Guys, It’s Not Too Late To Grow Your Hair Out!
This is part 1 of 4 in a series dedicated to prepping for hair growth. Be sure to check out the other parts as well:
Part 2: Don’t grow your hair out until you do these 3 things
Part 3: Treat your hair growth like an RPG
Part 4: Best haircuts to get before growing out your hair
Hello, I am back!
I hope you had a great holiday season full of rest and time with loved ones.
Usually, we want to look clean and presentable as we go to our Christmas parties or we may want to enter the New Year looking our best to set the tone for the rest of the year.
The weeks leading up to the holidays are busy for me in the barbershop as everyone is trying to get in that last cut of the year.
However, I also noticed that more and more of my clients are starting to do the opposite and want to embrace growing their hair out, possibly for the first time in their lives!
I think over the past few years, we’ve seen a lot more options pop up for medium-length hair on men (such as this). Guys are ditching the short back and sides that they’ve had for years in favour of something they can play around with. It has become much more accepted in professional workplaces too (as long as it is done right!), and barbers are now getting quite experienced with cutting long hair, so you’re more likely to get a haircut that suits you perfectly than 4 or 5 years ago.
But is longer hair for men just a fad or is it here to stay?
Just as more guys are looking to go from short to long hair, I am also seeing a lot of guys who have had long hair for a while wanting to do a big chop.
This pattern makes it feel like long hair might not be in style for much longer, so is it really worth growing it out at this point if everyone is going back to short hair?
If you were somehow able to make it through the pandemic without having your hair grow ridiculously long, then you may even feel like you missed out on a golden opportunity after seeing how great longer hair looks.
I know I regret not taking full advantage of that time to experiment.
However, I don’t think the trend is anywhere near dying, and it isn’t too late to try a longer style.
Let me explain using a bit of a strange example.
In Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why, he explains that trends (usually within technology) tend to look like a bell curve, which is broken down into 5 segments (a diagram of this graph can be seen here).
The first part is comprised of the Innovators, a minority that will essentially set the trend. In the world of hairstyles, this usually means celebrities who are trying something new that is outside the status quo.
The second part of the bell curve is the Early Adopters. These are the people who will jump on a trend right away before anyone else is even sure if the trend is cool.
Afterward, there is the Early Majority. These are people who were a little unsure, but after seeing how the Early Adopters reacted, will want to get in on the trend as well. Here we see an uptick in how many people are joining in until it reaches a peak.
After that, we have the Late Majority, who are just getting in when the hype is starting to die down. These are the folks who want to give it a try while there is still some buzz left.
Then there are the Laggards who have essentially adopted the trend later than the hype. These are the ones who may not be that tuned into the trends and wish to do things when they feel instead of when everyone else is doing it.
So what does this have to do with growing our hair?
Well, I’d argue that we’re nowhere near the late stage of the long hair trend.
If we look at the past few years, we saw a rise in the popularity of long hair for guys when the pandemic hit and we were forced into lockdowns. The ones who stuck with growing out their hair were within the Early Adopter to Early Majority range, and they helped make the look more widely accepted.
Those same people may now be tired of the long hair and may want to change things up, but that is normal with any trend cycle. What’s important is that the trend has now been established, even if the early adopters are no longer a part of it and we’re actually hovering around the peak at this current point in time.
That means we still have a good amount of time to try out long hair before it fizzles out in popularity. It is not too late to give it a shot if you haven’t before!
In fact, I’ve even committed to growing my hair longer in 2024. I’m already a couple of months into it, and I’m learning a lot about what kind of advice works and what doesn’t when it comes to growing out the hair.
Early October vs. Late December. I got a little trim around the ears for the holidays, but other than that, I’ve left it alone to grow.
If you’ve been on the fence about growing your hair out for the first time, then here’s your sign to give it a shot and join me on the hair growth journey!
For more tips and inspo, follow me on Instagram.
Next week, we’ll explore more practical tips on how you get started on your hair growth journey!
References:
Thank you for reading!
My name is Wesley, I am a Barber located in the city of Calgary helping my clients become more confident with all things related to their hair by providing customized haircuts that suit them best while demystifying all the complicated hair information out there!
