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So, today I'm talking about things to consider before growing your hair out. Now, I feel like I've neglected the whole hair growth process thing for a while, and particularly because I am done pretty much growing my hair out. It's like down to my nipples almost. I should’ve actually had my hair out for the video below, but I atleast had it out for the thumbnail right.
1. Hair Growth Negativity From Others
All right, so the first thing that I wanted to cover in considering cutting your hair out is, how are you prepared for the negative bullshit? Okay? It is a super weird thing. I don't know why so many people care about how your hair looks. I know for me personally, I guess in real life, because I do work from home and everything, I'm quite secluded. I've only ever really got my friends around. I'm not really in public environments like school or work or anything like that where people have a chance to even comment negative things about my hair.
But the one place I really did experience the whole, "You look shit, this sucks, why are you doing that? You look gross," is particularly online. And I live here a lot. I'm online a lot of the time. I make videos every single week. So, of course, I'm getting comments here, there, and everywhere. And some of them are really negative and crappy.
What I want you to take forward with this is, you've got to be kind of prepared for that. When you go to your job or if you're going to school, people are going to say things about it, and you either have to come up with a list of comebacks of what you're going to say. I could actually make a video about that, comebacks for people that are paying you out about your hair. I love it, or I don't know. Work out how you're going to get your skin a bit thicker, because it can, not only when you're going through the growing out process do you feel like you look shit and you tell yourself that in the mirror, but having other people confirm it back to you just is so much more defeating and so much more like it just beats you down, man.
And I think that's why a lot of us wit out before we actually even get to where our hair's actually grown to the full length that we wanted it in the beginning. So, it is a very serious thing, and it's a very real thing. And you've got to make sure... Shut up. You've got to make sure you're prepared for that just before you go into it.
So, when you know that you're ready and you've thought about all the things that could potentially happen, it's almost like people going to change a career or going to change whatever and worrying about what people are going to say about it. And at the end of the day, you have to do what's good for you. And if you want to have long hair, essentially you got to go through this process. But once you get to the end of it, you're like, I know I was.
And in saying that as well though, it is a lot easier to just ignore the negative bullshit online because I can just go, "Oh, I'm not going to look at that comment," or, "Oh, I'm going to delete that person," or, "Oh, I'm going to give that person a rude finger emoji." But in real life it can be a little bit tough. So, just make sure you're prepared for that. And it is definitely something to consider. Are you ready to go through with it? Okay?
2. Will Long Hair Even Suit You?
The second thing that you really need to consider when growing your hair out is, is it going to suit your face shape? You know what I mean? This is a very interesting thing. So different hairstyles work with different face shapes. Luckily, for the man bun, the man bun is actually one of those hairstyles that works with pretty much most face shapes.
There's probably about three of them that are really ideal for having a man bun and long hair. I'll read those out to you right now. I did make some notes before. So, we've got the oval face shape. That's the actual face shape I have. I have an oval face shape, which is why the man bun looks so good on me. No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, the oval face shape is probably, if you've got an oval face shape, your hair's pretty much going to work with any style. But particularly with long hair, it can look good as well. I mean, I love my hair down now as well. I can even wear it like without doing stuff and it still suits my face very well. I can wear it up. I feel like it suits me very well as well.
The other face shapes that are pretty much ideal for having a man bun, the square face shape and you've also got the triangle face shape. All of these things compliment, like with the triangle one because it's quite pointed down the bottom. If you have a bun up the top it can kind of even that point out. Like a triangle chin is quite pointy, so having something on top to help balance it out can really benefit your face. And with a square one, I think just that manly jaw line with the man bun, it adds that masculinity look that people really like in the man bun.
All of the other face shapes can pretty much fit with it. You've got like the diamond face shape. You've also got the heart face shape. You've got the round face shape. The round face shape can work really well with a man bun with an undercut because a round face is quite wide as it is tall. And when you shave the sides it kind of gives the face a little bit more length and then the bun on top also accentuates that.
However, yeah, I don't know long hair on a round face probably like wearing it down could look a little bit frumpy and I also wouldn't recommend... I mean, actually I can't say I wouldn't recommend because if you want long hair just go for it. Like who gives a fuck really? But it is important to take into account your features and just do a little forecast of what it might look like or if it's even going to suit you. Because if you spend all that time actually growing it out. Like we're talking 18 months here, growing it out just to go, "Oh-oh fuck, I look shit," you're going to feel really jipped. Okay?
With the round face shape, yeah, have a go at it. I'm struggling to recommend that you grow your hair long and wear it out if you've got a around face shape and also with the oblong face shape. The oblong face shape is quite long already, so if you take a long face and then add long hair that's even longer than the face, the face then looks longer. And then if you tie your hair up in a bun with a long face, it adds this whole like couple of centimetres on top of your head, which makes it look longer as well. Okay?
Now, that can be seen as unflattering. If you're not bothered by that and you have a long face, fucking go for it. But it's just something to consider and think about because yeah, like I said, if you go through all that time of growing it out, you're going to feel very jipped.
3. How Are You Going to Grow Your Hair Out?
The third thing to consider when growing your hair out is how are you going to go about this? Now usually you guys are growing from a disconnected undercut. These are like the main things that I see. And the question that I do get quite a lot is like do I grow it out by just letting the sides go or do I shave the whole thing and let it all grow evenly?
This is something that you have to actually decide for yourself because to be honest, there is no easy way. Once it starts getting to that like this stage and you can't really control it anymore, it's very, very awkward.
When it's this long and we have a man bun, you have like this little bun and the crusty, the clown bits. When it's this long all over, you can't really style it in any cool way. It's just like I am royally fucked either way I go here, so I may as well work with it either way. The way I did it, I had my disconnected undercut and I was on... I was having a zero on the sides and I did contemplate like, "Oh, should I just shave it all and then go from there?"
And then I thought, "No, I don't really want to miss out on the style opportunities." I actually took the challenge on to go, "Well, I'm going to keep the top knot and all this long hair and I'm going to make it work. I'm going to see if I can come up with some styles."
I did do a video about hacks during the growing out phase, which you can find up in the cards, or I might do a revamp of that one because I think I do have a few more tips for it. However, it's really up to you how you want to do it.
I believe having the top knot and the shaving sides and just growing the sides out as you go it still gives you more opportunity to make yourself look different or try different things. But when you grow it all out in an even length, to me that was less appealing because I was like, I know what I'm going to be like if all my hair is even this length.
I'm just going to be like, I'm going to hate it, get it off. And it would have been even more of a deterrent for me to go and actually go through with growing all the hair out.
So, I'm really happy with the way that I did it. And there's no right or wrong way, but you have to kind of make the decision. Okay?
4. How Long Do You Want to Grow Your Hair?
The fourth thing that you have to consider is what length are you going to grow it to? Now, there's probably, I mean, you could put a question mark on it and go, "Oh, whenever I feel like it," but I feel like setting a goal is actually the better thing to do because you have something to go towards. Like when you get to that goal, you go, "Right." It gives you a point of assessment.
When you put a question mark on it, it's kind of like, "Oh well, I don't know." And you could get to this long, get fed up with it and go, "Oh well, I didn't even have a goal anyway, so why not," even more of a deterrent to turn you off. Now, when I got my hair to about here and I decided, "Oh, I actually like it," I actually dropped my goal. I was kind of like, "Ah, I don't even know where this is going now, but I'm liking what I'm seeing. So I'm gathering the longer it gets, the better."
I think subconsciously my new goal is to my nipples and I'm not far off. I found having a goal of what I wanted it to get to was going to be a thing for me. So, that's what I did and sure enough it helped me stick straight on the straight and narrow and not cut it.
And also having this community and you guys here with me every month to check in about it was actually a really good confidence boost too, because I knew that I wasn't the only person on the whole planet that was doing it. When I'm not online and I'm just by myself and nobody else is growing their hair around, like around me, then yeah, it feels like, "Oh, I am literally the only one doing this, how uncool.
So set a goal. All right? How long are you going to get it to?
5. What Hairstyles Are You Going to Wear?
The fifth thing that I wanted to talk about was what kind of styles are you going to go for? So, if you're considering growing your hair out, you've obviously been seeing somebody online who, no, I'm just kidding, who you thought looked cool. You actually liked their style, you liked their inspo and you thought, "Oh man, I'd really like to try that."
And it's really, really cool to have even a Pinterest board or something like that. You can even save things on Instagram, but to have a portfolio or some sort of folder or album where you keep all of your hair inspo and styles that you're going to try when you get to those lengths. The reason I really encourage this is just because it helps with keeping you going and reminding you of what the goal was, if you know what I mean.
So ,I don't know if you guys know about this, but look at this handsome devil, this little flag thing here is actually a save button. So if you click it you can actually save to a collection and you'll see here I've got man bun styles that I wanted to... This is from when I was growing my hair out, I would click and save different photos to boards that I wanted to have just for my inspo in case they ever got like ran out of ideas or felt a bit disheartened or wanted to chop all my hair off. I just found it, sorry, that just jumped in my mouth.
I really wanted to have something there that I could look at for inspo and keep me on track with my goal. It's essentially just knowing where your weak points are, and making sure you've got them all covered. Because when you go through this shit, I cannot tell you the amount of times, like it was an emotional journey, man.
No, it was. It was really emotional and I'd be so up and down, up and down, up and down. And now that I've grown it all out, I could not have thanked myself more because I've never loved my hair more in my whole life, to be honest, than I do right now, and how long it is. Just a few tips from good old Tom.
Conclusion
And that's pretty much all. I didn't want to overwhelm you with too much. There's probably a few more things to consider, but those are probably the main things that I would say. And yeah, if you have any more that you wanted to share, make sure you leave a comment. Leave a comment anyway because it's just good for my morale on YouTube. Right? I should stop pushing people to engage with me. Engage with me. Could you imagine doing that to someone in a nightclub?
Engage with me. Leave a comment on me. It's so weird. Like what if you took YouTube to real life? No way. Anyway, so yeah, I hope you found this post useful.
I am planning to do a bit more hair growth content and inspo, male hair celebrities is on the way, I think, or male long head celebrities is on the way because I know you guys liked the long head inspo on Instagram. So yeah, just stay tuned and keep it real. All right. I love you so much. See you later, okur.
Yours in good hair,
Thomas