A Hairy Issue

It strikes me as very strange that the standard approach to haircuts is to get one's hair cut to the ideal length. To minimize the variance in one's hair length from the ideal over the period of time between cuts, you should get it cut too short instead. Can the downside of having hair that is too short so outweigh the downside of having hair that is too long as to justify the standard approach? Surely not. Any ideas on why we get our hair cut to the ideal length?

One possibility that suggests itself to me is that people are much more likely to notice your hair right after you have had a haircut; thus, your newly cut hair is especially salient and the memory of that ideal haircut is what will stick in people's minds after they are no longer really paying attention to your hair on a day to day basis. So if you want your hair to "look good" to others, you will get it cut to the ideal length.

I have also had the experience of having great difficulty convincing a hairdresser that I really do want my hair cut as short as I was asking. (Yes, I admit my preferred haircut is a little bit shorter than the ideal.) To the degree that people are willing to take their hairdresser's lead, they will get the ideal haircut, since we evaluate the cut immediately and decide whether that particular person did a good job (and make a behavioral intention whether to come back?) on that basis.

Some men will not have much oppportunity to go shorter than ideal if their ideal is very short indeed.