Women and Long Hair

Introduction

Jerry Seinfeld once told a joke about our duplicitous nature with hair. He remarked, saying, "We love hair, we run our fingers through it, we smell it, we’ll rub our faces up against it, but if one measly hair should fall out of that head and fall on the floor or in the shower, we're disgusted by it." The joke is actually very funny because it is incredibly true. With this joke (like many of his others) he sheds light on how people truly are; that we like things when they are the way they are supposed to be and detest them when they are out of order and unappealing. Hair is meant to be on the head, in other words, not spiraled up clinging to your shower wall like a little shower mouse.

In the same way, the Lord has made the hair for men and women to be in a particular fashion, and when men or women do not style their hair as God has designed it is disgusting and altogether unlovely. When hair is an unnatural color, like purple or blue, it's actually obscene. When hair is messy and disheveled it is unappealing and offensive. Our hair, in other words, tells the world a lot about us. It speaks in much the same way the kind of clothes we wear, or the way that the words we use convey much about who and what we are. Thinking differently on this matter is simply because of the corruption of our age.

Even the length of our hair matters to God. This is because God has made the world sexed: male and female. And so, God has designed men and women to be different at nearly every level, and he has made these differences obvious to anyone willing to look. It is the goal of modernity, however, to flatten those differences and mock God’s design. One way this has played out in the length (or lack thereof) of women’s hair. Of course, men must wear their hair how God decrees, but feminism is a far more pernicious problem than chauvinism, so female hair will be getting my attention in this article.

Short Hair on Women

This will certainly enrage the feminists and old ladies among us. They will no doubt call me a misogynist, or a toxic man, or coercive, or sexist, or simply say I don’t understand the Bible properly. But none of those many names or charges change God’s word but merely further solidify the error in their hearts.

For some reason, many women want to have short hair in our culture which makes them indistinguishable from a petite man if you’re looking at them from behind (and sometimes even from the front). Nevertheless, women with short hair will often say things like “It’s just easier to control” or “It's less maintenance” or “It's not so hot” or “Short hair gives me confidence” or even “Shorter hair is healthier hair.” All excuses to rebel against God.

The discussion about head coverings aside for a moment, Paul (God’s messenger speaking on behalf of God) says very clearly that long hair on women is required because of the true nature of the contrary: “it is disgraceful for a woman to cut off her hair or shave her head (1 Corinthians 11:6).” The reason for Paul’s instruction is because (among other reasons) long hair is a woman’s glory. Paul says, “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering (1 Corinthians 11:15-16).” Now, in our culture we far too easily and quickly dismiss many of Paul’s arguments in 1 Corinthians and say things like “well that was just for those people at that time” or “Paul was tackling a very specific problem that the Corinthians had that we don’t.” But in reality, before first wave feminism in the mid 1800’s all Christian women had long hair because they understood Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 to be timeless and immediately applicable for them. They were ignorant to the wicked and devilish evils of feminism. And this ignorance made them able to see God’s word with purity, and live faithfully. We have performed eisegesis on this passage and have allowed the cultural hue of feminism to color our understanding of Paul’s instruction. A woman cutting her hair, in other words, is a result of the demonic movement of feminism not because the bible isn’t clear.

This is one of those examples of when we need to just read the bible plainly and do it. A woman’s long hair is her glory and a covering for her. When she cuts it off, she loses her glory, and she loses her God given covering. It’s as simple as that. This fact, however, is born out throughout history. The association of long hair with femininity and glory is a recurring theme in many cultures and historical periods. For example, in ancient Greek and Roman societies, long hair on women was seen as a symbol of power, wealth, and status, whereas short hair on women was a sign of masculinity. A woman who cut off her hair, in other words, was not a woman. Biblically speaking, short hair on a woman is a disgrace and a dishonor to her head – who is her husband (1 Corinthians 11:3). When a woman cuts off her hair, in other words, she is taking on the posture of a prostitute and/or a man because she is refusing the symbol of femininity, glory, beauty, submission, and service to her husband (her lord) and Jesus Christ (her Lord). We can see now why feminism hates long hair. 

Of course, the nay sayers will crawl out from behind their purple hair dye stations and walmart to object: “what about cancer patients” or “the bible doesn’t prescribe a length.” Yes, those who have various medical conditions or are undergoing certain medical treatments may have – as a consequence – hair loss or total baldness. For those women they should feel no shame. God’s commands are not burdensome and there are times when providential ailments or treatments take away the glorious hair that these women would otherwise never part with. But this argument is not a genuine argument, but rather it is a diversion meant to make the one arguing for long hair look like an unreasonable misogynist so that the feminist in question can begin to emote rather than deal with the arguments themselves.

As for the length, Paul’s argument is quite interesting. He says, “does not nature itself teach you…if a woman has long hair, it is her glory (1 Corinthians 11:15)?” It is true, the bible does not say a woman’s hair must be at least 12 inches in length (for example), but what it does say is it must be “long”, and this necessarily means that it must not be “short” or “shaved” and that nature itself shows us this. In other words, women who cut their hair short are not only ignorant, but blind. This means, that this principal Paul is communicating is so clearly stated in nature, i.e. the divinely created world that God designed and ordered, that it isn’t even worth Paul’s time to defend it; all he needs to do is point to it. This is also why all godly cultures (and most cultures in antiquity) that have ever existed have been full of men with short hair and women with long hair. In other words, God has designed a system where long hair is feminine and short hair is masculine, and this is plain to all thinking people. If a woman shaves her head, she is necessarily saying that she denounces her femininity, rejects the headship of her husband, and refuses the glory that God has bestowed upon her.

The Big Deal

The reason this is such a big deal is because the sexes are a big deal. We’re not interchangeable androgenous pegs in a Christian merry-go-round. Being a man means something and being a woman means something, and we are not designed to do or be what the other does or is. A woman must have long hair (if she can help it) because that is how the Lord decreed that her femininity should be gloriously showcased. Here are some good rules of thumb:

• If hair clippers touch your head as a woman, you’re doing it wrong.

• If you have any kind of fade on your neck and sides of your head, you’re doing it wrong.

• If you can’t tuck your hair behind your ears, you’re doing it wrong.

• If your husband can’t run his fingers through your hair, you’re doing it wrong.

• If you can’t put your hair in a ponytail, you’re doing it wrong.

• If you can use a comb instead of a brush, you’re doing it wrong.

• If your husband’s hair is longer than yours, you’re doing it wrong.

• If your hair doesn’t come down to your shoulders, you’re doing it wrong.

• If you’re not asking for your husband’s opinion about how he’d like your hair to look, you are doing it wrong.

• If your husband is okay with you looking like a boy or petite man, he is doing it wrong.

Sadly, there are myriads of women in the community of the redeemed sinning against the Lord by willfully cutting their hair short, and they are encouraging the younger women to do likewise. Worse than that, pastors rarely, if ever, call this act what it is: sin, rebellion, evil, malicious. What may be worst of all, however, is that the husbands of these women have abdicated their role as head, they do not correct their wives, they do not show them God’s word, and they do not call them to live righteously before the face of God, meaning they are effeminate and have distorted the proper function of the biblical home.

Who would have thought hair would be so important? God.