Contrary to popular opinion, bad hair days are not a female prerogative. A survey conducted by Yale University in the United States has discovered that men are just as liable to be anxious about the state of their scalp as women - and suffer more angst if their crowning glory is not glorious.
Yale's Gender Communication Laboratory, directed by Prof Marianne LaFrance, investigated the psychological effects of "bad hair". Prof LaFrance's research team asked 60 men and 60 women between the ages of 17 and 30 to recall occasions on which their hair had refused to behave as they hoped.
The surprise finding was that not only did male interviewees have no difficulty remembering such moments but also that the "negative impact" on their sense of self-esteem was greater than among women.
Yesterday, Prof LaFrance explained that problematic hair could cause men to experience self-doubt. "And when they do, they're more inclined than women to be unsociable," she said. "For men, more than women, performing well in all areas of activity is an important dimension of their lives."
Her study concludes that having bad hair "negatively influences self-esteem, brings out social insecurities, and causes people to concentrate on the negative aspects of themselves."
However, although men are taking more trouble over their hair, they are showing correspondingly less interest in their attire. Late last week, two large accountancy firms in England, Arthur Andersen and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, announced that their male staff were no longer obliged to wear suits to work.
This sartorial slide is in line with current trends in office dress, with fewer men wearing suits to work regularly. For several years, retailers throughout Europe have reported falling sales of formal clothing as increasing numbers of men prefer to take a casual approach, even at work.
Some companies have begun to reflect this change of tone by introducing weekly "casual days". In Ireland, for example, accountants Deloitte & Touche adopted this policy a year ago.
(A cursory glance around the Irish Times office shows that, without waiting for any managerial diktat, a similarly relaxed approach to dress has been adopted on an all day/ every day basis.)
Nonetheless, yesterday the Dublin offices of both Arthur Andersen and Price WaterhouseCoopers were continuing to uphold tailored tradition. A spokeswoman at the former remarked, "They're all still wearing suits here."
She passed no comment on the state of their hair.