When a boy is taken to the salon where his father or grandfather commands the barber, “shorter on the sides, trim the top, keep it neat,” every fortnight, the child, without questioning, internalises the requirement.
Once he skips the set routine and decides to grow his hair long, the appreciation turns into comments such as “you look untidy”, “you don’t look disciplined”, “you don’t look professional”, “you look like a girl”, “you look like a rowdy”.
For most Indian men, the idea of what their hair should look like is ingrained through the weight of labels and boxes that society puts them in. Perhaps that is what makes it difficult to see grooming as a form of operant conditioning.
The moment men stop their regular visits to a salon is also the moment this invisible rule becomes visible to them. For years, Vinoth R, a communications professional and photographer, wanted to know what he would look like with long hair. He had seen it in films, on characters for whom long hair did not seem particularly strange. But there had always been something stopping him. “It’s not a deeply foreign or alienating concept, but just that I didn’t have the opportunity to do so for so many years, because of school, college, and work,” he notes.
Then, finally, there came an opening, an opportunity. Vinoth says, “I work a remote job, and I got an opportunity to grow my hair out. I just wanted to try the style, and I’m just loving it.”
What began as an experiment has become deeply personal for him. “I feel growing my hair long brings me closer to myself. I feel long hair, even a bun, looks very good on a man. I don’t think that growing hair should be regulated or categorised as a female thing. It has to be for everybody,” Vinoth points out.
Bagiyaraj D, a senior design engineer at Tata Motors Engineering Research Centre, started growing his hair just for a change. He shares, “I decided to grow my hair because I wanted to try something different and see how it suited me. It was simply a personal style choice.” For him, this approach is also rooted in our Indian culture. He notes, “Traditionally, Indian men grew their hair, and they have never looked more masculine.” Moreover, in some communities, it was and continues to be a norm.
While the timeline of the shift — from a regular habit to a niche — is unclear, some netizens argue that it could be after the invasion of the East India Company. Whether men wanted to enter a school, join the army, or work in a government job, short hair was mandated in the name of hygiene, uniformity, and combat safety.
This institutionalisation has seeped into our everyday life even today. We do a double take at a man who, of his free will, chooses to grow his hair even an inch longer than the accepted level. Vinaoth says, "I saw people having slightly longer hair than their regular style. And the result? They were criticised for growing their hair and labelled an outlaw." Yet, some men continue to exercise their agency by choosing to wear their hair long.
Vinoth sees conditioning how one grooms themselves as part of a much larger process through which young people are prepared to enter professional life. “Grooming is just one of those larger packages that the education system is moulding our kids. Maybe if the West considered having long hair as a norm, then probably India or any country like us would also follow it,” hopes Vinoth.
Once a professional, new regulations greet them. Most workplaces restrict men in the way they prefer to style their hair. Prathik D, a researcher and writer at Token Dispatch, sees the limit to this “rebellious act”. He claims, “If I don’t have job options and my workplace is particular about the hairstyle I carry, then I would get my hair cut.”
This admission shows how men are pushed to take the purpose out of rebellion. With a job to hold on to, bills to pay, and families to negotiate with, a man may yield to corporate norms, even as he sometimes chooses to go beyond the boundaries of societal order.
For him, the larger issue is the need for an authority to be present in the system that chooses what he should and shouldn’t. He states, “People should be mature enough to understand that these are not to be considered as topics of big concern.”
The men CE spoke to argue that the point is not to replace one grooming rule with another. It is to question why a hairstyle should carry so much information about a man’s character. A creative director, who goes by the pen name Th8oz, started his resistance when he stopped going to the barber shop after completing his 12th grade. He recollects, “I disliked going to the salon because it was imposed upon. And also because most of them are from North India, and there is a language barrier.”
Long hair, for him, also represented something he admired. He shares, “I’ve always found people with long hair endearing and someone that I aspire to be. Rabindranath Tagore is one of the best-looking people, I believe.”
This choice has closed many important doors for him. “I don’t get selected at job interviews,” rues Th8oz. The idea of a “well-groomed man”, he believes, has been repeated so often that it has become part of the visual language of masculinity. “It comes from systematic conditioning. This is how a gentleman should be. The representation of men, when you want to show a ‘good man’, it’s always somebody who’s with a trimmed beard and hair. But when they cast villains, or rowdies, so to say, it is always someone with long hair. Today, actors like Pradeep Ranganathan and director-turned-actor Lokesh Kanagaraj have grown out their hair, but these characters are inherently flawed. Lokesh is shown as someone rugged.”
Th8oz goes back to the historical relationship between hair and social status. “Upper caste men, even in our history, have had long hair. For them, it is a symbol of status,” he claims.
Vinoth, meanwhile, has encountered another set of assumptions. His long hair has been read by strangers as a sign of belonging to a particular community. “People have approached me thinking that I am from a certain community or a certain caste. They have a preconceived notion that only a priest or a person who frequents a temple have long hair.”
The irony is that while long hair can sometimes be treated as foreign, often feminine, or always unprofessional on one hand, it can simultaneously signify religious identity or tradition on the other. Vinoth does not see himself through either lens. “I just consider myself getting closer to nature.”
What he does encounter, however, is shame. “There is also a bit of a shame around a man growing long hair.” The comments have ranged from teasing to unsolicited moral instruction. “It’s understandable why they react that way. But I just try to not engage in any conversation with them regarding this, and I just move on.”
Agency is perhaps the thread that binds these men together. Because conditioning sometimes looks like a routine you have been asked to follow for a long time until you decide to look the other way.