I'd rather have a young person approach philosophy with clean, neat hair than with dirty, messy hair. When someone cares about their appearance, it shows they have some sense of beauty and want to look good. Where they think beauty is, that's where they try to create it. I just need to point them in the right direction and say: "Young person, you're looking for beauty, and that's good. But you need to know that real beauty grows in the part of you that thinks and reasons. Look for it where you make choices about what to pursue and what to avoid. Look for it in your desires and in what you reject. That's the superior part of you. Your body is just dirt. Why waste effort on it? Even if you learn nothing else, time will teach you that the body is nothing."
I indeed would rather that a young man, who is making his first movements towards philosophy, should come to me with his hair carefully trimmed than with it dirty and rough, for there is seen in him a certain notion (appearance) of beauty and a desire of (attempt at) that which is becoming; and where he supposes it to be, there also he strives that it shall be. It is only necessary to show him (what it is), and to say: Young man, you seek beauty, and you do well; you must know then that it (is produced) grows in that part of you where you have the rational faculty; seek it there where you have the movements towards and movements from things, where you have the desires towards and the aversion from things; for this is what you have in yourself of a superior kind; but the poor body is naturally only earth; why do you labor about it to no purpose? if you shall learn nothing else, you will learn from time that the body is nothing.