new thread
As I recall it was the punk subculture which sprung up in the U.K. as a reaction to the mainstream culture of the day.
there were many young unemployed kids such as John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten who despised the fact that there were a few bands that were filthy rich making money off of 'yobs' like him.
as a reaction, the young people formed their own bands and changed their hair fashion as a reaction against the dominate mainstream music culture which was at that time as every historian knows-Long hair! these punk bands could not play their instruments and were self-taught from the beginning learning along the way.
some punks cropped their hair and spiked it short like Rotten did, others shaved theirs into Mohawks and spiked them or completely shaved their heads bald. this applied to female punks as well.
in the U.S. many in the hardcore "straight edge" movement such as Minor threat and others associated long hair with drugs and the 1970s in general.
Ian MacKaye shaved his head and discussed his reasons in some early 1980s film on the growing punk movement in the U.S.
in addition to the punks, the 'gangsta' subculture also introduced buzzed styles such as the 'fade' which caught on as a mainstream "style".
awhile back I almost burst out laughing at some interview some guy did with two girls with long hair who looked completely normal calling themselves 'punks'. they cited Avril Lavigne as one of their favorites.
back in the 1980s that was unheard of because most of the punks hated people with long hair regardless of gender and you would be taking your life in your hands if you attended a punk show with long hair.
that was then and punk as it was known then no longer exists and today`s "pop-punk" bands have admitted to listening to groups that the old-school punk bands spat upon themselves including the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd.
The fact is that both the punks and gangsta rappers did resurrect clipper-cuts which influenced the direction of Men`s hairstyles.
also, it has been suggested by some, that the Gay community may have contributed to the rising popularity of closely clipped haircuts.
Fortunately, while a few women tried the Sinéad O'Connor look it never caught on and became mainstream while buzzed heads did for Men.
most women wear their hair long today while most Men continue to get clipper cuts.
what do you think must happen in order to counteract the negative influences of the punk`s and gangsta`s on Men`s hairstyles to usher in another "Hair" friendly decade which first emerged with The Beatles and Hippies back in the 1960s after several decades of Men wearing closely cropped haircuts?
It seems that all waves of style recur because the Younger Population decides it is time. It never happens the other way around. Once some group of musicians or actors who are considered very handsome and cool by their cohorts start the long hair movement in an attempt to differentiate themselves or in thinking they have "invented" the look, it will again become a form of rebellion and breaking away for these young guys and be reinforced by the hordes of young girls who follow them. It is always important for teenagers and those in their 20's to feel they are Not their parents and so, the pendulum swings back and forth. When it becomes cool because of this influence, the whole gender association thing changes and people again realize that what you look like or wear is just an expression of your personality, ie, you like it. In the mean time, we just have to keep the flame burning so that there are at least a few longhaired role models.
I have long hair, but I can identify more with the punk/straight edge mentality than drug-soaked psychedelia. I used to be "straight-edge" when I was young, then deviated for much of my 20s and experimented. I find myself now as more "straight-edge" again, although I don't regret anything, and feel I've evolved as a person through experience. I constantly question authority and so-called "common wisdom."
Considering long hair being "mainstream" or not, I don't put any stock into social norms, rather questioning them. I'm not concerned with long hair being common, rather, I'm concerned with society evolving past accepting only what is common. In a sense, transcending our concepts about what "should be" and working with "what is."
I don't think it's fair or accurate to blame the punk movement for the fact that mainstream society has embraced the buzz cut. For one thing, there were true punks in the late 70s and early 80s who were also long-haired men (such as Henry Rollins, pictured above). More likely, common hairstyles began shortening again in the 1980s as young business people coming of age saw how materially prosperous their aging forebears from the 1950s had become, and sought to emulate their lifestyles. I do agree with you wholeheartedly, though, that little if any of the true punk ethos exists anymore. I think this is unfortunate, as it really did represent a catalyst for true societal change. As far as I'm concerned, though, I don't care if long hair on men ever becomes the "norm" (and in fact, I largely hope it doesn't), as this would resultantly strip the symbol of long hair of much of its psychosocial power.
--Val
WOW, I don't follow Rollins closly, but when I think of Henry Rollins I think BUZZ CUT.
Good post Val , I have never seen hiw with long hair.
I can't answer specifically for buzzcuts, but ultimately, I feel men felt it was more practical to have short hair.
I went to a ren faire last summer and a guy made the joke of "Oh look at you barbarian. Ready to fight, but I'll give you a few minutes to do your hair."
I chuckled because it carried some truth.
Provided ofcourse you cared about the appearance of it.
If anyone is to blame for the resurrection of closely cropped hairstyles it is the Conformist Yuppies and Neoconservatives neither of which applied to to punks during the 1980s!
Punks were NONCONFORMISTS and were rejected by the mainstream culture from the beginning even more so than the Hippies were in their time.
I would think if anything the old school Punks would be more inclined to be on our side and support our decision to grow our hair long while the corporate yuppie types would be the ones to tell us to get it cut if we wanted the job because the corporations rules stipulated so and Punks did NOT believe in following rules especially asinine ones.
I suspect there might be some old school punker`s who are members of this site.
you never know.
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I have no idea of the punk subculture in the USA but I do have some idea of its impact in the UK ...
Punk had nothing specifically to do with the LENGTH of the hair you wore, it was HOW you wore it. Punk was about ATTITUDE.
The intention was to shock - and since most people had long hair at that time, the obvious solution was to cut your hair short or spike it or dye it or shave it. But there were other ways to make your hair shock people and still have it long.
The clip in the link might be of interest ...
(I don't know if the person being interviewed was wearing a wig or not - but I also don't think he would've cared too much if he was taking his life in his hands attending a "punk show" one way or the other ;)
Damon
Clip from 1987
I think he is wearing a wig. You can notice what looks like a shaven head below the front of the spiky orange hair. Also, as far as I can recall from photos of the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten never had long hair. However, some member of The Ramones did.
Click below for video...
Rollins - early spoken word art
Stripes on a tiger don't wash away. Rollins is awesome...
Rollins on punk attitude, then and now
Iggy Pop.
Being a punk doesn't mean short hair. Being a punk it about doing whatever the fuck you want. If you want long hair, you're gonna have long hair. If you don't, you won't. Simple as that. Yeah most punks did/do have short hair but not all of us :)
I think of Punks as the Hippies who rebelled against the Hippies as well as the mainstream. Just did what the hell they wanted.
Duncan
... We can't forget Iggy! Though a pioneer of punk, he is one of those geniuses who transcended the concept of "genre," and was a great and unique jazz, rock, and blues man, as well. Here's a picture of him at age 64, still rockin' the sound, hair, and youthful physique.
--Val
We need a new Punk type movement of sorts Now!
with Long Haired guys at the helm of the new movement!
Rollin`s looked cool as a long haired dude.
too bad he buzzed it off!
Bear in mind one of the names you think of with the Punk
movement is Kurt Cobain.
If I had a dollar for everyone on this site who said over the years they'd like to grow their hair long like Kurt Cobain i'd be a very rich man.
Kurt Cobain was not "punk."
--Val
Kurt Cobain wasn't a good role model for long hair. He didn't look after his hair or himself very well. He was not a Punk but of the Grunge music genre.
Duncan
I was already aware of people like Rollins, the Ramones and others who had longer hair at one time, but that was the exception, not the norm
I even bought a few punk albums as a young teen and was very supportive of the scene at first, that is until I attended a few punk shows later in the 1980s.
with my shoulder length hair I was called all types of obscenities by punks, usually the hard edge/straight edge types who overtly HATED long haired dudes. they were probably want you might consider Nazi punks because there were some incidents where they would try to coerce a kid to shave his hair off.
anyway, I got tired of being told to get a "f-ing haircut!" by these punks and stopped attending shows and it had a HUGE effect on my atttitude toward the punk scene in general.
as for Rollins, I attended a Black Flag show where there were many closely shaven scalps in attendance and there is a strong possibility that he started taking up body building and got a buzz-cut because he might have had some bad encounters with some of the hard-edge/straight-edge punks.
as far as I'm concerned the majority of the punks that I encountered were anti-1960s which meant to me "ANTI-HAIR" and they hated everything and everyone!
there were exceptions, but the people you cited were rare at punk shows.
after I stopped attending shows I started listening to old classic rock from the 1960s and 1970s. the music was more uplifting and the people who attended those shows were probably much more tolerant than those attending many punk shows during the later part of the 1980s
I am not saying everyone who was a punk/is a punk or was in a punk band was full of hate. what i am saying is that long hair was not the norm for punks, nor was the average punk filled with Peace and Love. had that been the case I would not have stopped attending punk shows!
Short hair for males dates back pretty far. It seems to have accompanied militarism and the diminishing of individuality. Modern nations used ancient Rome and Greece as a model for government, military organization and-- fashion. Julius Caesar had very short hair when most of the people in the less organized cultures he conquered wore long hair. The first thing the U.S. military typically has always done to a recruit is to cut off all his hair, symbolizing the castration of his individuality and his transformation into a manipulated military tool.
Amen to that. It's how the military operates and another reason I'm so vehemently anti-war.