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I know more about hair than any man alive and yet people often ask me, what of it? Why is the history of hair important today? Indeed, I ask myself that question all the time. The answer to why hair is important is–sex. And yes, also power. Allow me to demonstrate why it is one of the building blocks of our society.
In the animal kingdom rituals of courtship are usually based upon the plumage, the manes, crests and so on of any given animal. For example, a male bird often has special plumage on top of its head. It uses the plumage to woo its mate, the plumage says “Look at me, over here, I am sexy. You should have my babies.” Most species have a part of their body that serves no evolutionary purpose other than to attract the desired mate. For humans this part is the hair. Like any animal, a human can weed out potential mates from its breeding group based upon hair, e.g. the person interested in a guy with a mullet will have a totally different reaction to somebody with hair extensions, a mohawk or an afro, or a plain business man’s haircut. Of course, this can also express many other emotions. For example, a cat or a dog with a raised ridge on its back is saying, “Stay the hell away from me.” The animal does this to appear bigger, taller and meaner than it really is, much like a person wearing a mohawk.
The mohawk is of course a much older style that has come back around. Mohicans captured Daniel Boone circa 1788 and gave him a mohawk the old-fashioned way, by pulling his hair out piece by piece, and if he so much as whimpered, they would cut his throat. It made a big comeback in the eighties with the rise of punk. It was also previously popular with WWII paratroopers when they jumped out of planes, the idea being, “I’m going to die today anyhow, why not have a mohawk?”
The only reason that hairstyles have been a social statement in the past is because hairstyles and the definition of mainstream hair are firmly ingrained in any society’s subconscious. Nowadays you see a lot more people sporting fauxhawks than mohawks.The fauxhawk was popularized by British Soccer player David Beckham, where a man cuts the side of his head close but leaves a miniature gelled up hawk. Oddly, the fauxhawk is currently popular with the punk scene although my sources in New York say it will be passe by next Tuesday.
If a fauxhawk is today’s way of saying, “I'm cooler than I look,” a mullet is worn to tell prospective mates, “Yes, I am as dumb as I look.” The mullet, AKA the Alabama waterfall or bammer as we hairologists call it, is perhaps the most easily recognizable hairdo discussed in this article. Chances are good someone in your family or a loved one has a mullet. By tracking the appearance of the bammer in the great Northwest, scientists can study the influx of Baptists, REO Speedwagon fans and other related groups. Hairologists have been able to track migration routes of these cultures, much in the same way biologists can track specific deer by attaching collars with different little tags to the animals’ heads, but I digress.
The way that people have worn their hair throughout history is an incredibly good indicator of a culture’s social ideas about themselves. The pragmatic Greeks kept their hair fairly short rather like our mainstream society today. However, in the Baroque period gentlemen’s wigs were very ornate, Rococo and decadent as a three-tier wedding cake. It is interesting, this most Rococo period of hairstyles did not involve real hair.
The variations in men’s hair more readily display alterations from the status quo. To put this another way–consider the traditional link in Western culture between a woman and her hair. The fact that women have usually had longer hairstyles than men says something about our ideas of gender. One modern feminist response to this idea which is rooted in the hegemonic Judeo-Christian belief “a woman’s hair is her glory” etc, is the radical act of a woman completely shearing her hair, cropping it even closer than the current masculine short hair style. By doing this a woman chooses, to quote Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek–“to eschew the core of her ‘femininity,’ that mysterious je ne sais quoi, something ‘in her more then herself,’ that secret treasure (algama) that makes her the object of male desire.”
Wearing your hair differently has always been a way of placing oneself outside of society as a whole, from tonsured monks down to Mr. T. On the opposite extreme are the hairstyles of the presidential candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush. The whole point of their hair is to look presidential and presidential hair should look... well besides charismatically well coifed, it is hair that strives to be the ideal that the voters have about good hair. Don’t think for an instant that Bush and Kerry don’t both have hairstylists working hard to create the most presidential head of hair possible. The hair of the president is the ultimate representation of what we the people deem to be proper and respectable hair. Kerry himself joked that he and Edwards had “ better ideas and better hair” for the country.
Historically, the United States' presidential candidate with the best head of hair has always won the election. Abraham Lincoln knew this, he grew his whiskers out, after a lifetime of failure as a lawyer and rode his bushy bearded prophet look into the Oval Office. It would seem safe to say that Bush and Cheney will lose to the Kerry and Edwards ticket based on hair alone. Kerry has a fuller head of hair all by himself than Bush and Dick Cheney combined. As a staunch Republican I can only say this: Dick Cheney if you are reading this, call Hair Club For Men at 1.800.346.9249 and if you get started now you could be looking like a troll doll by November.
Most honest political analysts will tell you quite straightforwardly that JFK won based upon his looks. He was young and inexperienced but he had much better hair than his opponent. While people are thinking, "okay… I am going to pick this candidate because I like his economic policy, or his policy on taxes or blah blah blah." What it really comes down to for many voters, or to go back to the animal kingdom analogy, people hunting for a prospective mate, is do I like this guy or not, do I trust them? For a lot of people what this boils down to is looks, and as a hairologist I have to tell you frankly that hair is the first aspect of a person we are likely to take in. I mean do you think Kerry would be such a viable Democratic candidate if he was bald, had dreadlocks or a Donald Trump comb-over? Probably not.
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