I find the fact that long hair is remarkable in 2008 to be, well, remarkable. Do we still live in a world of Hugh Beaumonts and Barbara Billingsleys? Is it still 1964 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, when four scruffy lads from Liverpool deplaned, shocking God-fearing Americans with what now seems like shockingly unlong long hair? I mean, seriously: Grow up, everyone. Long hair is not a statement, man. Down-to-there hair is not for rebels and poets and others in need of waving their freak flags. What it is, at best, is flattering. And what it is, at worst, is occasionally inappropriate and sad.

I will now attempt to contextualize long hair and its place in my life and the lives of others.

I have long(ish) hair because it suits me — full stop. I am most certainly not doing it as a break from convention or out of some societal defiance, because that would be kind of pathetic, actually. I have had short hair. I have had grossly overlong-to-my-lower-back hair (photo record largely destroyed). And I now have hair to my shoulders — because it seems right to me. I do get comments, though very seldom, about my unruly lid from older men, usually my father, to which I usually reply, "Are you kidding? I'm 40 years old." Or every once in a while I'll say: "You're completely correct. I'm overdue for my quarterly haircut."

My hair tends to grow mostly outward — not Jewfro (though if it's humid, watch out) so much as mountain man. It's very unflattering either way, so I must get it trimmed (in what is essentially an extremely well-disguised and expertly subtle mullet) every three or four months, without fail.

Long-hair care and feeding: Here is the awesome little secret about long hair, at least for me. It is almost utterly maintenance free. I do not own a brush, comb, or hairdryer, and haven't forever. I wash my hair almost never — not in some nasty Rasta way, but I never shampoo it in the traditional Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific–style commercial way. I wash it, as I do the rest of me, with soap (favorite these days is Santa Maria Novella), towel dry for about 10 seconds, run my fingers through it so it doesn't knot up, and voilà! The idea of a beauty routine is, let's just say, foreign to me. Would Kris Kristofferson (in his prime) condition with a silky rinse? Would Sam Shepard (in his prime) use a volumizer? Um, hell no.

The key thing to understand about long hair is its appropriateness to your true presence and character. This is an elusive perspective and a humbling and difficult thing to become sensitive to. One must ask oneself, "How do I register to others and how much of that comes down to my appearance?" If you can digest this idea, everything becomes much more simplified, as it is the essence of true style. You can see evidence of violations of this code all the time. Just walk down the street. See the fellow who is too plump to be wearing the Thom Browne suit? Well, he has the same problem as the tech executive with the greasy Paul Mitchell-fied hair treatment. They are, in essence, wearing a costume, and it has to suck for them. This is why Gay Talese is impeccable in his style and Elton John is in his: They dress as themselves, and it works. This is why we intuitively understand that Dave Grohl's long hair looks cool and correct and Fabio's does not.