Haircut and Facial Hair

[ArtilleryNick]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

For me it's a matter of personal choice, my current job doesn't really require anything specific so far as hair and facial hair, an advantage of being a tire and oil changer at a garage. I usually keep my hair shaved, but allow it to grow in a little prior to an event to avoid sunburn on the portions of the head not covered by a hat. As far as facial hair, I've experimented with various styles, usually searching through period pictures will give me ideas to go beyond the basic beard. As of late though, after seeing it done in pictures, I've opted to try the "Burnside" style beard.

[PVT.BEN MILLER]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

I just go with long hair becouse of my Native Amirican reenacting.

[WoodenNutmeg]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

I keep my hair fairly short, but I cut it with scissors, giving it that uneven look, imitating hairstyles as they would have often been seen amongst campaigning Federal troops.

[sam H]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

The biggest problem for me is doing both WW2 and Civil War. With WW2 the hair has to be off the neck and ears plus a clean shaved face at all times. But with a little pomade I can work it out to having a period looking haircut for both time periods.

[fedcampaigner]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

Being in the Ag industry lets me get away with just about whatever I want. Out of personel preference I usually keep my hair short. Which is also handy if I squeez in a WW2 event. For the last couple years I had a goatee minus the mustache. Resently, I grew out my beard. As the warmer weather comes on we'll see how long it lasts.

[Phantom Captain]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

I keep my hair pretty short and wear a Van Dyke. I think it looks totally period and I get no complaints from work.

[Clark Badgett]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

Well, I have to keep the hair on the shorter side. Since my hair is now in full blown retreat, I just shave it off, as the only thing still left on top is off center to my left side. Looks less goofy to just take it off to the skin every month.

[D.W. Scalf]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

Since one of the kids in my class today showed me a live grayback he'd just pulled off his head, I have an uncontrollable urge to shave off my "Hiram Granbury" do. I'll try to resist though !! It only looks like Granbury from the front...then you can't see the bald part in back ;)

D.W. Scalf

[rebjeb04]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

I'm in car sales GM, and there are probably boundaries I could push, and far as facial hair, but with the current situation of things I try to keep as "up-to-date" lookin' as possible. I'd love to grow a Vandyke or Colonel Sanders Goat, but I don't think that cavalier appearance would carry me to far right now. I try to supplement this by keeping my sideburns, and letting my hair grow out as long as possible before an event, and have been pretty successful at attaining some good hairstyles. Maybe later in life, and I can get by with it more I'll experiment a little more.

Enjoyed reading the feedback here.

Thanks,

[Doug Harding]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

After 27 years in the Army Reserve I can now really let it grow out. I haven't quite decided the style I want to go with yet but will get it trimmed before my next event. I was doing some 18th century events that require longer hair and no facial hair. I've been now letting the beard grow out as well, but fine that there is a lot of gray that was not there before. I've been looking over my collection of photograph to find a style I like.

Work doesn't have any problem with my hair as long as it is clean and neat. My wife on the other hand is a different story,

[PalmettoBugler]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

My problem is that I have to enforce a hair length policy on others, so I must comply myself. Our Boy Scout Troop has had a policy long before I became associated with the Troop. Now that I am the Scoutmaster, I have to set the example.

[mtodriscoll]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

IMO, the current majority poll choice is not really an "answer", so it kinda skews the poll results...

Perhaps if it were worded differently.
Such as: "I would grow long hair, but my work doesn't allow it."

My employer does not enforce a hair length policy, but I choose not to grow my hair long. I don't go with a modern-mil buzz cut either...(though I used to).

I chose the "facial hair option" since I typically have a hat on the entire weekend anyway. I'm the "if your outside your cover should be on" type.

[guad42]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

I'm afraid I resemble that Bob McIntosh character from one of the linked stories. My hair doesn't grown long, it grows out. My wife calls it my Buffalo head, and indeed it looks like ragged bison hair and sticks out. I quickly start to look like a curly Anton Chigurh from "No Country for Old Men". I get cut now about every three weeks, close around the sides and back, but with length on top.

But as other posters here, and on earlier threads have pointed out, a shorter "fightin' cut" is acceptable, with a variety of examples evident in photographs.

-Sam Dolan
1st Texas Infantry

[guad42]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

From Ernest Waitt's "History of the Nineteenth Massachusetts..."

The hair cutting mania seemed, at one time, literally to have taken hold of the men, and the shorter they had it cut, the better as some believed. They called it the "Fighting Cut". Jere Cronan, of Company G, outdid everybody else by having his head shaved off every spear of hair, so that it looked like a newborn baby's. It was an amusing sight and no sooner was it done than he repented. He said he felt as if his head was "all out of doors" and he was obliged to wear his handkerchief, knotted at the four corners, on his bare head in lieu of a cap until the hair grew again. As he was acting color sergeant of the regiment, he was a most conspicuous figure on dress parade and drill. Jere was a good soldier, and, although he had a peculiar impediment in his speech, his sunny disposition and invariable good nature made him very popular. He served his full term, reinlisted as a veteran, was promoted to lieutenant in the 1st US Volunteers, was honorably mustered out of service and lost his life, several years after the war, in a sewer in New Jersey, where he volunteered to go down and rescue a laborer who had been overcome by gas.

-Sam Dolan
1st Texas Inf.

[David Fox]

Re: Haircut and Facial Hair

Years ago I wrote an article for CCG on 1860s soldier hair styles. It's doubtful one could contrive a cut that wasn't an individual or unit fashion statement among the troops. Shaved heads ("filed" in the then-contemprary terminology) mixed with shoulder length hair in that War. Some Northern zouaves even had designs (eagles, etc.) shaven onto their heads. Reasonably short styles, given regulations, hygene, lice, and officers' druthers likely predominated amongst veteran troops everywhere.
A hair-related war story: In 1968 I was in line to climb aboard a Freedom Bird to leave Vietnam for R&R. At the foot of the ramp leading up to the 'plane stood a lieutenant with sissors. His job was to cut handlebar 'staches off at the regulation edge-of-the-mouth. It makes for interesting speculation as to how he'd contrived to screw the pooch to land such a humiliating military occupation. Another sergeant ahead of me tucked the tails of his moustache into his mouth. I and others followed suit as we trooped by the looie. When I got to the door of the 'plane, the round-eyed stewardess was convulsed by peals of Homeric laughter as man after man passed her, spitting-out moustache tails in a form of salute. There's always a way around regulations, Bunkie.... And, if that stewardess was familiar with Civil War enlistedmen's japes and, concurrently, lines from old Mae West movies, she could have observed: "Is them mice in your mouths (I see their tails sticking out) or are you just glad to see me?"