✂️ Why Do Men Have Short Hair?

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This is a post about hair… just stick with me for a second.

For most of human history, long hair wasn't a "women's thing." Men and women across ancient Greece, Viking societies, many Indigenous cultures, and even European nobility often wore their hair long. Short hair for men became common largely because it was practical—soldiers couldn't have enemies grabbing it, sailors and factory workers found it safer, and later, modern militaries made cropped hair the norm.

Women's long hair, meanwhile, became tied to ideas of beauty, fertility, and status. Maintaining long hair signaled time, health, and resources. Over centuries, what began as practical differences slowly hardened into cultural expectations.

Historian Kurt Stenn explores this evolution in Hair: A Human History, showing how hair has always been about far more than appearance—it's been a signal of identity, power, religion, class, and belonging.

The takeaway? 

Culture has a remarkable ability to disguise itself as biology. Many things we assume are "natural" are actually customs that have been repeated for so long they simply feel inevitable.

Thanks for reading,

Andrew

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