3 days ago
Why is it still acceptable to abuse men with long hair?
It was a hairy situation. At a drab corporate dinner in a posh hotel basement, one of my fellow diners grew increasingly prickly. My publication had committed some slight against him – perhaps passing him over for one of our phoney awards, more likely misspelling his name.
Unassuaged by my non-apologies, the fur was beginning to fly, though with as much ferocity as Bagpuss might muster. As my assailant stared at my luscious locks cascading onto my chest, he decided things must get personal. He leant across the table and yelled: 'And get your hair cut!'
The advice wasn't without merit; I'm perennially in need of a trim. But the incident spoke to something darker in the soul of British men, borne of frustration, drink, and perhaps subconscious lust. It is one of the last acceptable prejudices in modern Britain: barnets.
The topic is an unlikely point of agreement between white contrarian hipsters and racial justice activists. Earlier this year, a group of the latter launched a petition to end 'hair discrimination' against people sporting afros, braids or dreadlocks, a phenomenon that has 'destroyed' some of those affected, as social entrepreneur Salha Kaitesi recently told the BBC.
Whether facing unwanted contact, comments or professional chastisement, those with traditional black hairstyles argue they should be left alone. 'By discriminating against us, you're literally just saying we shouldn't belong or we shouldn't be who we are,' Kaitesi said.
It's a new spin on a fashionable cause, at least. And as befits the vogue for legal boilerplating, her campaign calls for the Equality Act to be rewritten to make explicit mention of hair discrimination. This is despite the fact that the legislation already covers hairstyles worn because of cultural, family and social customs.
The politics of hair is nothing new. Even two decades ago, my own all-boys secondary school carved out generous exemptions for bewhiskered pupils. While the official policy was not far off short back and sides with a clean shave, South Asian classmates were sufficiently numerous to make a mockery of having any standard at all.
Such liberalism has crept into working life, as a stroll around any office would show you. Even the City of London, that bastion of stuffy privilege, now hosts a vivid array of barnets. The easing of dress codes has coincided with laxer rules about hair, perhaps encouraged by growing diversity in the workplace. Keep it kempt and you can often get away with anything.
Or at least you can most of the time. For while the socially-astute conformists will know to avoid a brush with race relations law, white men with long hair are still fair game for follicular abuse. To paraphrase famous baldy Gregg Wallace, 'men of a certain age' are frequently forthright in expressing their distaste, as if traditional British mores haven't been suffering an unbroken series of catastrophic defeats since the 1960s.
In that decade, lengthier styles on men were indicative of everything from mere idleness to the worst seditions: communism, anarchism and sexual deviancy. Long-haired men at the time report being refused service at pubs, subjected to a non-consensual trim, or in grimmer cases even beaten up.
The correlation between barber abstinence and disobedience is true, of course. As Graham Nash once put it, long hair 'was a flag, it was a symbol of rebellion, of a new way of thinking, of a tantalising of your parents, a finger in the face of convention'. As well as symbolising good music taste and access to decent drugs, it was most of all a threat to the establishment.
Perhaps then the man who heckled my flowing locks outside a Redhill pub some years ago was continuing in that tradition of defending the beliefs of every right-thinking person. Something similar may well be true of the Millwall fans who called out to their Lord and Saviour on seeing a friend of mine the other side of a security barrier – though in fairness, he does rather look like Jesus.
But I suspect at its heart the verbal attacks on the long-hairs owe most to sexual jealousy from the baldies. Certainly many women cannot resist a floppy fringe after a few drinks, if only for the shampoo recommendations.
It is hardly nit-picking to argue that men and women of all colours and creeds should be allowed to wear their hair how they like, if only to prop up one of the few AI-proof industries Britain has left and maintain a steady supply of hirsute tribute acts as rock pioneers die off. The government must act to end this disgraceful prejudice – at least once it's fixed the economy.
