Either short cut hair, or at the very least, done up in a very tight bun, or fairly short ponytail or braids or cornrows or something.
As you say, tangling with the environment or your gear… in a hand to hand fight, you do not want hair that can be pulled or wrapped up, you don’t want long hair getting in the way of reloading a gun, longer bangs blocking your view through binocs or iron sights or a scope…
Also… for tampons and pads…?
The ‘old ways’:
Lint wrapped around wood. Knotted ropes. Papyrus. Paper. Moss. Animal skins.
These were all used before the tampons and pads, with some more … unique solutions beginning to be mass produced in the late 1800s, eventually leading to modern tampons and pads.
So… I guess uh, assuming a post apocalyptic woman’s ‘survival’ stat is high enough, presumably they would return to much more locally sourceable, less complex to produce, decent enough solutions, after the last box of tampons gets looted from the last dilapidated Walgreens.
So… if your character is a postapoc woman badass… you could just add this into your own headcannon as an explanation, of sorts.
… I wonder how many post apocalyptic movies pass the Bechdel test lol.
EDIT: Going a bit further, and arguably off topic…
Common ammunition calibers, cigarettes, condoms, and possibly bandage/compress packs, tampons/pads, bic lighters… maybe also small sewing needle kits?.. would be pretty good candidates as physical commodity psuedo-currencies…
Basically for the reason that they are small, light, easily transportable, roughly standardized, are generally durable if stored properly… and are no longer in mass production… and basically everyone would either directly have practical use for them or know someone who does.
Bottlecaps as a currency would represent some level of general social cohesion beyond and above that, lol.
EDIT 2: … having long hair could …probably become something of a status symbol, as it would only really make sense if you were not roughing it all the time.
Men would also presumably keep their hair and beards short generally as well, and longer hair/beards could also become something of a status symbol as well.
Bottlecaps as a currency would represent some level of general social cohesion beyond and above that, lol.
Yep. Currency is usually backed by something, like the US dollar used to be backed by their gold reserves, caps in the wastes are backed by The Hub and its Water Merchants.
As I understand it… this is somewhat theoretical, and somewhat backed by fairly scant historical, prehistorical/anthropological data…
Caps, being accepted … broadly, regionally… implies, as you say, the infrastructure of The Hub’s water merchants and traders.
This would be a greater level of … general social cohesion and trust… because the caps, a cap itself… is not really a directly useful commodity in and of itself.
Cigs and tampons and condoms… things like these often naturally arise as psuedo currencies in situations like prisons, PoW camps… and part of the theory on why that seems to fairly consistently happen is that, in addition to having other attributes of a good money, a good currency… is that they do have a generally applicable direct use as an actual good.
So basically, the more inherent trust and level of technological development in society… the more likely you are to find that society with a currency/money that is further removed from being a directly useful or consumable good.
There are a good number of historical exceptions to this though, so… just a theory hehe.
Nah it’s pretty well proven I think, barter and trade has always been an informal method of…well…barter and trade lol, when currency can’t be used for some reason (like prison, or trading rifles for land from the Native Americans, etc, many examples throughout history). Sure there’s exceptions, but I’d call it common enough that it’s true, personally anyway.
The problem is it doesn’t scale well, eventually it gets to the point where you need bullets and have chickens but the bullet guy has chickens too and he needs more lead for casting and brass to reload, so you have to go find out what the lead and brass guys want, and it becomes a whole thing, where having something as an abstraction of value means we can all just get what we want easier. That and you eat/smoke/drink/consume your “money” somehow by necessity if it’s usable goods, or it rots etc, whereas if there’s an abstraction of value that is only used for that purpose it’s easier to save, transport, etc. It’s absolutely human nature to use trade/barter when money isn’t an option, but due to all that bullshit that comes with barter, money eventually gets reinvented by society because it’s just so handy, like The Hub using caps backed by water.