Why do men prefer long hair on women?

I was on Hairfinder.com (don't ask) when I started reading this article about why men like long hair on women. It went on about the usual stuff - cultural norms and expectations, long hair indicates commitment of money and daily care on the part of the woman, indicating that men find these characteristics desirable in a partner.

My son is 10, and my daughter is 5. I doubt very much that they or their contemporaries make such shrewd judgments about financial or health status when deciding to fancy someone with long hair. The fact of the matter is that Andrew says the most liked girls in his class have long hair, and Amy says boys want to kiss her because she has long (blond) hair.

OK, so the article goes on to mention that the preference for long hair is most likely evolutionary rather than cultural. Looking good. Except then it drags up the old chestnut that evolutionary theory says men prefer long hair on women because it is an indicator of reproductive fitness.

I'm sorry, but again do my kids have any idea of reproductive fitness?

Let's face it, it's the usual chicken & egg blind evolutionary botch-job. Men are genetically programmed to like women with long hair...because they are descended from individuals who have the "I like long hair" gene(s). This gene is obviously a very successful one, but why?

Well how about this? Men like long hair, so will have a tendency to mate with long-haired women. If you're a woman with long hair, surrounded by men who like long hair, there's more chance of your genetic material being passed onto the next generation, simply because you will have a pretty good chance of being impregnated by one of these men. If your female offspring also have a tendency to long, fast-growing hair, then those genes will also propagate.

Men meanwhile are doing the same thing. By mating with the long-haired woman, they are ensuring that their genes are also successfully propagated into succeeding generations.

But who started it? Well no-one. You see evolution is blind. It's the numbers and sheer amount of time that causes these things to happen. Women aren't actively choosing to evolve long hair, and men aren't actively choosing to find it attractive. The individuals aren't doing anything at all, just living their lives and giving in to their impulses. It's the drip-drip-drip of the genetic lottery that's slowly manipulating each individual and species down the line.

You've only got to look at the Peacock to see this taken to an extreme. Does the Peacock have such a ridiculous display of feathers simply because the Peahen likes it? I suspect the Peahen is as much a blind evolutionary result as the Peacock is. The more opulent his feathers, the more successful he will be at mating, and the more he will further his genes (in particular the "having great turquoise feathers" gene)...because the hens like a big-feathered bird. But the hen also seeks out the cock with the best display to maximise the propagation of her genes (in particular the "liking great turquoise feathers" gene). But again it's not that either of them are actively seeking this, for these reasons. All the individuals have is a tendency to find certain characteristics attractive. However, over the time-scales of millennia, these little tendencies are just enough to eventually produce individuals trapped in an evolutionary straight-jacket fashioned from generation upon generation of drip-drip-drip selective breeding.

So think on that next time you admire your face, your hair, your eyes, the shape of your butt, in the mirror. You think your body's your own, but it isn't, and it hasn't been for at least the last million years.