I Wore a Wig to See If Men on Dating Sites Really Do Prefer Long Hair

Up until recently, I had been in a relationship for about seven years. I’ve also had short hair—like pixie cut short, sometimes even buzzcut short—for the same amount of time. So when I recently found myself single and on Tinder for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder (in my best Carrie Bradshaw voice): Do men on dating sites prefer short hair or long hair?

On one hand, I like the way I look with short hair; but on the other hand, the most popular woman on OkCupid has long hair. I, of course, would never change my hair just to make someone like me, but I was curious. So for the sake of a sociological investigation, I decided to do a little experiment to see exactly how much hair has an influence on the amount of interested potential dates.

Here’s how it went down. For the first week, I made a dating profile (one on Tinder and one on OkCupid) with pictures of my usual short hair and recorded the number of matches/likes and messages I received. For the second week, I did the same thing but with a new profile that had pictures of me with long hair. Other than the length of my hair, every other part of my dating profiles remained the same: the same brown hair color, the same neutral makeup in most of my pictures, the same brief bio, and the same preferences for age and location radius of men. My hypothesis, if you want to call it that, was that the profile with long hair would receive more attention.

I started with Tinder. I created a profile with pictures of my short hair first. I swiped right on every single one of the first 100 profiles and then waited to see how many turned into a match. By the end of the first hour, I had 19 matches and seven messages. By the end of the week, I had 49 matches and 25 messages. A 49 percent success rate with matches isn’t bad, but I was confident that the profile with long hair would beat it.

So the following week, I made a new Tinder profile that was identical to my old one but with pictures of me with long hair (a wig, since i haven’t had long hair since high school) instead of my usual pixie cut. Once again, I swiped right on the first 100 profiles. After the first hour, I had eight matches and two messages—noticeably fewer than the amount that I had after the first hour of creating the short hair profile. Interesting, I thought, but probably an anomaly. Give it till the end of the week to catch up. By the end of the week, however, the long hair profile only had 38 matches and 15 messages.

That’s 22 percent fewer matches and 40 percent fewer messages than I received on my Tinder profile with short hair! I was shocked.

I conducted the same experiment simultaneously on OkCupid. Since OkCupid is set up differently from Tinder in that it doesn’t require a mutual match, I just created my profile and then sat back and waited. For my OkC profile with the short hair, I received 33 likes and 9 messages within the first hour. By the end of the week, I had 484 likes and 77 messages.

You know the drill by now: I created an identical profile with pictures of long hair for the second week. By the end of the first hour, I had 36 likes and 5 messages—pretty close to the short hair profile’s results. But then by the end of the week, the long hair profile had only garnered 237 likes and 31 messages.

That’s 51 percent fewer likes and about 60 percent fewer messages than I received with short hair. I believe the correct scientific term here is: Daayyyumn!

Here’s a small sampling of the initial comments I received that were just about my short hair.

By the end of my little experiment, I had to conclude that not only was my hypothesis completely incorrect, I was also apparently carrying around an incorrect assumption about the way men view women with short hair. This forced me to take a moment to unpack my reasons for this. I myself have had short hair for years and I love how it looks—not only on myself, but on other women as well. I’ve also only ever dated men who liked my short crop. So why did I feel so confident that men, in general, prefer women with long hair?

All I can say is that it’s something that I grew up hearing so often I must have internalized it as fact. I heard it from important men in my life—such as my father, my brother and his friends, my high school crush—and saw that view reflected in the media, specifically in the way that female celebrities’ long hair is prized.

It’s always a big deal when a woman cuts off her hair, whether it’s in a TV show or a movie or in real life. Consider what a big deal it was when Miley Cyrus sheared off her long Hannah Montana locks into a pixie cut, or how Julia Louis-Dreyfus was inspired by criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s hair for the short hair plotline on Veep.

Going from long hair to short always opens up invitations to critique the woman’s appearance (especially when said woman is in the spotlight), and there’s seemingly always one person who’s quick to chime in with an unsolicited, “She looked better with long hair.” I would know, since I certainly have received plenty of those sorts of comments myself.

The sad thing is that I allowed those individuals to shape my view of the world as a whole. I let a few sexist men speak for men everywhere. The worst part is that I filtered my own appearance through their perspective and saw it as reality, without even realizing it. Sure, I recognized that remarks like “women shouldn’t have short hair” and “women with short hair are less attractive than women with long hair” are sexist. I laughed them off and continued to wear my hair short.

And yet, I still managed to internalize them to the point that I had no problem casually declaring that of course men on dating sites would greatly prefer me with long hair rather than my usual short hair—and I was surprised when I was proved wrong.

After I had some time to reflect on the results of my experiment, I tried to figure out what the take-away was—for this article, at least. Obviously, the take-away isn’t simply: “Cut your hair short if you want more Tinder matches!” (Although that would make a very clickable headline, I’m sure.) That’s actually the opposite of the take-away, I think, because if there’s any moral to this story it’s that it really does pay off to just be your genuine self.

On my actual (now-defunct) dating profile, I had pictures of my short hair, including a picture of it when it was pink and another picture of my buzzcut—and I wasn’t at all surprised when I wound up talking to a lot of great guys. My short hair feels more like me than any other hairstyle. I decided long ago against growing my hair out because my pixie cut has become such an essential part of the way that I see myself. Even if the dating profiles with long hair had gotten ten times as much attention, I still wouldn’t have considered growing my hair out. I just wish I hadn’t been so quick to bet against my own hair before starting this experiment.

I think it’s totally fine to have a few pictures of yourself on your dating profile that showcase different hairstyles or makeup looks, but if you love your curls, don’t restrict yourself to only posting pictures of yourself with straight hair because some dumb ex said he prefers straight hair.

For every person who isn’t into one aspect of your appearance, there are 10 other people who will love it. So whatever it is that you love about yourself that goes against the norm, put that front and center in your dating profile. Whether it’s your nose ring, your freckles, your pink hair, your glasses, or whatever it is that makes you feel like you when you look in the mirror: don’t ever bet against it. I certainly won’t now.

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