The Internet Needs To Stop Pretending We Can All Have Long Hair, Because We Can’t
We can’t all have Blake Lively’s mass of long locks [Photo: Getty]
Long hair isn’t a universally achievable dream and the internet needs to shut up lying about it.
Gaggles of schoolgirls with identical manes by the mile, sexy ladies with their luscious locks tickling their boobies on ‘Game of Thrones’ and Cheryl swooshing her barnet on telly telling us we’re “worth it” can all make a girl feel pretty inadequate.
Long hair is so intrinsically linked with femininity. It’s something most ladies (and more recently men) have been lusting after ever since short hairstyles peaked in 1999 with the Posh Spice choppy-Sonic-spiky bob.
[Photo: Nikos Vinieratos/REX/Shutterstock]
There are thousands of articles out there promising that with a few simple lifestyle changes you too can have a bouncy barnet just like the Duchess of Cambridge.
Really though? Because I treat my hair pretty darn well, it just won’t bloody grow. Still, these articles and blogs insist it’s possible; if only I would stop “over processing” my hair - I don’t, I assure you. If only I would eat more protein - I eat all the protein, honest. If only I would trim off the damaged ends - there’s a man in town whose palm I furnish with a lot of sliver to do this, so…
I’ve tried vitamins, silk pillow cases, alternating moisturising and protein treatments and praying . The fact is, nothing works. My hair gets to about shoulder length then gives up and goes all scraggly. End of.
It wasn’t always this way. As a child I had hair down to my bum and a hareem of classmates scrapping over who got to braid it at lunch. But bodies change; hormones and genetics start messing around and unless you’re a natural-born Rapunzel you’re gonna have to get to grips with ‘terminal length’.
Me on the left with my little sister [Photo: Jasmine Jones]
My boyfriend thinks terminal length is just something I made up. He can’t get his massive head (no joke, it’s huge) round the fact that in the two years he’s been growing his hair out it’s surpassed mine by several inches. Inches! I’ve been growing mine years longer than him. He’s been brainwashed by long hair propaganda and uncritically believes it could happen to me, if I’d just try.
If, like me, you’re frustrated because you can’t get your tresses beyond a certain point no matter what you do, it’s because there’s a window of time in which your hair will grow and after that, time’s up buddy.
Okay, here’s some science to back it up. Hair follicles have three phases: anagen = growth, catagen = no growth/preparing for rest, and telogen = hair is resting/hair falls out.
Let’s have a gander at the anagen phase. According to WebMD during this phase “the hair grows about 1cm every 28 days. Scalp hair stays in this active phase of growth for two to six years. Some people have difficulty growing their hair beyond a certain length because they have a short active phase of growth.”
So there you have it. Some people genuinely can’t grow their hair long because the window of growth time is just too damn short.
There’s no magical cure to change how you’re genetically programmed despite what the beauty mags may tell you. This isn’t the ideal answer, I know.
What you can do though is try to make your hair grow faster during the anagen phase. Supposedly eating a diet rich in protein, vitamin C, biotin, niacin and iron can help nourish your hair. Obviously treating your hair well by avoiding over processing it will limit damage and make it look better.
It’s worth keeping in mind this is still unlikely to give you the long locks you’ve been lusting after. Better to keep it real and start loving the hair you’re already blessed with.
