Men prefer hair long

Amanda Holden came top of the website’s hot celebrity wish list, with Holly Willoughby in close proximity in second place. The website, which caters for married people looking for passion and single people looking for short-term fun, quizzed a group of male members to see whether they preferred long or short hair in a girl they’d want to take for a date. They also asked them to name the female celebrity they’d most want to date or take to bed for one night only. 72% said they liked long locks, but even so, all of the celebrity names that cropped up had long hair, suggesting that even though men may think they like the short, sexy, cropped look, when it comes to primal urges they are subliminally drawn to the femininity of longer hair. Only a sixth (15%) of men said they liked short hair. The remainder (13%) said they didn’t care. When asked whether they liked women with their dos down or tied back there was a similar split. Nearly another three quarters (74%) preferred down and only 20% preferred a woman’s hair back, saying it looked more ‘elegant’. A surprising number of long blonde haired beauties made the top ten. Scarlett Johansson’s thick golden mane won her third place in the most mentioned woman men would like to date or take to bed. In fourth place was Sienna Miller and Billie Piper came fifth. The poll by the dating website, which has more than 650,000 members in the UK, was commissioned following comments by Davina McCall that her gran thought ‘she looked like a slut’ with long hair past forty years of age. Long hair has long been epitomised as a symbol of beauty in artistic imagery for centuries. Style expert and coach Katherine Owens says that sex and hair are inextricably linked. “Short can be sexy and this survey shows that many men openly say they love short hair. It symbolises playfulness, confidence and an ability to express individuality. However I find that when women are active on the dating scene or feeling particularly sexually active, they tell me they want to grow their hair long. They see it as girly and they expect men to be drawn to that. Men too recognise long hair as soft, feminine and even submissive part, which is very powerful in attraction.”