Nothing is more commonplace than a man’s haircut, and yet nothing is more charged with symbolism. The accidental fuzz that evolution left on top of our heads, perhaps to keep our brains warm, has acquired more meanings over the years than any other aspect of the male anatomy, except perhaps height. These meanings are rich, and at the same time completely contradictory, which makes them very human. We love symbolism, but we hate it to make sense.
Marines have short or shaven hair to symbolize toughness and prisoners to symbolize submission. Religions have many rules about hair. Sikhs don’t cut theirs at all. Pious Jews may wear long sideburns. Muslim men grow their facial hair. Monks traditionally wore their hair in a tonsure — bald with a fringe all around. God cares about hair.
In pagan mythology, hair often symbolized strength. Samson lost his to an amateur barber and was humiliated. The 18th century was the golden age of male wigs when real hair was cut down to stubble, and men paraded around in elaborate hairpieces.
For a while in the 60s, long hair came back, and some teenagers still favor elaborately coiffed masses of hair as a symbolic rebellion or out of vanity. But now, the almost universal fashion for grown men is some version of the old-fashioned Victorian short back and sides, which is a kind of anti-style. That’s my choice too, or rather my failure to make a choice. I’ve been going to the same barber for years now, and I never have to engage in conversation about my stylistic needs. The price increases as fast as the amount of hair to be cut diminishes, but everything else remains the same.
The recent Republican Convention gave a clue to how popular this choice is. The convention audience, photographed from behind, was a sea of neatly trimmed male heads – all short back and sides. In the First Continental Congress of 1774, it would have been a sea of white wigs, but hair conformity rules in every age. It will be interesting to see whether audience photographs from the coming Democratic convention show any signs of tonsorial rebellion, or whether it will suggest that we are more united than we thought, at least in the matter of hair.
Hair marks the passing of time, at least for men. Not only does it evaporate year by year, but it also changes color, acting as a kind of public barometer of age. This never seems to happen to women of my generation. Their hair stays the same and sometimes gets even darker or turns suddenly and startlingly blonde from one day to the next. This must be some beneficial female gene denied to men, who must face up to the passage of time every time we look in the mirror.
I did think about anticipating nature and having the last of my hair shaved, as is fashionable these days. But then I would have to shave it every day or two, and perhaps polish the dome as well. There’s no point in fooling around with hair unless you are an actor or a politician. It’s embarrassing for grown men to appear in public with funny hairstyles and improbable colors that take too much time in front of the mirror. It makes you wonder what’s going on underneath.
