Long hair question

[jerkit]

Inspired by a guest post by Stevie on Zsu's blog: what constitutes "long hair"? Is there a specific length that is needed for a woman to be holy? Does it vary by fundie flavor?

[silverspoons]

My stylist has always said if your hair goes below your should blades, it is considered long hair. I have long hair and have been slowly cutting it shorter each year so I have talked about it a lot with my stylist. Of course my stylist is a outspoken gay NYC trained stylist so maybe the fundie definition is different.

[snuggles911]

I grew up in the Pentecostal church. Women weren't supposed to cut their hair at all. Some of the women in the congregation wore bangs,which were considered OK, but most women wore their hair to their backsides. Older women tended to wear buns or other updos. Coloring ones hair was frowned upon as was wearing makeup.

I didn't cut my hair until I went away to college, started dating a guy who liked short hair, and got a chin-length bob.

Most of the fundie churches I'm familiar with expect women to have long hair, but consider anything shoulder length or longer long enough. They don't seem to have a problem with women getting their hair cut and styled or dyed.

[jerkit]

I grew up in the Pentecostal church. Women weren't supposed to cut their hair at all. Some of the women in the congregation wore bangs,which were considered OK, but most women wore their hair to their backsides. Older women tended to wear buns or other updos. Coloring ones hair was frowned upon as was wearing makeup.

I didn't cut my hair until I went away to college, started dating a guy who liked short hair, and got a chin-length bob.

Most of the fundie churches I'm familiar with expect women to have long hair, but consider anything shoulder length or longer long enough. They don't seem to have a problem with women getting their hair cut and styled or dyed.

Were trims allowed? And if they are expected to never cut their hair, is there some kind of physically limit hair reaches? Since I've never seen a Pentecostal woman with a train of hair dragging behind her feet, I would assume so.

[Talitha Cumi]

Were trims allowed? And if they are expected to never cut their hair, is there some kind of physically limit hair reaches? Since I've never seen a Pentecostal woman with a train of hair dragging behind her feet, I would assume so.

My mom always had our hair cut short, no matter how much I pleaded to have beautiful long princess hair. So when I grew up, I let it grow, wanting it to at least get to my waist. It stopped about 4 inches shorter than that and would never grow longer for all the years I had it.

[Georgiana]

I grew up in the Pentecostal church. Women weren't supposed to cut their hair at all. Some of the women in the congregation wore bangs,which were considered OK, but most women wore their hair to their backsides. Older women tended to wear buns or other updos. Coloring ones hair was frowned upon as was wearing makeup.

I didn't cut my hair until I went away to college, started dating a guy who liked short hair, and got a chin-length bob.

Most of the fundie churches I'm familiar with expect women to have long hair, but consider anything shoulder length or longer long enough. They don't seem to have a problem with women getting their hair cut and styled or dyed.

I've seen the "below the shoulder" rule as well. But no cheating! So if you style it in curls, you need to make sure you have a few extra inches so that the curls don't make it too short.

I've always wondered how they would handle super-curly hair/Black hair. My sister's hair curls up almost a foot, so it is barely shoulder length if she doesn't straighten. Guess this hasn't really come up, because they are a very scarily homogeneous group.

[louisa05]

There were a lot of Pentecostals/Charismatics at the Christian school I taught at. They seemed to consider it okay for older married women to have short hair, but not unmarried women or younger married women. There were no specific rules about hair for women and female students at the school (other than it could not be dyed an "unnatural" color--i.e. not blue), but you could easily run afoul of what the expectations were. One younger teacher went "too blonde" for their tastes and was told to "fix it". And I had my shoulder length hair cut to chin length bob which started a major uproar including a meeting with a board member about why I had decided to never marry and if I understood marriage was God's plan for women. Apparently, in their minds, no man will marry a woman with short hair.

Oddly enough, I met and married my husband with my hair shorter than that. It is long now, but now I'm of an age when they would approve of the previous style...

[snuggles911]

Were trims allowed? And if they are expected to never cut their hair, is there some kind of physically limit hair reaches? Since I've never seen a Pentecostal woman with a train of hair dragging behind her feet, I would assume so.

I don't know if trims were officially allowed, but my mom would trim our hair occasionally to get rid of the split ends. One thing I didn't mention in my OP is that the congregation was almost entirely Hispanic and Italian. Most women had thick hair (wavy or straight) that could grow quite long. I don't think the pastor would have held it against someone if their hair only reached their shoulder blades.

I've seen photos of women in traditional Pentecostal churches with their hair to their knees, but I've only known one woman who could grow her hair that long.

There is an African American woman in my neighborhood who grew up in a similar church. She believes that women should keep their hair long and wears hers in a very long braid that she often coils into a bun.

Also, I'm not sure if the no-cutting rule is something that's common within Pentecostal churches, or if my pastor followed it b/c he was a Bible literalist.

[veron1que]

Were trims allowed? And if they are expected to never cut their hair, is there some kind of physically limit hair reaches? Since I've never seen a Pentecostal woman with a train of hair dragging behind her feet, I would assume so.

As someone who goes years at a time without trimming, I can tell you hair reaches a threshold (it's the point at which hair falls out at the same rate it grows to that length, so say hair reaches 3 ft and falls out, the hair will never get past 3 ft no matter how time it grows.) The max length ones hair can reach varies by person to person, but I'd say most people can get hair to their butt.

[keen23]

As someone who goes years at a time without trimming, I can tell you hair reaches a threshold (it's the point at which hair falls out at the same rate it grows to that length, so say hair reaches 3 ft and falls out, the hair will never get past 3 ft no matter how time it grows.) The max length ones hair can reach varies by person to person, but I'd say most people can get hair to their butt.

My hair easily will get to my butt. My older two daughters have the same type of hair. My poor youngest has thin hair that won't grow longer than her shoulder blades, and even then it's a wispy mess.

[yetanothermeg]

I like my hair to just cover my boobs. Now that I'm older....I have to wear my hair longer!

[OkToBeTakei]

I like my hair to just cover my boobs. Now that I'm older....I have to wear my hair longer!

:lol: :lol:

Aww God love you, you gave me a belly laugh!!!

[FloraKitty35]

My hair stops growing at my shoulders and I now shave my head and wear a short red wig that I love and gets lots of compliments on.

[dawbs]

Were trims allowed? And if they are expected to never cut their hair, is there some kind of physically limit hair reaches? Since I've never seen a Pentecostal woman with a train of hair dragging behind her feet, I would assume so.

The limit varies a LOT by person. There's the 'terminal length' beyond which it generally gets broken off, so it often naturally just stops at a certain point.

(mine gets ratty looking if I forget to cut it until it hits my waist. But if I didn't care about the ends being ratty and tried to do it, I'm fairly sure I could get it longer--but I don't. From experience, i will say that hair long enough to sit on is a PITA and a toilet hazard)

(this is a reminder that I need my hair cut so I don't look fundie :)

[Jinger Jar]

My in-law's house is down the street from a Pentecostal church. There are some women there with the most gorgeous long, long hair. Sometimes I'm tempted to attend a service so I can quiz them about their hair care routines. :lol:

[Loveday]

:lol: :lol:

Aww God love you, you gave me a belly laugh!!!

It took me a minute to get this, and now I can't stop laughing!

[jerkit]

Right before my wedding, I had hair that covered my tots. I cut it 2 days after the wedding. There's something about a wedding that makes a woman want to chop all her hair off.

[keen23]

Right before my wedding, I had hair that covered my tots. I cut it 2 days after the wedding. There's something about a wedding that makes a woman want to chop all her hair off.

Having a baby makes you want to chop it all off too. My most drastic hair cuts have happened two to three months after having a baby.

[VeryNikeSeamstress]

Having a baby makes you want to chop it all off too. My most drastic hair cuts have happened two to three months after having a baby.

Doesn't hair grow faster when you're pregnant?

I used to try to grow my hair out naturally, but the longest it wold get would be to the back band of my bra. Since my hair is curly and quite fine, it would seem to take forever to grow, and in order to keep it looking nice, I had to trim it and layer it very frequently. The longest I've had my hair in recent years is just past shoulder length, and even at that length I'm always pinning it up because I don't like the way it feels on the back of my neck.

[micatite]

I'd think the 'you can't cut it at all' people would look terrible. After a certain point, without trims to handle it, you'd have nothing but a mass of split ends. And then the hair doesn't grow worth a darn anyway.

[RachelB]

I've seen the "below the shoulder" rule as well. But no cheating! So if you style it in curls, you need to make sure you have a few extra inches so that the curls don't make it too short.

I've always wondered how they would handle super-curly hair/Black hair. My sister's hair curls up almost a foot, so it is barely shoulder length if she doesn't straighten. Guess this hasn't really come up, because they are a very scarily homogeneous group.

I had very long (varying between waist-length and butt-length) hair for quite a while. I didn't realize until I cut it that I've got a wave every 4 inches, more or less. When my hair is close to terminal length, its weight pulls the wave out, and it won't hold styled curls, either. (No Gothard hair for me!) When my hair is buzzed, in a pixie, or bobbed, it's too short for the wave to manifest.

My brother's hair is much more tightly curled than mine. When he grew it long for a while in high school and college, it initially grew out rather than down. I don't know if the weight of his hair eventually would have pulled the curl out; he gave up growing it out shortly after he was able to pull it into a ponytail.

[micatite]

If it's a really tight curl, probably not. I went to school with a girl who had total 'Merida-from-Brave' type wild (red) curls down past her butt and even when she braided it, which she did most of the time because it was a total PITA to deal with on a day to day basis, it would curl in on itself within the braid. So hair that was past her behind when carefully brushed or picked out fully, would kink in on itself so much that it came to mid-back-length instead.

Natural soft waves are another matter. The weight will pull that right out after a certain point. Mine does. Right now it's long enough that it waves when I first wash it, but after about two days of brushing, it's pretty straight except right at the very ends where it does a flip (but not all of it flips the same direction, dang it!)

[salex]

We have pictures of one of my grandmothers when her hair was probably past her knees, in her youth. My baby sister liked long hair from the time she was tiny, and wore it long. When she was healthy and young, it grew and was fairly thick and she kept it about mid thigh length til she got to her thirties--at which point she started trimming it a bit more and a bit more. Now, it comes to the middle of her back, and is much easier to deal with. When it was long, she rarely wore it down, except for church or going out. Our methodist church never cared about hair lenght.

[Just_Jane]

my family isn't fundie so no one cared about hair length. I didn't have long hair until the last couple of years when it was about mid back length. I felt so hopeless clueless about it that I got it cut just below shoulder length a few months ago. I'm much happier. When I was getting my hair cut my stylist showed me pictures of another client of hers that has super long to the knees length hair. My stylist says when hair gets that long it actually will begin to recede at the hairline. I wonder if that's why some have such thick bangs as a way to cover up a receding hairline.

[HoneyBunny]

That's totally me. My hair can be 8" long, but it's a Bozo style. Frizzy, curly, coarse and thin. It's the worst hair in the entire world. I wear it 3" long or less and highly shaped, and let it do its thing. Its only advantage is while it never looks good, it never looks really bad either. I've often wondered about having my hair as a Fundie. I'd have to keep it so contained in a ponytail/bun that it would look even thinner on top. Only my curl saves me from looking half-bald.