How do I grow my hair out?

Yes. The best thing to do is to go to a good barber and tell him you are trying to grow your hair out and what can he do in the meantime to make it look kempt.

Thank you @janbb!

I agree with @janbb . I always wore my hair short and recently grew it long. I found the messy look helpful. It can still look stylish and kept. They say good hairstyles are 50% product. So perhaps look at some stylish messy styles for that in between stage and ask your barber for a good product to achieve that. I see more men are wearing headbands. Leather ones not sure how you feel about that? but can look quite spunky.

Thanks, @Shippy. Not sure if I could rock a headband, but I wouldn’t mind looking spunky… I’ll investigate products!

My husband has thick curly hair. He grows it out every few years into an all one length look. Eventually while in the midst of growing he begins to look like Greg Brady. What he does is use gel or mousse to hold it down during the growing stages. He applies the hair product when the hair is wet andnjust lets it dry naturally. He can after it is completely dry run his hands through it, well he more play with his curls as a habit and winds up with a style that looks natural and wavy.

Once it gets long enough the weight of the hair makes it more wavy than curly and he can go without the hair products, sometimes I give him a “perm” to relax it more.

So, I have no idea if your hair will be curly, but even straight you can slick it back for a few months until it is longish.

If we are facebook friends I can send you some photos of his hairstyles through there. I don’t remember if we are.

If you let it grow very long and then are willing to go short, don’t forget you can donate the hair to Locks of Love for cancer patients. My husband did that.

Oh, my husband uses a hair band also sometimes. I lot of people think he is a soccer player or actor when he does that. LOL.

Also, generally if you want it to grow, you need to let it grow. Cutting it does not make it grow faster like people think. Although a trim for shape now and then makes sense.

@JLeslie, thank you. Back to L.A. Looks I guess, haha.
We’re not facebook friends; I have an FB allergy, but thanks for the offer.
And I’ll definitely do Locks of Love if my mane is long enough by the time I go on the job market :-p

You’re going to have a a period where you look fucktarded when growing your hair out. Most people do at least… For me when my hair reaches like the bottom of my ears it starts to curl outward in every direction. Looks pretty damn stupid for a month or so then when it gets longer the weight of it pulls it down and its straight again. How long exactly are you trying to grow your hair? Right now mine is probably down to around my nipples and if I had to take a guess I’d say that was around 2 years of growing it out with the occasional trims to even it out/get rid of split ends.

btw I also have some really thick hair

In my opinion, @uberbatman shared the most important thing to keep in mind, there will be many bad hair days along the way to your new style. Over the years I have chopped and grown my hair more times than I can count. I am currently in the final stages of growing out a knuckle cut. The two most important things are a good stylist and good product. A good stylist will keep cutting the back short while the front grows out – without having that done regularly you will be sporting a bit of a mullet – not a look many can pull off. The other key is patience.

@uberbatman : Haha, thanks for the honesty. I am prepared to look fairly stupid, as long as it can be remedied somehow before I return to France next summer… I don’t really have a plan as to how long to grow it… That’s part of the adventure. I’ve only ever had shoulder length or longer hair, or a buzz cut, haha. I just want to grow it out until I can find a decent style to stick with forever until my hair falls out.

@SuperMouse : Thanks for the tips, and the look ahead! Eeek, a mullet!

Winter is a good time to grow it out. In the summer at the mid length it is impossible to pull up off your neck and it can be very hot.

The other nice thing about awkward hair phases during the winter… is hats.

who said mullet :o

If you’re going to ask for a cut to make your hair look kempt (really, @janbb),? then you may as well go all in and tell the barber you want it to be ruly, too.

@CWOTUS That wood be “truly ruly,” wouldn’t it?

“Extra ruly”

‘duly truly ruly”

“farklempt kempt”

I give up before I start pulling my hair out.

Waggles tailfeathers in triumph.

Can I tell you this slightly tongue in cheek, @bookish1? If you’re going to be a man, then be a man. Men don’t give a shit about their hair. Grow it the fuck out, and don’t even think about it unless a woman tells you to. Even then, ignore that for a month or two until you are good and ready to get it trimmed. Even then, trim it only half as much as she tells you to, because you wouldn’t want her to think she could just order you around, would you?

In any case, when I grow my hair out, women seem to like it, and to me, it looks unkempt and like shit. I like my hair short and out of the way. Not too hot, either. As in, heat hot, not style hot.

Another thing. Men don’t ask for directions when lost. We just insist that we know where we are and we know what we’re doing. Man up, dude! No more questions like this. ;-)

You’re no longer a bookish one. You’re a Book, now!

I’m signing up for refresher courses in manship from @wundayatta. Yeah, what he said. I mean, what the fuck he said.

Now @wundayatta, why would a Man™ listen to a woman at all? ;)

Never said I was a man. But in this world of binary gender, since I am visibly male I am going to be read as a man. One of the few positive things I can think about being a transsexual guy is that I did not have “man up” beaten into me in childhood and adolescence. I don’t care if people think I’m a pussy. I’ve already slept with far more women than the guys who are likely to call me faggot.

Like I said elsewhere recently, I don’t give a damn about hegemonic straight white male masculinity, I had no model of that growing up, and I couldn’t be bothered to learn it now.

Give that person a soapbox!

I would also suggest going to a hair salon and discussing what style your goal is, that the stylist can then trim as it grows out. I’ve had very short hair – less than an inch long – and now it’s halfway down my back, so I know about growing hair out. To keep it ‘kempt’ they will likely just shape-up around the ears and the nape of the neck while allowing the rest to gain length.

@bookish1 Your words about hegemony are well-taken. Having said that, really, don’t worry about the hair. Grow it how you like. Be yourself. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

Although…. doing the white male thing is good for a lot of laughs in this day and age. This of all the fun you can have in a mens room messing with the other guys. Men are such wimps when it comes to masculinity.

Don’t cut it. That’s pretty much all you can do.

Hegemonic… Swoon.

Chances are, there’s going to be at least one awkward stage. I’ve grown out my hair down to my ass and I’m in the process of growing out bangs, so I feel for you. Like others have said, the best you can really do is get frequent trims/touch-ups and hope for the best. But on the plus side, the beanie is in at the moment.

The agony of growing one’s hair out is a genderless issue.

The easiest time I had was after I went bald from chemo. Every hair was the same length at the start…zero.

I vote more in favor of clips, scrunchies, ties or rags rather than hair products which only last for part of the day and leave the hair sticky or greasy. Personally, I love a man who wears a hair buff.

I normally buzz cut my own hair with the #4 (½”) clippers (#3 around the ears), about four or five times a year. I’m overdue now (my hair is over an inch long, pretty much uniformly), and I hate for it to get “messy” (because I won’t comb it any more). But I’m flying overseas in a couple of weeks, and I prefer to look more or less like my passport photo when I do.

In three weeks, when I get back, then I’m so looking forward to that buzz again. (The look is awful on me; everyone prefers my hair the length it is now – everyone but me, that is. I’ll look like I just escaped from prison, but I care less about that than how I feel.)

Milo here; I vote for the beanie. Me in a red beanie