There was a time when women in court would have hair up in a bun or cut short in order to appear respectable, professional ect.
It is interesting (and good!) to not only see the number of female attorneys in the courtroom, but also that many wore their hair loose and very long!
Curious to know if that is a trend particular to Florida, or is it a general trend for female lawyers?
Is there a subliminal power of sorts associated with the loose long hair, ie. the "Sampson" effect, cut your hair/lose your strength, is it an asset of sorts in the courtroom?
imo, speculation.fwiw rbbm.
Now You Know: How Did Long Hair Become a Thing for Women?
"Hair is highly communicative, says Stenn, allowing individuals to send “messages of health, sexuality, religiosity, power” on first glance. It can be an expression of individual and group identity, and the the more attention a person (often a woman) is expected to devote to it, the more it can say. The scholar Deborah Pergament has
written that hair’s cultural and historic implications can be legally significant. “
Inferences and judgments about a person’s morality, sexual orientation, political persuasion, religious sentiments and, in some cultures, socio-economic status,” she notes, “can sometimes be surmised by seeing a particular hairstyle.”
Stenn, a former professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale who was also the director of skin biology at Johnson & Johnson, believes that health is perhaps the root cause of hair’s significance. “In order to have long hair you have to be healthy,” he says. “You have to eat well, have no diseases, no infectious organisms, you have to have good rest and exercise.”
Stenn also notes the practical difficulties of long hair:
“In order to have long hair you have to have your needs in life taken care of.” So long hair is also a status symbol, especially when it comes to complex hairstyles that require someone else to help you do them, which “implies you have the wealth to do it.”
