Hair-o-whine....

Flowing tresses, silken locks - what is it with long-haired heroines in Romance novels? Maili's post on cutting her hair got me thinking about women and hair and standards of attractiveness. I'd like to think we are past the days when a woman's hair was regarded as her crowning glory, but in Romances long hair = teh sexy.

I've only had hair past my shoulders a couple if times, but both instances, I noticed that I tended to shed a lot. It was all over the bathroom counter, in the drain, and it tended to get, um, caught, or pulled or leaned on in intimate situations. Ow. So why the thing with long hair?

Is it all those video vixens shaking their asses and hair around? Or the girls gone wild whose flailing straw like manes, stringy with beersweat and Fructis often hide their faces even as they surrender their dignity? Yes, long hair is a sign of youth, but lately it's started to seem a little trashy, too.

Harlequin Presents aside, most romance readers outgrew stories about timid chignon-sporting secretaries falling in lurve with domineering rich jackasses decades their seniors back in the early - okay, late - eighties. Can't we give up on the flowing silken tresses, gilded locks and other hair hyperbole?