I live in Bangkok. What I have found after more than 10 years here is that with few exceptions girls with the sexiest waist length hair or longer are in a line of work where they NEED to attract men, and long hair gets them hired or directly makes them more money each day, such as product presenter girls as well as call girls, bar girls, and sing-a-song girls. Actresses and even models, however, more and more have shorter hair.

Whenever I ask girls here with "normal" office jobs with gorgeous shorter hair (and there are many) why they don't grow it long they always give one of two answers: a) It's just too hot here to keep long or b) that it will make them look like a spirit/ghost. Answer B, which is as common as answer A here, might sound strange to those who don't live in Thailand, but ghosts in Thai movies and TV are almost always portrayed as beautiful women with long hair (albeit with serious dark circles under their eyes). Still, that answer always cracks me up, and I NEVER hear an answer like "it doesn't look professional" or "it doesn't fit my career".

Still, I've got to hand it to the shampoo advertisers here for trying their best. Every shampoo commerical not only displays gorgeous hair, but they almost always use very long hair models and endlessly push long hair and how great it is. This is the kind of "brainwashing" I am all for :-), but it doesn't always seem to work unfortunately. Also, I guess when you work in a relatively slow-growth market like shampoo products, nothing increases shampoo usage like a trend towards longer hair. I've had long-haired girlfriends go through a bottle in just a few days!