The clash of generations: Make Men’s Haircuts Great Again

“We can’t mold people who are going to run the world in the 1980s into the shapes of the 1920s…We just can’t expect to make the future look like the past. It’s bad education even to suggest it.” While this statement has been made within a particular country, at a particular historical moment, and within a specific context, its prominence resides in its inner logic which is universally applicable at all times. One could equally argue, for example, that you can not expect the people “who are going to run the world” in the 2040s to have the same attitudes to work that were prevalent back in the 1990s. And yet, the arrival of the Z generation has inevitably unleashed a novel chapter of generational clashes:

“Gen Z is undisciplined, apparently; entitled, some critics claim; and purportedly hates work. One viral column in the Wall Street Journal went so far as to suggest this entire generation was potentially ‘unemployable’.”

To be sure, such cries are very familiar, for in the same manner the “millennials were once derided as lazy, entitled, delusional, narcissistic and unreliable, too”. And, most likely, both the millennials and generation Z will one day likewise criticize the upcoming new generations. Now, the key lesson in all of this is that none of the generations is correct or incorrect, right or wrong. These are merely subjective categories utilised to fight out the clash of generations. For if my worldview differs from another person’s perspective, it is simply natural that I am on the right side instead of him or her. There is just no possibility that my position could not represent the universal truth.

The problem here is that throughout history so many of such “universal truths” have died their natural deaths. Among them we find the notion of an acceptable length of men’s hair. The initial quote with which we have started this post “was the response of U.S. District Court Judge James B. Parsons in Chicago in the fall of 1969 which ordered Barrington Consolidated High School to readmit two students who were suspended for wearing their hair too long”. Whereas “by the mid-1970s long hair worn by much of the American youth evoked little comment and indeed was considered fashionable”, during a decade or so before this ideological shift, "expulsions, suspensions, and many city-wide debates over hair were part of everyday life in high schools”. Here is one example of a now outdated social norm dictating the life for previous generations:

“An early fall of 1966 issue of the school newspaper, the Daily Athenaeum, printed an article out of Dallas, TX about three teen-agers in Dallas who were refused admittance to R. W. Samuell High School by their principal because their hair was too long. The three students were in a rock band with two college students and stated that the reason they did not cut their hair was because they were under a recording contract which prohibited them from cutting their hair short. The boys tried to

go to seven other schools and were rejected by all. The reason given by school officials for not letting them in school was that their hair would cause other students to be distracted.”

Among the reasons why the teachers and school administration would oppose long hair being worn by male students was also the claim that “their long hair was upsetting the morale of the other students”. While all of this already sounds completely ridiculous to our contemporary social consciousness, one can find even more unhinged situations in those days. For example, “in Concord, New Hampshire, school administrator Norman Limoges took eighteen students from their classrooms, put them on a bus, sent them to a barber shop, and had their hair sheared”. Also, “one student in San Diego, California, sued his teacher for assault and battery for cutting his hair in class”. Of course, we are dealing here with generations that had a very distinct conception over child parenting, corporal punishment, and so on.

But the question over the length of male hair was not confined to high schools. At one point allegations were made “that State Police harassment was so common that New Jersey had earned a national and international reputation as a place to avoid if a traveler had long hair. A British travel guide even warned young Englishmen with long hair to stay away from the Turnpike if they planned to travel between New York and Philadelphia.” To be sure, to a large extent long hair had come to be associated with drugs and anti-social behaviour. In any case, the State Court of New Jersey was even forced to rule “that the state police did not have the right to stop and search the car simply because the occupant had long hair”. It is hard not to make comparisons with the contemporary proposition within the US justice system that immigration agents could detain persons simply for looking latino or speaking Spanish.

Again, one must never lose sight of the fact that we are effectively dealing here with yet another case of generational divide. Here is a characteristic illustration:

“In a 1969 Good Housekeeping Poll, seventy-six percent of the polled adults sided with the high schools and believed that they had the right to regulate student hair length. [...] Eighty percent of the respondents said that the appearance of high school

boys in their town bothered them. Only sixteen percent said it did not. Of the different groups identified as being a proponent of school involvement in grooming, the most conservative were parents concerned with law, order, discipline and control, and who were worried by the falling off of standards in all areas of life.”

As we can imagine, at every stage throughout human history we would be able to find those poor folks who would be “worried by the falling off of standards in all areas of life”. In this case the slogan could have been Make America Cut Male Hair Again. In fact, there were billboards around the country, stating "Beautify America-get a haircut”. Would the creators of such posters have believed if told how silly it would all look in 2025? Probably not, in the same way as the contemporary opponents of the rights for the LGBT or transgender people would refuse to acknowledge the inevitable obsolescence of their political stance.

But let’s return to the issue of generational divide. One article wrote about a “confused” and “graying mother” who “was left with only a basketful of shattered hopes the day her son left home to become one of the young, shaggy drug users she had always despised. Joining a discussion group of other parents with hippie sons and daughters didn’t bring her son back.” Again, how many stories could one find today about familial cleavages between MAGA parents and their liberal children? Furthermore, in the same manner the ageing Zionists are lamenting about the young generation of Jews who are opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians. And just as the “graying mother” did not get her hippy son back, the MAGA parents are not going to get their liberal offsprings back, whereas the Zionists will not get the young Jews back onto supporting Israel.

Interestingly, the 1920s “also saw distinctive hair and fashion associated with a youth movement. They shocked their parents with their ‘hedonistic escapism and their moral anarchism.’” And while the futile fearmongering over moral downfall and civilizational collapse has been a constant companion throughout the ages, it is ironic that former “hedonistic” anarchists would later on refer “to those with long hair as ‘fanatics’ because they signed peace petitions”. And as we reach our days, the formerly rebellious generation of the 1960s is now decrying the contemporary youth as radicals and extremists for demanding greater gender equality or climate protection.

Finally, to some conservative people of the 1960s “long hair also became a symbol of ‘the emasculation of the American college man.’ In 1966 nine college students at Wayne State University met at a barber shop to protest ‘the greatest social issue of our time.’ They shaved their heads because they felt ‘men are losing their identity.’” Once again, this fear over masculinity appears as a constant thread across the generations. As we may regard the concerns of the 1960s regarding this matter with ridicule, we are also on firm ground to predict the same fate for the contemporary vulnerabilities. For instance, the idea that the “female empowerment” of such individuals as Taylor Swift results in male emasculation.

All in all, history shows us that there is no universal truth in relation to the social concept of masculinity. Neither is there one in the case of male hair length. In fact, there are no universal social truths. However, history also demonstrates to us that no generation is willing to accept that. Hence, long live the clash of generations.

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/ng-interactive/2025/nov/17/gen-z-workplace-criticism
https://enlacelatinonc.org/en/Speaking-Spanish-or-appearing-Latino-can-lead-to-an-ICE-detention./
https://rozsixties.unl.edu/items/show/619.html
https://forward.com/news/785155/jfna-israel-education-generational-divide/
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/872/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/younger-women-barbie-gen-z-men-feminism

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