simple explanation. Sex. Which is the simple answer for pretty much everything that humans do.

When you look at the history of women's hair styles, the hair itself remains pretty long

throughout the ages, what changes is what we do with it, how we put it up, how we might

cover it or not. Which leads to the question then of why there's been so little variation

up until the twentieth century of women's hair lengths. Like I said at the top of this

video the answer usually traces back to sex. Ask a group of evolutionary psychologists

why women tend to grow their hair long and they would say simple, it's an outward sign

of a woman's fertility in the same way that we think of beards, mustaches and chest hair

as an outward sign of a man's virility. Perhaps we are more innately inclined toward growing

our hair long but that beauty norm has been reinforced over and over again by a lot of

cultural factors as well. If you just look at Christianity, Islam and Judaism, there

are all sorts of directives about women and their hair. In the Bible for instance you

have the verse in first Corinthians about women's long hair being their crowing glory.

And in Islam of course you have the tradition of women wearing hijabs and niqabs to cover

their hair in public. Also in Judaism, married women will traditionally cover their hair

in public. Historically speaking you have that either or of unmarried maiden and her

long flowing hair versus the married woman with her hair pulled up and possibly covered.

Clearly we have long hair being interwoven over time into this overarching femininity

construct which includes things like the acceptable sexuality and sexual behavior of women and

also our social status. It is quite telling when you think about all of that that you

don't have women cutting off their hair in mass until the 1920s with the rise of the

so-called new woman. A more politically-minded and less bathtub gin guzzling cousin to the

flapper of the time, the new woman was radically challenging women's place in society, saying

you know what, I want to be able to vote, I want to be able to work, I want to be able

to get education and I want to be able to strive toward equality with men and one way

that this was outwardly symbolized, this new way of thinking for women and there place

in the world was by cutting their hair off, not because as some people claimed at the

time they were trying to emulate men and de-feminize themselves completely but rather it was a

way of physically shedding off that old woman of the Edwardian and Victorian past. As epitomized

by the former beauty icon the Gibson Girl. Fun fact you also see a similar hair trend

happening among young women in Japan at the same time. That was happening then, why now

is it still headline news if a female celebrity gets a pixie cut. First of all you have to

remember that the bobbed hair trend of the flapper era was exactly that. A trend. Sociologists

today say that even in the twenty-first century a woman cutting her hair off is still such

a deliberate act. It is seen as flouting that kind of normative female sexuality that we

for centuries have reinforced over and over again as the standard. I realize I've been

speaking in broad terms in this video and by broad I should just simply say white and

western, one thing that I didn't bring up in this video because frankly it's a bit more

of a complex conversation that I would maybe want the consultation of other people on before

I go there is the intersection between female beauty standards, hair and ethnicity. That's

something that we need to talk about as well, I'm just not entirely sure yet how to talk

about it. So maybe you can offer some suggestions below. My short-haired ladies out there, props

to you. Why is my hair not short. Because when humidity strikes, my hair puffs.