The Longhairs: A community helping men with long hair

The group shares how-to videos, tips on getting past the 'awkward phase', and have made their own range of hair ties

Kurt Cobain, Bob Marley, Jared Leto, and Jesus: men with long hair are in good company. But that doesn’t mean that being an average guy with anything other than a short back and sides is a walk in the park - at least according to the leaders of a US-based community for guys with long hair.

Chris Healy, 35, co-founded The Longhairs website with his former university classmate Lindsay Barto, in 2014, as a side project to their marketing firm. Two years prior, they had started to grow their hair out and were both bothered by the fact that there wasn’t a solid group for follicly gifted men such as themselves to turn to. A year after starting their website, the pair launched Hair Ties for Guys which are, as the name suggests, bands designed for men.

And they take the project seriously, with the tagline: “advocate, education, celebrate” emblazoned across the top of their website.

On The Longhairs, Healy and Barto share tips on styling - including the popular ‘How to Tie Your Hair - For Men’ YouTube video and how to “vaporise” split ends and baby hairs. But they also take a broader approach to the obstacles they say that men with unconventional hairdos face, which are tackled in interviews with successful long-haired men, including a Jiu Jitsu instructor, and tips on how men with what they call "flow" should treat one another in public. Mates rates for fellow longhairs, for instance, are encouraged.

But few topics are given as much attention as the “awkward phase" or the stage between when a man is growing his hair but can’t yet tie it up.

“You feel weird, sloppy, unprofessional, and you don’t know what the hell to do with it,” the website says empathetically. “You get comments from people, even your mom, telling you your hair looks bad and well-meaning advice that ‘you should just cut it honey’.”

In a post entitled “What you didn’t know about your friend with long hair”, a writer depicts the plight of a Longhair hiding hair products marketed at women “with men’s shaving products, a home-gym set of perfect push-ups and a can of motor oil” in his shopping basket.

Which begs the question, is it really so hard for men to have to find black hair bobbles in the supermarket or have to use products, God forbid, marketed at women?

Asked for his response to people might argue that a man's masculinity must be pretty fragile if he can’t face buying ties not marketed at men, Healy disagrees. In fact, he suggests, his group is playing an important role in questioning gender norms. And the messages of thanks he and Barto have received prove this, he says.

“I’ve never heard anyone say that,” he says. “If I did, I would have compassion for that person because they wouldn’t seem to understand what The Longhairs is all about, and I would take my time to explain it to them," he tells The Independent.

“You see, this whole thing isn’t about hair ties. It’s about guys with long hair, and finally having a place to go, and being part of a community of guys with long hair and knowing that’s badass.”

“It’s a lifestyle, one that partly says, ‘I don’t care what other people think, and I choose not to live a conventional life that society preconditions us to believe is acceptable.’ Sometimes that means wearing hair ties with missile launchers on them,” he says, half-joking.

“We look up to successful professional men with long hair, who break the conventional norms and demonstrate you can be a successful professional with long hair. Like businessmen Sir Richard Branson, John Paul DeJoria and Dan Price,” he adds.

But Healy says that, luckily, neither he nor Barto have felt targeted because of their hair.

“We’re very respectful of others, and at the same time we carry ourselves confidently, so not many people have negative things to say," he says, adding: "I’m compassionate with anyone who has negative things to say about my hair, because they are dealing with their own challenges in life.”

So, they haven’t been tarred with the same brush as those who sport the much-ridiculed man-bun? That fad, suggests Healy, barely registers on his long-haired radar.

“‘Man bun’ is a term used by women to describe a men’s hairstyle to no fault of their own. But for guys, that shit doesn’t fly," he says. "You can’t be walking down the street with your homies and say, “hang on a second guys, I have to tie my man bun.”

“I’m not so sure there is hatred,” he says. “I think people tend to get tired of trends like ‘hipster” and what have you. But long hair isn’t a trend, it’s timeless, dating back to the beginning of mankind."