How to have long hair ?

[Emi]

Hi !

I have thick and very male-looking hair and I want it to grow longer and not thicker. How could I do ?
Thanks if you reply ! 

[Jess42]

Hi !

I have thick and very male-looking hair and I want it to grow longer and not thicker. How could I do ?
Thanks if you reply ! 

Not really sure what you are asking other than just let your hair grow. What do you mean by male-looking hair? Hairline, the way you have it cut or just more or less bushy? Hair is hair, believe me a lot of ciswomen would kill to have thick hair. There is a commercial in the states about women having flat hair, so be thankful if you are MTF that it is thick and the longer it gets the more luscious it will become.

[Caitlyn]

Patience. That's the only real answer for long hair Having thick hair is typically a good thing though. When very thin hair gets long it runs the risk of looking "stringy," so enjoy your thick locks!

My hair is long enough that it just barely drapes across my shoulders, and it took about a year and a half to get there. Granted, I got it trimmed more than once during that time to avoid split ends and such. Also, everybody is different, so some people grow hair faster than others.

[LittleEmily24]

Back then I had long hair and it was messy and I looked like the fat guy from Lost, alternatively I also looked like the lead singer of Coheed and Cambria... thats how messy my hair was. However i never took care of it... i kinda just washed it and put in a pony tail, so it looked like messy guy hair. But being that I have been on hormones too short a time for it to have an effect on my hair (and yes, it does have an effect on your hair) I've just started brushing it, letting it air-dry instead of roughly towel-drying it, using shampoo and conditioner properly, not washing my hair every day, taking hair/skin/nails pills and eating cold-water fish (omega-3 oils are good for hair growth and strength) and my hair doesn't grow like messy guy hair anymore. It still frizzes up, but it doesn't look like hell. You can always use leave-in conditioner too, or mousse (for now, until it gets longer) to keep it under control.

Btw, I have wavy hair and live in Miami so my hair needs a lot of maintenance to look nice -_- Often times when someone's hair looks "male" its because they don't take very good care of it.. hence why a lot of metal heads in high school had messy long hair that you could never mistake for female, while i had friends who took great care of their hair and would get mistaken for female because of how healthy their hair was. It has more to do with maintenance than it does with any kind of "special growth", because even a ciswoman can look like a man if she doesn't take care of her hair, trust me, i've seen it lol. It might seem very "role associated" but the truth of the matter is that most women normally take care of their hair and men simply can't be bothered to do more than the bare minimum

[vlmitchell]

Hair grows at about 6"/year... so... do what the rest of us do and... wait three years, preferably working with a stylist who knows what your goal is, getting maintenance cuts every couple of months to keep it healthy.

Other things you can do:
- Pre-natal vitamins actually grow hair like crazy in certain peeps.
- Wigs (no, seriously, *don't* do this, wigs = no)
- Condition daily, wash every 2-3 days (do not over wash your hair, srsly)
- Nothing
- No, really, nothing

[JamesG]

Whut she said.  Taking just about any vitamins will help your hair (and nails) to grow and be healthier. Hair cells need iron and B... something (12?) specifically. 

I now have much more respect for wemen's hair and why they are so protective and hate cutting it. It is such a PITA waiting thru that awkward period where it's too short to do anything with and long enough to be a mess and get in the way.

Also you might be surprised by what it does while it grows out. Texture and color can change as it ages. I haven't had more than a short short hair since I was a teenager when it was straight, thick, and blonde.  Since I've been growing it out, it is now curly, thin, and dark brown that gets a red cast to it. Go figure...

[Hikari]

The first thing would be to let it grow. It will look bad when it is between your ears and your shoulders because really thick hair has a tendancy to curve very strongly on the edges. You can mitigate this by styling it, but I would avoid using heavy heat like a straightener.

You can have a healthy diet, I notice that it seems like seafood makes my hair grow a bit faster. I would question the posts ITT that list a specific growth rate, people's hair grows at different rates. My brothers hair is much thicker than mine and grows noticeably slower. I would assume that since we have similar genetics and diet that the reason is that thicker hair has more substance so the actual creation of hair is about the same amount but I can grow nearly 10" a year while he does about 5".

Also if you get split ends, trim your hair. It is hard to take away some of your hard earned progress but in the long run it looks much better. Regular trims also seem to make your hair grown faster but, obviously you can't trim too much if you want it to make it long.

As you are growing your hair I would also reccomend brushing and styling your hair in you "standard" style to train it. While I don't always center part my hair it very much wants to be parted in the center now due to how much I have done it.

Also remember styling > length! It doesn't matter if your hair is long if you don't make it look nice, if it is too much maintmence plenty of shorter styles look nice with less work.

[Emi]

Thanks for all your replies
At the moment I can only wait ...
My hair grows fast so I just have to wait and style it I think ? I'll try to post pics because I can't explain how it grows (it's a bit special, and I don't speak english well enough) :p
Again, thank you all for your replies