I hope I've backpedalled enough that I can bow out of this. I don't think that discussions about appearance and fashions have much relationship to English usage, but I was tempted to throw in an alternative theory to merely the physical properties of hair. May we talk about men's hair_style_s then, in English usage? Why, for example, is a mullet so called? And should there be a comma in 'short back and sides'?

The explanation I've seen is that women tend to keep the same hair length as in their youth (say, age 20). Women *used* to have very, very long, never-cut hair, worn in buns and French twists, and I can remember one of my grandmothers wearing such.  But since the 1920s, young women cut their hair short (the famous bob ), and all the elderly women we have seen for some time were young in the 1920s, 30s, and now 1940s. Therefore they have short hair, usually curled. So, just wait. Long hair came back into fashion in the late 1960s, so someone who was 20 in 1970 was born in 1950 and will be an old lady in 2020 or so. Believe you me, old age is not going to cause me to suddenly adopt a 1940s-_style_ perm any more than it will a bun and wire-rimmed spectacles. Bottom line: expect to see more old women with long hair. Donna, I am fascinated by your logic. However, I observe that, among my long-standing female friends and family members, those who had long hair in the 1960s (the ones I envied, as my own is so curly it is impossible to grow long) now, without exception, wear it short. My aunt who died last year at the age of 91 kept her long hair (which became thin and brittle) pinned up in a bun until the end. Is it not the 'Miss Haversham effect'?  Older women with long grey hair tend to look like bag ladies the moment it becomes dishevelled.  I'll offer Page's corollary to Richoux's conjecture - older women with long hair tend to dye it. Mike Page, Let the ape escape for e-mail

Richard Fontana < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it wrote ... (Regarding hair length, I've noticed that many women seem to believe that once they reach a certain age they are required to have fairly short hair; this is something I really don't understand.) It is neither a belief nor a requirement. It is simply a case of which _style_ an older woman finds more flattering to herself and many of us older women, including some whose hair was quite long for a quite long time, find longer hair no longer appealing.

It is neither a belief nor a requirement. It is simply a case of which _style_ an older woman finds more flattering to herself and many of us older women, including some whose hair was quite long for a quite long time, find longer hair no longer appealing. It may be the association with a pointed hat and broomstick, but I may have cause and effect reversed. Best regards,

I'll offer Page's corollary to Richoux's conjecture - older women with long hair tend to dye it. I have observed the opposite.  A sufficiently older woman with long hair is someone willing to (or, perhaps, in a position to) defy or flout social convention, and therefore will be less likely to color her hair.  Short-haired older women seem to be precisely the ones who are most likely to dye their hair.  I would like to add a blanket not that there's anything wrong with that to all of these comments. I detect that steam is coming out of Donna Richoux's ears as she stares at the dial on her off-topicness meter.