Long Haired Men, How Do You Take Care of Your Hair?
It’s my first time growing out my hair. I currently almost have shoulder length hair.
Here’s my dilemma, I usually just stay home and don’t like using product when I’m not going out, my long hair falls down in front of my face blocking my eyes, even reaching my mouth and it’s extremely inconvenient.
I’ve tried using hair ties, but somebody said it eventually leads to a receding hairline.
I’ve also used headbands, but am looking for alternatives.
I’d also appreciate some advice when using product, because sometimes it still falls down and/or becomes flat and lack some volume.
My end goal is to have a slicked back hair.
Hair ties leading to receding hair line reeks of an old wives tale. I would look into actual research on the topic, and if it hasn’t been proven true, assume it is false.
Just look at all the women with receding hairlines.
idk there’s that scene in Zoolander where he takes that woman’s hair down from a ponytail
Bit of a skewed comparison though, since men are naturally more prone to baldness because of the testosterone.
So what you’re saying is the difference has nothing to do with tying it anyway
Thanks for your comment.
It’s possible, it’s called traction alopecia. It happens from frequent use of hairbands that are tied too tightly. The solution is to use a lightly tied hairband and not use a hairband every day.
No actually if you have a sensible scalp like me, when I tie my hair, after I feel pain in the scalp.
Apparently keeping your hair tied for to long, can cause some people’s hair to develop cutaneous allodynia.
Wich basically means you pulled the nerves in your scalps too much
Hey. My hair was pretty long and very nice. Here’s my number one tip: don’t use anything. Normal shampoo, don’t wash too often. No blow-dry, no hard brushes or combs, use soft brushes. The receding hairline is just genetics. Yeah hats and ponytails make it a little faster, but everyone’s hairline will recede.
For getting the hair out of the way, I also used bandanas sometimes.
You are 90s as fuck.
Welp… I’m old
Haha why’s that?
Because in the 90s I was already 6-16 years old
Oshit
That makes you almost exactly 10 years older than me, if you’re saying 1984
Jup. Q.E.D. I’m old
Nah man, you’re still in the springtime of your youth!
Jesus Christ, it’s Axl Rose in his prime!
Does care for men’s hair and women’s hair differ? I’m curious to know
Aside from any treatments to avoid hair fall, it’s all the same.
In that case, here is my advice to OP for the least time consuming way to care for hair:
Check your hair type, pick a conditioner you like, and use it always. Long hair doesn’t need to be washed that often, depending on your hair type (mine is somewhat curly so I have a curly hair shampoo and conditioner twice a week). Use the conditioner as specified on the bottle, some may say one should leave it in one or two minutes longer than specified. That way you only have to worry about two products (shampoo and conditioner), and buy them always from the same place. The conditioner will make it more manageable and it’s only a small addition to your hair routine.
If your hair always falls to the front of your face, consider a change in hairstyle that gives volume to the back and keeps your face hair-free – this is better to discuss with your hair dresser.
Instead of hairbands, use a hair clamp. They are cheap to buy and replace and the plastic ones are light and nice albeit poor in quality. They are gentler on your hair and can keep it all together in a temporary bun when you need to work/focus/keep your hair out of your face.
Your hair always being in your face will cause skin problems and more black heads (at least this has always been the case for me and I always have zits in places where my bangs fall and rub against my forehead). Keeping it out of your face will make a huge difference, I promise.
Nope
Hormones can definitely influence hair growth and texture, but… neither of those have anything to do with OP’s inconvenient dilemma or incomplete traction alopecia information.
Just use a looser hair tie or one made out of a softer material and don’t tie your hair too tightly. Hair ties can break your hair and cause frizz, but a receding hairline is usually a genetic thing, there’s nothing much you can do about it outside of checking with a dermatologist for some treatment.
As for your second question, to have more volume the best option is to get a haircut with some layering, it helps to create volume. The other thing you can do it is use a leave-in conditioner to help style your hair, apply just a coin sized amount (maybe even less) to your hair from the middle of it’s lenght to its tips, applying too much will make your hair flat, it will help keep it in place with some volume. Your other option is to use some hair pomade to keep it in place, but it can look wet if you use too much.
I’ve had hair past my shoulders on and off for more than a decade in total over the last 30 years.
It is basically always pulled back in a hair tie and as @glad_cat has said, no receding hair line here.
I use no product in it at all and wash/condition it once a week. I regularly have women comment that they wish their had hair as healthy as mine and ask what products I use. My reply is always none.
My hair is super strait, so it is always flat. meh. That’s what it is.
From what I have found, the less you fuck with it. The better it is.
I use the curly girl method (am cis dude). There is a really good wiki on Reddit.
Same here. I wish it had a different name since it might be confusing for guys with curly looking to take the best care of it, but it’s basically a product recommendation system to make sure your curly hair is healthy and you aren’t using products that might damage or dry it out.
A receding hairline, apart from genetics, might happen when you tie your hair very, very tight. A loose tail would not be an issue.
Not a man but hair ties leading to receding hairlines is referencing traction alopecia. Basically you pull your hair so tight it gets ripped out at the front over and over resulting in more or less the equivalent of how folks who plucked their eyebrows for years had them stop growing back.
My recommendation as a long haired woman who doesn’t like her hair in her face is hair ties in loose buns/ponytails (best practice is to switch it up from time to time so you don’t wind up with friction damage on the same place) and hair clips once it’s long enough for them.
Also braids. The longer my hair is the more a braid is helpful.
No receding hairline for me and I’ve been tying my hair for 20 years.
Also I would check this link, it’s for curly hair but they have good advice: https://lemmy.world/post/661730
I’ve used hair ties for over 20 years and my hair line isn’t receeding. I’m pretty sure that’s either bullshit, or it’s caused by pulling your hair back too hard and literally ripping it out.
Isn’t the receding hairline thing if you tie the ponytail too tight to the point that your hair looks like it’s trying to be freed from your scalp?
I don’t know if that will cause a receding hair line because doing that is painful as shit and will give you a headache in about 30 minutes…so guys with long hair don’t do it.
Yes, it’s called traction alopecia.
Long hair since forever now.
So:- Brush it every day at least. Twice if neccessary. Brush it before you wash it to get the entangled fallen out hair off and after you washed your hair. Washing it will entangle it again.
- Find out how often you need to wash the hair. Curly hair gets frizzly if washed too often, oily hair obviously gets hard to manage if washed too infrequently.
- Just use a shampoo and conditioner that makes your hair feel right. You’ll know what I mean. Do not use the typical “15 in 1 and it wil cook you diner” things marketed for men. They are usually super aggressive and with menthol and shit… Don’t let them control you with your masculinity. I have a shampoo that smells of almonds and vanilla and makes my hair silky. I like it.
- Hair bands will not affect your hairline. If so, every woman with a braid would go bald. Baldness in men is triggered by some gene-BS, not by you pulling on your hair
- If you want to restrain your hair, but not clamp it down so to say, use those telephone-wire-like hairbands. They’ll do just that. I can’t use them because my thick hair will just laugh at me and push the band away
- Get a tangle teezer. Thank me later.
What does a tangle teezer do? I often see them being recommended.
can you post a picture of that telephone hair band thing, I don’t know what that is.
There you go.
Tangle Teezers have a bristle shapoe that will prevent your hair from getting tangled in nots. If that happens, your brush will get stuck in your hair (I can literally hang my brush into my hair that way). So when pushing through, you’ll break some hair or pull it out.
Dude with curly long hair here. This is 100% my experience. Pay special attention to #3. You are going to need the right products and finding them will take time. And they will be expensive. And their bottles will be girly as fuck.
Also, and that might be superstition, I like to alternate between products. When I come back to a product after a month or so it always feels like it works better.
Hairties leading to a receding hairline sounds like grade A bullshit to me, sure it might pull some hairs out but in that case either you’re going to lose the hair regardless or you need to tie it looser.
As for product: just don’t. If you’ve rubbed cowpats into your hair for some reason then just use regular soap to clean it, anything more advanced is a scam perpetrated by product companies to make you spend money on expensive shampoo that strips your hair and scalp of natural oils so that you have to also buy expensive conditioner to put oils back…
Just scrub your body and rub your hair a bunch in the shower, and use as fine-toothed of a comb as you can find on your hair every day, to distribute the oils through your hair. This is what people have done since we invented combs (and we invented them pretty damn quick) and it works fine.
As a man with somewhat curly hair, i would never be able to run a fine toothed comb through my hair… find one that fits you, everyone is different.
But i agree with the washing tip, as a mason ionly use soap when i have done really dusty work (grinding concrete, cut out stones etc.) And else i just scrub my scalp with my fingers a couple times.
And for styling your hair? Hair ties are god given… pony tails, man buns you name it… but do you want to spoil yourself? Learn to braid your own hair, and find a style that suits you
Seconding braiding. Looks nice, stays nice without product, doesn’t pull the hair as much as a tie alone, and less breakage than a tie alone. I was able to grow my hair and additional six inches behind the previous terminal length when I switched to braiding as my go-to style over ponytail.
I leave that to the birds nesting in my beard.
I have long 2A hair with your goals and wear my hair slicked back and it took me a long time to figure out how to take care of it well so here are my tips:
Once you get it around the length you want, go to a good salon and get a trim. The outside layer of your hair gets the most environmental and UV damage and I bet you haven’t gotten that cleaned off since you started growing it out. Just this single item changed my mind from “I’m getting sick of long hair and I don’t know what to do with it maybe I’ll cut it all off again” to loving it more than I have in many years. It has more movement and looks way healthier and has helped me keep it out of my face.
Yes, wearing hair ties can cause your hair to thin at the front of your scalp, called traction alopecia. But only if you have some combo of weak hair retention, pull and tie your hair way too tight, and/or use too tight of hair ties all the time. This happened to me after a couple of years and switching to claw clips sometimes and changing some routine steps helped me recover most of it.
If you’re just chilling around your house try using a claw clip instead of a hair tie. I make a loop over the top of my horizontal index finger, curl my finger in to grab the hair, and then give my wrist a half to full twist so that the bend in the loop is facing down and the end of my hair is pointing up and clip it. It keeps all my hair out of my face without any pulling pressure.
Don’t use a fine, close toothed comb on your long hair. I recommend a combo of a wide space, fine tooth comb (hard to describe I wish I knew the name of it) or a paddle brush. I’ve started dropping the comb entirely and using just the paddle brush and my hair has had more body.
Find a nice shampoo and conditioner for your hair type and scalp oiliness. A nicer shampoo can be a benefit but there is a diminishing return on cost so you don’t have to buy the most expensive stuff on the market. Then work on figuring out a good shampoo schedule for your hair. Usually for me it’s one day on/one or two days off but my hair is very fine so it looks gross quickly when it gets oily (but again a nice haircut from someone who knew what I was looking for helped this out a ton, too). Every day, especially if you’ve spent all day with it tied up, use your fingers or a scalp massage brush to really stimulate your scalp. Not only does it feel amazing, it helps ensure good blood flow to your scalp follicles and clean up any sebum build up. On days you don’t use shampoo, either just do a massage with your fingers or just use water to clean your hair in the shower and do the massage. Depending on the moisture/protein content of your hair, use conditioner but infrequently. I use a very small amount of conditioner about once a week, but again I have fine hair. Only use the conditioner about halfway down your hair length to avoid weighing down your hair by your scalp, this can help you keep your hair healthy but keep from getting flat. Make sure to thoroughly wash the conditioner out.
I squeeze my hair out and then use old t-shirts to dry it instead of a towel and after a little bit of that I noticed my hair improve over using a towel which can roughen your hair and pull moisture out (allegedly). If you want to feel really fancy, pick up a cheap silk pillowcase, mine a few years ago was about $20. It’s very smooth so it helps keep your hair from getting snagged and tangley at night.
Now for product - I’m a recent convert over to using mousse. I hated how flat and no volume my hair looked when I didn’t want to wear it up, and how much it kept falling in my face. Mousse helped give my hair volume and hold it back without giving it that crisp look gels and hairspray can give or the oiliness of pomades. There are dozens of types of mousses on the market but look for one that advertised volume and medium hold. With your hair slightly damp, rub the mousse in your hands to activate it, flip your head down and your hair forward and run your hands and fingers through your hair from root to tip along the front half of your hairline and a little in the back. Scrunch your hair up and run your fingers through towards the back as you feel the mouse dry. Flip your hair around a little and then stand up and flip it back. Wet your hands just a little and run your fingers through your hair towards the back, adding a little bit of mousse if you need it and let it air dry. This should give you a good amount of volume and also help keep your hair out of your face (my least favorite thing about long hair.
I hope this helps you out and feel free to ask any questions. I’m not an expert but I’ve had long hair for several years now and I’m finally happy with how it looks both up and down
speaking of shampoo, what do you do if also have a dandruff problem.
Sometimes if I don’t shampoo daily, I get a lot of dandruff.
It’s hard to say because there’s lots of different causes of dandruff. You can have sebum build up, dry scalp, fungus stuff. If it’s sebum build up, the scalp massage can help as can shampoo that markets itself as scalp invigorating. But not stripping or cleansing if you can help it. It can also help dry scalp in conjunction with a moisturizing shampoo. You can always mix in something like a dandruff specific shampoo every few washes. But honestly, even though it sucks, finding a good stylist in your city and booking an appointment and indicating that you’d like to have a consultation beforehand can be a ton of help. It’ll be more expensive than just getting a cut but going forward you’ll know what you need and how to ask for it.
Also how does a trim remove the outer layer or something, wouldn’t they just remove the tips of the hair?
Sorry by trim I meant getting a cut without removing a ton of length. So yes removing the last length of your hair, an actual trim, but getting an actual styled haircut without cutting out a lot of length. They’ll cut some more off the length off of the outer layers of your hair, which I was really afraid of because my hair is already very fine I thought it’d look like I thin lanky hair after. But removing some of the outer layer let all the healthy hair that had been protected by that outer layer come out and it’s much more manageable and didn’t just slide flat into my face nearly as bad because it isn’t as damaged
