Why DO men panic when their wives decide to cut off their hair?

Whether it’s fashion or beauty, I’ve never been very quick to pick up on trends.

It took me years to switch from my familiar Millennial parting to the Gen Z center parting, but now it’s apparently back in full force.

So I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the hairstyle of the summer is one I had long had in mind: the bob. For months I had dreamed of cutting my once long locks to chin length – so I finally made an appointment at the salon.

And for the first time, my delay in carrying out the plan is not due to my own stubbornness, but to another, quite important, obstacle.

My husband.

Every time I announce I’m going to the hairdresser, he cringes. Not because he’s worried about the cost – he’s unaware that prices at his barber and most barbers vary so much – but because he’s terrified of change, especially changes to the length of my hair.

According to him, more hair is better hair. Over the years we’ve been together, my hair has varied from shoulder length to somewhere between my collarbone and chest. He’s always expressed a fondness for it, but he always cries out in disappointment when he loses inches, and he still shudders in horror when a haircut is on the horizon.

He’s not the only one doing this. It seems that many men are at best cautious and at worst completely panicked at the thought of their partner making the switch from long hair to short.

A staunch feminist friend tells me that she had to struggle to get her husband’s “permission” to cut her hair from mid-back to above her shoulders. When I tell another I’m getting a bob, she tells me that she’d suggested the idea to her own partner days before, but was met with a flat-out “no.” You’d think we were suggesting chopping off a limb.

I wait until a week before the appointment to break the news. I had considered leaving it until the morning itself, but I think it is kinder to give him time to ‘process’ it.

“I have a haircut scheduled for next week,” I say as we drive through our hometown. There it is, the setback. A slight pursed lips. I take a breath.

“I’m going to get a bob.” We approach the traffic lights, which have turned red. I can’t say for sure whether he would have hit the brakes so hard under normal circumstances.

‘What!’ His eyes are wide open. ‘But… But… you’ll look like Ann Widdecombe!’

I double over laughing as he groans. I can tell he’s torn between laughing at the image of me with the fringed bowl cut Ann had in her heyday, and deadly serious that he doesn’t think it would suit me, to put it mildly.

I jump out of the car to go to my gym class. ‘Don’t worry! It’ll look fun! We can talk about it later!’ I think this is the most concerned I’ve ever seen him.

While I’m away, he sends me unflattering screenshots of other famous bob-wearers, all well over 60 and all, oddly enough, politicians. He clearly hasn’t seen the “hottest bobs of 2024” lists featuring Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya and more. He’d be surprised if Theresa May isn’t on any of them.

The next time I bring up the subject, he’s clearly recovered from his outburst. “I like your hair,” is all he wants to hear, “but I would never tell you what to do with it.” Thank goodness.

But it does make me think. Am I going to look terrible? Is long hair more flattering?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the length of a woman’s hair is an issue that society is strangely invested in.

If you go for the chop, you might be told you’re “brave” – I don’t think that’s ever been said about a woman who wants extensions. And while we’re glad we’ve gotten rid of the archaic idea that a woman over a certain age shouldn’t wear her hair long, there’s still a backlash against women of all ages cutting it shorter.

From evangelical American fathers forcing their daughters to grow waist-length hair to the number of men online who say they prefer to date women with long hair, why are so many people so obsessed with it?

It’s really quite simple; long hair has been seen as a sign of femininity and sexuality for centuries. It’s the same reason why many religions have women cover their hair.

And it’s something I’ve internalized, too. When my hair is longer, I often feel more beautiful—when I look back at photos from over the years, I consistently prefer the ones of myself when my hair was longer. I even feel slimmer when my hair is longer—the volume of my locks balancing out the curve of my thighs, maybe? Totally crazy, but in my head it’s true.

But despite my husband’s objections and my own reservations, I want a clean slate. My pursuit of longer hair combined with a lazy approach to styling has left me with torn, unruly ends.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that the last time I got my hair cut, I hated it so much that I wore it half up for months to hide it. The (male) hairdresser refused my request to chop off a few inches of my postpartum hair and instead decided to “save” it (his words) by cutting in unflattering layers – exactly what I had asked him not to do.

This time I’m not taking any chances. I book an appointment with Nick Peters, artistic advisor at Daniel Galvin’s (no relation) flagship salon in Marylebone, London, one of the few hairdressers I’ve ever trusted.

If anyone could make my desired ‘box bob’ – blunt and one length – come true, it was him.

He’s been cutting bobs all summer and says it’s not uncommon for clients to report that their partners hate changes to their loved one’s hair.

Safe in Nick’s hands, I let him do his thing. At one point we stop to assess and decide to go half an inch shorter. It’s the right decision. When he’s done, I’m elated – it’s even better than I’d hoped.

In fact, I am so happy with the haircut that I am confident my husband will be too. While he is against me changing my hair, I have noticed over the years that he also adapts very quickly to whatever the “new normal” is.

I pick him up from the station after work and when he looks at me I can see the relief on his face that he actually likes it. His verdict? ‘Wow! So cute.’ I can’t help but wonder if all the fuss was because he mistook a bob for a buzz cut…