Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: Hannah LS on 17/12/2018 14:31:05
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Tuomo says:
My question is about body hair vs. gender.
Females generally have long hair while males generally have relatively short hair - on their respective heads I mean. This phenomenon seems to be rather global and is of course a generalisation.
Yet when it comes to other body hair, males seem to generate more hair all over their body whilst females are generally pretty much hairless. Like beards for example.
My question is: is this purely a cultural thing? It seems odd to be only a cultural thing since this seems to be a global phenomenon. Or is there a difference to how females grow hair on their heads compared with males? And if so - why only on their heads?
What do you think?
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Long female hair is a cultural phenomenon that doesn't apply in many parts of Africa. The preferred length of male hair varies with time but is to some extent circumscribed by age too: many women can retain a full head of hair into senility, but most men lose it, so there is sometimes a cultural preference for a very short crop among male over-50's, whilst older women may prefer a "volumising" style of waving or combing to disguise any loss.
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There are sex hormone detectors on hair cells, which leads to sexual differences in hair patterns.
Of course, hormone levels vary between people, and so do the cell activity on detecting the hormones.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Hair