In the past 100 years there has been a numerous amount of changes in the world, especially with technology.

However the main change that I’m talking about is not something that has been invented or even created. The main change that I’m referencing is how mens hairstyles have changed. Just think about this for a minute.

Whenever you turn on any movie or see any drawings/paintings from the colonial era all the way back to biblical times notice that a majority of the men had one thing in common, long hair.

So what happened? When did this huge shift in our major appearances change so drastically? What caused this change? These are all things I’ll be diving into in this article.

When did short hair start becoming the norm?

This is something very hard to put an exact date on because of the lack of recording material back then.

Looking back though long hair on men was still very popular during the American revolution but as you continue on through the history books you tend to see it much less by the time civil war took place.

Knowing that long hair (shoulder length long) seemed to start dying down as a major trend around the early 1800s. However long hair on guys did have a flash of revival around the 1960s that lasted until around the 1970s.

Unfortunately the long hair on men during this time frame wasn’t perceived like it was back in the past. During this time if you had long hair it could be noted that it was more of a rebel type of mentality or being of the hippy genre.

Once the 90’s hit seeing men with long hair was very rare and still remains true to this day even though as I type this now, I do believe long hair on guys is slowly starting to make a comeback.

So what caused men to start wearing their hair shorter?

short hairstyles form ne. How did it start

Since we have no narrowed down a timeline on when long hair started to lose its popularity now let’s look into why this happened. Let’s look at around the time long hair started to disappear, the civil war.

Something many people don’t know is that many lives were lost between both the confederate and the union due to disease not battle related injuries. With that said, a lot of the diseases could be linked back to lice related issues as mentioned in records from soldiers in the war.

The lice was a huge issue back then from unclean living conditions which are expected during war.

Knowing what we do today we really only see one type of lice which is in our hair. This could have been a main reason for men cutting off their hair to possibly rid themselves of places for lice to be.

A side note that lice was also mentioned to being a big reason for men getting rid of as much hair as possible off of their heads while stuck in the trenches during WW1.

In terms of outside related reasons why men started having shorter hair this is the only thing I could find that would be the culprit behind it.

Lets fast forward to today’s time.

When did long hairstyles for men stopped being trendy

Alright, Alright I hear your enough of the history lesson. We’re not in the trenches here so why are men still keeping their hair short?

Three reasons:

  1. Short hair looks more masculine (usually, some exceptions)
  2. Easier to get a job.
  3. Long hair requires many factors to be able to pull the look off for a guy.

Point number one speaks for itself but there are some exceptions to this rule.

An exception is think of Aragon from Lord of the Rings he looks truly bad ass with his long hair. Seeing him in photos without it has completely changed that for him, also him not carrying around a sword but I’m getting off topic here.

Now point number two truly bothers me because if someone keeps their hair clean and has a nice professional look about them then they should be able to wear their hair the way they want but sadly this isn’t the case for many places, especially in the corporate world.

For most corporate type jobs having long hair will usually be a no go for getting hired.

Number three kinda touches a bit on number one in a way.

To be able to pull off long hair you have to have a decent jawline, doesn’t have to be perfect but at least one that is noticeable in my opinion.

Second of all you need to have some sort of muscle mass on you. This actually plays a big overall effect on how you look with long hair (feminine or manly).

This part isn’t 100% set in stone or anything because some guys I’ve seen to be the exception to this rule but for the most part yes, being in physical shape drastically improves how long hair looks on you.

To wrap this article up there are many reasons why guys have short hair these days but it is mainly related to outside opinion type of decision making unlike more of a survival thing that warranted men to start getting shorter hair in my opinion.

Thanks for sticking with me til the end, hope you enjoyed the article!

 

LONGHAIRFORMEN 150About The Author: Nate runs longhairformen.com and has been wanting to grow his hair long since he seen the movie Troy where Brad Pitt had long hair when he was playing Achilles. After beginning his hair growth journey he learned there was more to it than just a waiting game which is why he created his site to help educate others on how to get longer hair.

You can also find Longhairformen.com on twitter: @longhairformen