Does a short haircut mean women have gone off sex?

Is short hair a conscious - or unconscious - signal that a woman is not interested in sex? The question was raised this week by sex therapist and former comedienne Pamela Stephenson, who believes 'deliberately reducing one's attractiveness' can sometimes be a way of repelling men's interest. We asked a series of writers, experts and even a celebrity hairdresser for their views, with fascinating results ...

Short and sleek: But is there a underlying meaning in Victoria Beckham, left, and Natalie Portman's choice of hair style?



Anjula Mutanda: 'Long hair is still shorthand for sexual attractiveness'

Anjula Mutanda, relationship psychologist, TV presenter and author of Celebrity Life Laundry



If you gave a man two photographs of the same woman - in one her hair is long and in the other her hair is short - he will, almost invariably, prefer the long-haired version.



Regardless of split ends or whether the cut suits the shape of her face, long hair has come to signify many of the qualities that a man looks for in a mate. His reaction is primeval.



Evolutionary psychologists believe that a head of long, healthy hair has been a basic indicator of a woman's well-being since the dawn of mankind.



Cave paintings celebrated long-haired women - the longer the hair the more fertile and, therefore, desirable she was - and nothing had changed when Botticelli painted the Birth of Venus, complete with those flowing locks, millennia later.



These days you need only watch a shampoo commercial to see that long hair is still shorthand for sexual attractiveness.



Glossy, shoulder-length tresses are tossed from side to side as the ultimate sign of a woman at her peak.



Touching and playing with our hair is also regarded as one of the more obvious flirtation techniques.

Keira Knightley, left, and Halle Berry: Giving out the signal they're not interested in sex through their hair cut?



Our hair has always played a major part in the sexual drama of life.



Longer hair is associated with youth perhaps because as young girls we usually wear our hair long, and it is generally the case that when women become mothers they cut their hair for the sake of practicality, continuing to wear it shorter and shorter as they get older.





This, of course, coincides with a gradual falling away of libido and sexual activity.



While long hair appears to indicate to the male brain a more submissive and available woman, in simple terms it also distinguishes women from men in appearance.



That's why it is such a powerful symbol of femininity and why, conversely, if a woman even subconsciously feels she is losing interest in sex, she will cut her hair.



Dr Pam Spurr: 'For women, hair is a reflection of the person, of her moods and her self-esteem'

Dr Pam Spurr, relationships expert

Our hair reflects so much of our internal life - and what's going on with us emotionally - that you shouldn't be surprised when a woman cuts her hair and also changes something in her life.



Don't be fooled when a woman cuts it all off or completely restyles it and yet denies there's anything going on.



You can bet that some sort of emotional change is taking place, and usually a dramatic cut reflects a whole new phase for her.



Many times I've noticed a client or a friend make such a change to their hair only for them to confide - or for me to discover - that something's been troubling them.



It could be anything from general dissatisfaction with how they've been feeling about themselves, to dissatisfaction with something specifically, such as their sex life.



It's symbolic, in the sense that shedding their hair is like shedding a part of their old life: and yes, that can include sex.



The woman who has been dissatisfied with her sex life, and decides she no longer wants to have sex, uses the power of the haircut as a sign to show she's reclaiming power in the bedroom.



Or maybe if she's been unhappy in her relationship, by cutting her hair she shows she's going to stand up for herself and become more self-reliant.



Some people might think this is all nonsense and that a haircut is just a haircut.



But for women, hair is absolutely a reflection of the person, of her moods and her self-esteem.



It is the first thing people notice about us, as well as being an indicator of health.



Deep down, we realise the power our hair has as a marker of who we are and what we're feeling about ourselves and our lives.



Hannah Betts: 'A woman shorn is a woman stripped of desire'

Hannah Betts, style and beauty expert



When Delilah wanted to destroy the potency of Samson, she lopped off his locks.



By the same logic, when an attempt is made to curtail female sexuality, scissors will be brandished.



Rapunzel is the archetype for this sacrifice of seductiveness.



Moreover, the chop goes two ways: in the fairy story, just as Rapunzel is fleeced of the hair that symbolised her sensuality, so her lover loses the eyes with which he gazed at it.



The message: a woman shorn is a woman stripped of desire and desirability.



The most savage seductresses - sirens, mermaids, Lorelei - all exploited manes in which male destinies might become entangled.



Mortal enchantresses, too, were never without luxuriant tresses with which to lasso their prey.



The longer and more untrammelled a woman's hair, the more potent and dangerous her sexuality. Tumbling tresses also boast of more positive sexual associations.



Renaissance brides adopted flowing locks as an emblem of vir ginity, sexuality and fertility.



In ages in which inadequate nutrition played havoc with beauty, resplendent hair was a sign of fruitfulness, its unleashing implying the intimacy of the bedchamber.



Where long hair suggested sex, short hair has been a mark of revolution; of women putting political rather than sexual objectives first.



The long and short of it: Gwyneth Paltrow cropped her hair for her part in the film Sliding Doors but soon grew it back again



In the wake of the French Revolution, modish English women adopted cropped styles.



Similarly, in the Roaring Twenties and Swinging Sixties, women bobbed their hair to indicate that they were pleasing themselves rather than their menfolk.





What's interesting to note, however, is that whenever a trend for cropped hair has taken hold, it has been followed closely by a return to the fashion for long locks.



Why? Well, whatever the empowerment of going short, its historical associations remain negative.





As long hair suggested the time and money to tend it, so a cropped style implied poverty, practicality, an avoidance of machinery.



In Little Women, when Jo March sells her hair so her mother can afford to visit her injured father, there is shock, and still it is an act of only the most abject distress.



Chopped styles are associated with illness: be it feverish Victorian heroines, shaven-headed asylum inmates or today's chemotherapy patients.



For women, such actions invariably contained some psychological element of the curbing of sexual appetite. So yes, perhaps it's true that if a modern woman cuts her hair short she really is trying to tell us she's gone off sex.



Irma Kurtz: 'Long hair advertises a desire to attract'

Irma Kurtz, agony aunt



It was the week before my 40th birthday; I had sported long hair as long as I could remember.



I used to cut it myself, simply a matter of trimming split ends off the bottom of a waist-length ponytail.



Men loved my hair, or so they said.



The bold ones used to say they'd like to see it spread out on the pillow.



I was a mother to a two-year-old son and we were visiting my folks when, with a little shock, I found the first long grey hairs and knew it was time for the chop.



Dyeing my long mop might fool passers-by, but how could it fool the real me who lived under it?



Long hair past its prime smacked of desperation to me, and maybe even of the kind of woman who would indulge in late-life promiscuity.



It lacked the seriousness that must surely come to women raising children in their fifth decade.



I left my son with his grandparents in the country and headed by bus for the city and a 'crimper'.



'That makes you look a whole lot younger,' the man in salon said to my shorn reflection in the mirror, which shocked me, as I had not before thought of myself as looking old.



But back on the street I was soon aware that fewer men turned their heads the way they used to.



The realisation started to dawn on me that long hair advertises a desire to attract, even to be dominated.



Long hair on a woman shouts: 'Pull me, please!' Newly-cut hair represents a different relationship to her sexuality and her sexual life.



For me after that dramatic change of appearance, short-haired sex would turn out to be less frequent.



After I first cut my hair, I returned home on the bus. My parents had brought my son to meet me at the station.



He ran towards me, shouting: 'That's my mum! That's my mum!' Then he stopped short, noted my new cut hair and said in puzzlement: 'That's not my mum .. .'



I was his mum and always would be with all my heart: love is deeper than the roots of our hair. But I would never again be quite the same woman who had awakened that morning in a tangle of long tresses.



Richard Ward: 'Most of the women that come to my salon wanting a drastic chop are in a stable relationship'

Hairdresser Richard Ward, whose clients include Geri Halliwell, Elizabeth Hurley and Marie Helvin.



Does short hair mean that a woman has given up on sex? Absolutely not.



But it might mean there are more important things to her than attracting a man.



The British male, in particular, is an unimaginative beast.



He doesn't look at a woman's chic and sleek new cut and think how fabulously fashionable it is.



He doesn't assess its softly cut layers and think how perfectly it frames her features.



All he sees is the absence of the long mane that he instinctively equates with 'youth' and 'sex'.



So, if a woman is looking for a man, she's not going to cut her hair off.



It's a fact that long hair has a broader appeal to the opposite sex - I'd say nine out of ten men prefer long hair to short - which means long-haired ladies are more likely to catch a guy's eye.



It's no surprise, then, that most of the women that come to my salon wanting a drastic chop are in a stable relationship.

They're not looking to attract a man. But just like men, I think women in general believe long hair is flirtier and sexier than short.



Over the years, I have cut Geri Halliwell's hair into all kind of styles - she has experimented with crops and bobs and fringes - but she has always reverted back to long hair because she just feels sexier that way.



Variety is the spice of life: Geri Halliwell has experimented with different styles but feels sexier when her hair is longer



Gwyneth Paltrow is the same. She looked fabulous with a blonde crop when she starred in Sliding Doors.





Women the world over were desperate to copy her style. But she grew her hair back and has worn it mid-length to long ever since.



I expect most of the women who copied her have done the same. But there comes a point in every woman's life when she questions whether she is too old to wear her hair long. It's usually between the ages of 35 and 45.



For Jerry Hall who, at 52, has clung to her trademark tresses for far too long, the answer is a definite yes.



At a certain age, long hair can start to feel a bit desperate. It's the same as wearing a mini-skirt when you're old enough to know better - it's very mutton-dressed-as-lamb.



There really is nothing quite as unsexy as someone who is trying a bit too hard.



So a shorter, more grown-up hair-style on an older woman is usually the best way for her to appear more confident and attractive.



But cutting it off is a big step and for many women it feels like the end of an era.



They're petrified that the mere act of having a haircut will strip them of their sexiness and render them completely undesirable. Dramatic? Maybe.



But then our hair is the only fashion accessory we wear every moment of our lives.



Lady Alice Douglas: 'Hair is an adornment as much as a necklace or a bracelet'

Lady Alice Douglas, writer



I've associated long hair with femininity and sexuality ever since I shaved my beautiful blonde locks off after attending my first punk concert aged 14.



My mother wept, but I loved it. There was something fantastically refreshing, at that age, about removing myself from anything overtly girly.



I had led a rather sheltered life at boarding school up until that point, before the punk movement swept me up in its grasp, and shaving my head meant that I was now part of that scene.



It was liberating to think that I no longer needed to conform to the little girl stereotype.



But I don't think that I was really aware of how that would affect my sexuality.



Perhaps I was too young to know, but I do remember feeling more boyish.



So it's ironic that now, as a woman in her 40s, I am so desperate to hang on to that feminine image of long locks that I have even had hair extensions to bolster what was once mine naturally.



I had the extensions done shortly after my husband ran off because I consciously thought it would make me feel more sexually attractive.



I love having thick, long hair and I like to play with my current locks by twirling them around my fingers - it's a form of self-expression.

