A friend recently asked if I’ve ever had a bad hair day. I lifted my face to the clouds and roared with laughter. My baseball cap fell off. My friend guffawed.
I came close to having a bad hair decade. At one stage of its growth, my hairstyle took a phone-call from Tim Burton’s casting director. Rent Edward Scissorhands and look very closely at the topiary. I’ll say no more.
It began when I went to see Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’. I remember thinking that the real lesson of the tale was that if you have hair like Charlie Sheen, you should be beaten with a xylophone hammer. Traumatised by displays of power hair, I needed to rebel, to send ripples through my community and to commit crimes against paternity. I grew a mullet.
After the mullet, came the pony-tail, then something that slowly conquered my back and was formerly declared an area of outstanding national mockery. They were hard years, featuring Magoo glasses and green caps. They formed scars on my psyche that still send shock-waves through my hair.
I looked like I had been rejected from a buskers’ union. That was partly the point but what I thought was self expression was lack of direction. I should have looked for role models. I should have studied team sports.
There are athletes who steadfastly maintain sensible haircuts. Indeed, some of them are not just sensible, but are the very archetype of sensible, an ideal of a hairstyle, that has been mystically formed to provide corrective guidance for those tempted by the ways of the crimper. The athletes provide the kind of self-less public service that should, at the very least, merit an Esther Rantzen special.
Witness Michael Owen a striker who has always known where the gel is. Such is Owen’s talismanic quality that a previous England manager based one of his pre-match tactical talks on the symmetrical perfection of the player’s hairstyle. (“You see lads, he’s kept it flat at the back, even in the middle and the front line is well forward but could track back later.” It produced a dull but solid performance, leaving two key members of David Beckham’s appearance consultancy team weeping into their man-bags.)
Owen’s sensible haircuts are reassuring to the team as they do not disturb its cohesion. They blend. They guide the individual to tribal belonging and are a consequence of joining a group of older players at a young age. The fresh- faced interloper wants to look the part: young bobbies grow moustaches and focused hard working athletes adopt a bland hairstyle. That’s the point I just didn’t get.
Michael Owen dashed over the threshold of adulthood and immersed himself in the bath of team belonging. I just stood there, looking for a signpost, shaking my head and shoulders. He needed to belong, I needed to be lost. They were choices that have shaped our personalities.
Although his hairstyle choice was healthier than mine, it can lead to other problems. During post-match interviews he sometimes sounds like the bureaucrat who can quote the rulebook. It is one symptom of the recently labelled condition ‘grouphair’. (The review of the label’s accuracy is still pending from an independent peer group). Its sufferers avoid promoting any hairstyles that might be outside the comfort zone of consensus styling. However, because the condition drives members towards unanimity, they occasionally slip up and forget that they also exist (at times) outside the constraint of the team.
Michael Vaughn, sometime England cricket captain and full time grouphair sufferer, said, in a recent interview, “This is not about Michael Vaughn. This is about cricket.”
There’s the rub. Too often, Michael Vaughn thinks of himself as Michael Vaughn the cricket player. It has become too big a part of him. He has sacrificed too much identity on his temple. My hair was a formless mess reflecting my confusion but by letting someone shape your style too early, you may lose out on a bit of individualism. One can become interchangeable. No one wants to mould it like Michael because he shapes it like everybody else. The future is WikiHair: team belonging assisted by a team of consultants. Ask David Beckham.
I came close to having a bad hair decade. At one stage of its growth, my hairstyle took a phone-call from Tim Burton’s casting director. Rent Edward Scissorhands and look very closely at the topiary. I’ll say no more.
It began when I went to see Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’. I remember thinking that the real lesson of the tale was that if you have hair like Charlie Sheen, you should be beaten with a xylophone hammer. Traumatised by displays of power hair, I needed to rebel, to send ripples through my community and to commit crimes against paternity. I grew a mullet.
After the mullet, came the pony-tail, then something that slowly conquered my back and was formerly declared an area of outstanding national mockery. They were hard years, featuring Magoo glasses and green caps. They formed scars on my psyche that still send shock-waves through my hair.
I looked like I had been rejected from a buskers’ union. That was partly the point but what I thought was self expression was lack of direction. I should have looked for role models. I should have studied team sports.
There are athletes who steadfastly maintain sensible haircuts. Indeed, some of them are not just sensible, but are the very archetype of sensible, an ideal of a hairstyle, that has been mystically formed to provide corrective guidance for those tempted by the ways of the crimper. The athletes provide the kind of self-less public service that should, at the very least, merit an Esther Rantzen special.
Witness Michael Owen a striker who has always known where the gel is. Such is Owen’s talismanic quality that a previous England manager based one of his pre-match tactical talks on the symmetrical perfection of the player’s hairstyle. (“You see lads, he’s kept it flat at the back, even in the middle and the front line is well forward but could track back later.” It produced a dull but solid performance, leaving two key members of David Beckham’s appearance consultancy team weeping into their man-bags.)
Owen’s sensible haircuts are reassuring to the team as they do not disturb its cohesion. They blend. They guide the individual to tribal belonging and are a consequence of joining a group of older players at a young age. The fresh- faced interloper wants to look the part: young bobbies grow moustaches and focused hard working athletes adopt a bland hairstyle. That’s the point I just didn’t get.
Michael Owen dashed over the threshold of adulthood and immersed himself in the bath of team belonging. I just stood there, looking for a signpost, shaking my head and shoulders. He needed to belong, I needed to be lost. They were choices that have shaped our personalities.
Although his hairstyle choice was healthier than mine, it can lead to other problems. During post-match interviews he sometimes sounds like the bureaucrat who can quote the rulebook. It is one symptom of the recently labelled condition ‘grouphair’. (The review of the label’s accuracy is still pending from an independent peer group). Its sufferers avoid promoting any hairstyles that might be outside the comfort zone of consensus styling. However, because the condition drives members towards unanimity, they occasionally slip up and forget that they also exist (at times) outside the constraint of the team.
Michael Vaughn, sometime England cricket captain and full time grouphair sufferer, said, in a recent interview, “This is not about Michael Vaughn. This is about cricket.”
There’s the rub. Too often, Michael Vaughn thinks of himself as Michael Vaughn the cricket player. It has become too big a part of him. He has sacrificed too much identity on his temple. My hair was a formless mess reflecting my confusion but by letting someone shape your style too early, you may lose out on a bit of individualism. One can become interchangeable. No one wants to mould it like Michael because he shapes it like everybody else. The future is WikiHair: team belonging assisted by a team of consultants. Ask David Beckham.
