Today while in my college's library, I saw a young woman with classic length hair, let down loose.  It was chestnut brown, thick, and not shiny, but very healthy.  She also had above eyebrow length bangs.  When she got up to leave, she didn't even bother tying back her hair or anything before slapping on her backpack-- she just kinda pushed the hair out of the way, and let it hang all around the backpack.  On the other hand, my hair is only 22" long, and I must at least pull back (or up) my hair before putting on the backpack, if I don't want half of my hair pulling out!

I'm so envious! Here I am, treating my fine hair oh-so-gently, and still dealing with breakage, and this lady is apparently carefree as ever and has gorgeous hair!  :P
I suspect it has something to do with mine being fine and hers being thick... come to think of it, I RARELY see fine-haired ladies in public with waist-length or longer hair. Do any of you ever see this?  


Ilovecats

My hair is fine but not thin. I often wear my hair loose in public, but I'd never wear a backpack now that my hair is almost tailbone. It would be a nightmare rearranging it every time the pack went on or came off.

I seldom wear my near classic length, fine hair loose outdoors.  The slightest breeze will cause tangles that can take forever to detangle.  The thought of putting a backpack over my hair makes me cringe!

Here most longhaired ladies/girls I get to see (not too many), keep their hair down and don't seem to treat it very carefully. But I can tell the difference between the condition of their hair and mine (though my hair is much shorter). Shine is the most obvious thing...shiny heads of hair are very rare.

The idea of keeping my hair down for the whole day makes me cringe...

I've never had really glossy, shiney locks, but I have to agree with Galadriel, I've seen women with really long hair that is amazing because of the length, but it's not well managed; wind-blown and looking a bit ratty at the ends from splits.   And I find the more I take care of my hair, the shiner it has become.  But it's been a hard road; and I find that keeping my hair up is the best way to help the shine along..

and wearing a backpack over your hair?  ACK!

I agree with everyone -- backpack on hair= yuck! :P

Bikerbraid, you and I seem to share the malady of having super tangly hair.  Honestly I think that if I leave it down for more than an hour indoors (or 5 minutes outdoors), I'm left with a terrible mess that usually results in some hair being sacrificed to the comb.  So, as much as I'd like to, I hardly ever wear my hair loose.  

One (out of many) reasons why I don't go to salons anymore is that stylists just rip through your hair and with mine being so tangly, well, it's just awful.  I actually had a stylist tell me once "I've never seen hair this tangly and matted after a wash."  Truly, for me, detangling hair without losing too much in the process is like an artful skill that I'm constantly trying to improve.

Also, a question, is healthy hair always shiny?  Maybe it was just the fluorescent lighting in the library, but, this girl's hair didn't seem too shiny to me.  I walked past her, and saw that she had no evident breakage, either.  Didn't get a good look at the ends, though.

Oh yeah, a side note...when you're posting, how do you put other people's responses in your post, in the blue box?  

i think i tod this somewhere in another topic. i knew at least two girl with fine classic hair who could wear it down DAILY. no kidding, even in the chemistry lab! in a way such  long hair seems less anoying than waist length cuze it kinda stays nicely behind the back (gravity and all). none of them seemed to have any splits nor even a slight tangle problem. i think the reason is cuze they had their hair at that length for many years. just imagine the luxury to be able to cut 1/4" every two weeks when you keep it at length: your ends are fresh and all one length. your hair moves in bulk and is well protected. i think one has to hang on during the growing out fase and keep it up more often cuze you don't want to lose freshly achieved length because of damage. but once it is all one length and had some good trims, i think it's condition must permit to wear it loose quite often. i had seldom tangle problems myself when it was all one length (about the length it's now). now i accuse mainly the left layers for causing them.

I don't think that all hair types can become naturally shiny -I have never seen shiny hair on people of African origin. BUT, I think that most people whose hair isn't naturally coarse have a chance to have a naturally shiny hair. Such hair is very rare just because most people treat their hair harshly.
 My own hair was quite "ordinary" looking when I joined these boards and in my opinion it looked healthy. I didn't think that it was in bad condition... But I used to use gloss spray if I wanted to add extra shine to it. It wasn't really dull, but still gloss spray made a clearly visible difference.
  I didn't, however, have to follow Rapunzel's guide to growing long hair for long until I could throw gloss spray away as obsolete.  ;D It just didn't make a difference anymore.

BTW...one day in the commuting train I saw a lady with most gorgeus honey mane. She kept it in a braid (nearly wrist-thick  :o ) and the braid seemed to be hip length...so her hair must have been even longer! It was absolutely the best long hair sighting I've seen...and the best thing about it was, that the lady seemed to be in her forties or so.

wrote on Feb 24^th, 2005 at 8:23pm:

Oh yeah, a side note...when you're posting, how do you put other people's responses in your post, in the blue box?

On theupper right hand side just click where it says "Quote" if you don't want the whole post you can edit it by deleting what you don't want.   :)

I saw a girl in the shops once, with a braid down past her tailbone.  Her hair was really dull and lifeless, thin and didn't look to well cared for, split ends and such.  It was long, but not pretty or healthy.  She was quite young, and her mother had a short bob cut, so maybe they just did't know what to do with hair that long, which is sad really.