As noted in our word-bluffing game, the word telamon, means a figure of a man used as a supporting column, and a similarly-used figure of a woman is a caryatid.

Another name for a telamon is an atlas. The plurals of telamon and atlas are irregular; they are telamones and atlantes.

If you look up pictures, you'll find that typically the female, the caryatid, is standing up straight, while the atlas is hunched over, bearing the weight on its back, as if it is stuggling under a heavy load.

The reason isn't esthetic, though. A column must be strong enough to support the weight put on it, and the column's weakest part is its narrowest part, which in the case of a human figure is the neck. The neck part of a female-figured column can be made wider and stronger by sculpting as a single block the woman's neck and and the tresses that flow over it. Men's hairstyles, though, do not permit that approach.

Fascinating snippet: sexual ornament affecting architecture. If you'd been asked beforehand for an example of that, you'd never think of it. How could clothing, jewellery, hairstyle interact with bricks and mortar? -- or whatever they're made from.

The plurals are regular for Greek. Well, to the extent that declensions can be predicted.

Agreed in full, aput -- but I'm not sure the difference between women's and men's hairstyles is only "ornamentation". I have a funny empty spot at the back of my skull (my barber insistes on cutting it, no matter how much tell him otherwise), so I for one couldn't grow a woman's hair style.

aput, if male, must be too young and fortunate to have suffered this particular indignity.