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Has there ever been a time or a culture in which fashion/tradition strongly favored men with long hair AND women with short hair during the same period? There are plenty of instances of both having long hair or both having short hair, and obviously modern Western fashions tend toward men with short hair and women with long, but I can't think of a situation where those two were reversed...

Can anyone think of one?

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According to the book "Generations," there are recurring periods of this sort, when American men and women seem to blur (if not switch) gender roles. The last time was when the Baby Boomers, a so-called "Idealist" generation were adolescents in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This was a time when men wore their hair long. At the same time, women dressed and acted more like men by wearing pants in large numbers for the first time in history, and cutting their hair shorter than usual.

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    But as I understand it, weren't those two trends associated with different groups? The long-haired men of the 60's and 70's were usually counter-culture folks, with girls who had similarly long hairstyles, right? While the short-haired women were more along the Jane Jetson line, aggressively middle-class and mainstream. Am I misremembering that? And if not, are there any instances of that kind of trend happening among the same demographic/cultural group, where an average couple was likely to have the woman's hair shorter than the man's?
    – Nerrolken
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 0:39
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    @AlexanderWinn: Technically, you're correct. But "counterculture folks" were often drawn from the "Jetson" crowd. There was a saying, then, "You've never been to hell until you've lived in Scarsdale." It may or may not have been true for couples, but I (born in 1957), have a recollection of families where sisters had shorter hair than their brothers. "Couples" is more a matter of "like attracts like." So the lines got very blurred.
    – Tom Au
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 1:26

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