Cut Your Hair When You Can Eat It

Why did so many guys wear their hair long well into the Seventies? After all, that was a Sixties thing - right? As in the musical, protests, hippies, etc.

Most of the guys I hung around with in my teens had long hair. How long? Well, one test we used was to comb it over our faces. If it didn't come down at least as far as your nose, you were a hopeless Young Republican wannabe. But most of us wouldn't even consider cutting our hair until it was long enough to reach our mouths. No, most of our parents didn't approve, but that was probably the main reason why we did it.

Probably the most common reason guys gave for long hair was simply that it meant you were cool, as in against Nixon, the Catholic Youth Association, the Vietnam War, station wagons with wood on the sides, the John Birch types (where I grew up the JB Society took out ads in the local paper), the Osomonds, and so on. It also meant that you somewhat identified with rock and roll, bands like the Grateful Dead and a more relaxed way of life, as opposed to the chief opposing camps: the Browns and the Greasers.

Browns (as in "brown-nose," since they were seen as kissing the asses of the teachers) were our generation's nerds. And this was before computers made being a nerd acceptable. If you were a Brown you did not have long hair.

Greasers were just what you would think. They were the disco kings and queens before that era. Greaser guys dressed in leather jackets with fur collars, got into fights and looked like they were auditioning for Sha-Na-Na, their favorite band (although they didn't go for their "Grease for Peace" slogan). Greasers pretended to be rebels but were about as cool as hot coals. A lot studied to become accountants.

One thing that separated Seventies Long Hairs from their Sixties older brothers was that a lot of them had their hair styled. By the mid-Seventies barber shops were giving way to "unisex hair cutters" where they didn't just chop your long hair off. I'll never forget the first time I went to one - my parents forced me. This guy brings me to a sink and starts washing my hair using something that smelled like a strawberry colada. WHAT?!! No guy washes MY hair!! Then he shows me a book of hair styles and asks me to pick one! This wasn't my old Italian barber who smoked a cigar and told dirty jokes. I left feeling humiliated, and was tormented by my friends for days afterwards. Of course, eventually they would go to such a joint, and would in turn be the object of the teasing. But strange as it was to us, the Unisex joints stayed took off. I soon found one staffed entirely by cute women. But I never really liked those places. They seemed...I don't know... Opposed to what we thought we were standing for.