you seem to be a very ignorant and commenting on somthing you obviously dont understand yet.
Straighten your hair every day and do what 'most women' do for the next to years and post a picture proving you have nicer hair than half the people here.
I followed what was said on this site, and you can see my hair isnt that bad.. pictured below.
It looks 'good' because its all processed but god forbid you see the hair without being processed after it dries after a normal shower. My mother has that problem, and it looks god awful unless she processes it again. Its a vicious circle.
I almost think I should be insulted.
I have to laugh at this too. Just today I was out with a few other women and all of us were sporting ponytails or bandanas because the damp weather was giving us all a "bad hair day."
Mouse