My opinion on men with long hair is made strictly on a case by case basis. Perhaps, as a lady who has rocked super short hair for some years now, I should be more lenient and accepting overall but guess what? I'm not. Because I've seen some pretty terrible ponytails on some dudes. Number one rule: Don't, don't, don't grow out your hair if you're balding. Even if you're in you're twenties and in denial about it, just don't. Because that top bit will never, ever catch up, and you will look like a fool.
That being said, I totally had a sight-only crush* on a ponytail guy all through college. Mind you, he had great, fluffy, wavy-ish hair, and his ponytail was very small. He was also the first dude I saw rocking the man headband (cloth only), so I'm not totally unfamiliar with the concept.
Even though I (kind of) tried not to notice, Roman men are (generally) pretty good looking. So I was okay with them growing out their hair, and I completely support their use of plastic headband to secure it in place. Like, this kind of plastic headband:
Only not on Nikki Cox. On a dude.
Or maybe this kind:
"Mine's funky!"
I was in Rome for three days, and believe it or not, I did more than just ogle the men. I also saw pretty much every important tourist/historically important thing to see, ate some really good and slightly less good gelato, bickered with my sister, stayed in the worst hostel ever, used my phrasebook to speak broken Italian, embarrassed my sister by bickering with her in front of her friends, and went on a pretty decent pub crawl. Rome is, as imagined, spectacular and full of more things to do than one visit allows time for. The only thing I didn't make it into was the Vatican itself. I went into the Vatican Museums, which includes the ridiculous series of signs that look like this:
So you're like, Oh! I must be close to the Sistine Chapel now! But then there's like 17 more of those signs and it takes you 45 minutes to an hour to actually get there. And then you're finally in, but you're not aloud to take photos! And even though everyone around you is sneakily doing it anyway as the guards are yelling "Silence! Silence!" to the crowds, you decide to just admire quietly and move on. At least, that's what I did.
The Sistine Chapel was beautiful and impressive, especially Michelangelo's use of perspective against the curves of the ceiling, but I have to say after all the signs and winding through other parts of the museum, it was a bit anti-climactic. Like, if that weren't the most packed room in the Museum, I might not have even known it was the Sistine Chapel, because the whole building was decorated with ceiling and wall frescos. And by the end of it, I was too tired and hungry to make my way over to the real Vatican, which my sister and her friends had gotten up at 6am (morning after the pub crawl) to go see without a line.
If you do make it to Rome, I would definitely get out to Villa Borghese, a huge park in the northwest of the city. There are several museums and a zoo around the edges of the park, and I highly recommend the Galleria Borghese, which has The Rape of Prosperina by Bernini, a pretty impressive sculpture with that oh-so-common Roman theme. There are also several locations to rent bikes, which I regrettably didn't do, and ride around the park.
Rome is full of history (obvs), and if my sister is right about European fashion, its also full of America's future. So look out for plastic headbands on the heads of men everywhere come next Spring, and be warned, men in Europe where purses as well.
*It's not that we didn't have the opportunity to converse, it's just that every time I had the chance to speak around him, I would completely freeze up. I was so afraid of saying something completely inane like, "Table," that I just didn't say anything at all.
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