I am female. I put soap on a washcloth and rub it on my body, then rinse well. Once out of the shower or bath, I use body lotion. I am frequently told that I smell good and/or delicious, so I’m pretty sure I am doing it right. :) If you have dry skin, use lotion or look for a soap that is milder. I have a lot of allergies so I use Ivory, which doesn’t have a lot of extra perfume and no colourants or other additives. You can also use small-batch artisanal soaps, which are risky if you have allergies but may be less drying because a lot of them are superfatted and/or made with goat’s milk and that sort of thing.
I don’t like bath poufs because they feel weird and are gross over time. I own a loofah gourd, which I use when I feel particularly needful of exfoliation, but mostly it’s the washcloth for me. Basically it’s going to be what kind of texture you like to feel, as far as what you use for scrubbing (a lot of people use their hands, but I don’t feel clean enough if I do that), and product wise, use what makes your skin feel good.
For hair, go get a good haircut from a good stylist. If you are paying less than $30 in most markets you are getting a dreadful haircut. I routinely expect to pay $70 for a haircut because I have thick curly hair. If you like what the stylist does, ask them to recommend products and show you how to use them. If you do not, wait till it grows a bit, try another stylist. Ask your friends and coworkers where they get their hair cut. If you have a male friend who always looks particularly well-groomed, ask him who does his hair. This is how most people find stylists.
Easier to work with for styling. Moisturizing helps take care of your hair and avoid damage, and it’s especially necessary if any part of your hair is bleached. It also feels good for other people to touch.
For someone with <1 inch hair who doesn’t style it and doesn’t have other people touching it, conditioner probably doesn’t make a difference.
It varies to a surprising extent. Frizzy hair feels kind of wooly, while hair that’s unusually dry or fried from abuse of styling treatments can feel noticeably coarse, almost straw-like. Greasy hair is limp and kind of sticky. Even well-maintained hair feels different from person to person, but those differences are subtler.
It varies to a surprising extent. Frizzy hair feels kind of wooly, while hair that’s unusually dry or fried from abuse of styling treatments can feel noticeably coarse, almost straw-like. Even well-maintained hair feels different from person to person, but those differences are subtler.
You can’t get a $30 haircut if you’re a woman. It’s $40-$60, minimum. Let’s not even get started on styling.
I used to get my hair cut at barbershops because of the price; lately I don’t live near a barber who’ll make an exception for me, unfortunately. (No, I don’t have a man’s haircut. Some barbers will just cut a woman’s hair if you ask nicely.)
Honestly, I would be surprised if being more “serious” about hair (blow-drying, styling product, straightening) made much of a difference in my appearance and people’s impression of me. Am I underestimating the importance of hair?
It depends on where you live and what sort of cut you want. My haircuts are ridiculously cheap, because I have long, straight hair and I just want a straight line across the bottom, so they generally charge me the child’s price ($10). Fair warning, though, I may get charged less out of sheer novelty, because my hair comes to my knees, or because I always wash my hair at home before going, rather than having them wash it for me there, because my hair is simply too long to be washed in a sink.
I have lots of hair advice, but it is largely limited to very long hair, and thus minimally useful, and not worth using space on. If anyone wants advice on having or growing long hair, I’ll be happy to respond.
It takes a long time. I’ve been growing mine for fourteen years, and it was at least seven before it was long enough to be at all remarkable. Growth rates vary, and mine isn’t all that fast (4-5 inches a year), but it may be a long time. Don’t get fed up and chop it all off.
Stop doing damaging things. No more blow-drying or coloring or straightening or curling. Minimize the amount of product you put in. Never tease your hair.
Get trims. A half inch trim every three months or so will take off the split ends and make your hair healthier.
Conditioner is your friend. Use it liberally. As your hair gets longer, less of it will have any exposure to scalp oils. Be sure to condition all of your hair, not just the ends. I always brush my hair with the conditioner in it before I rinse. This makes sure the conditioner is evenly distributed and there are no tangles.
Braid your hair before sleep to prevent tangles, and brush gently. Work knots out patiently, don’t just tear through them.
Don’t wash your hair every day. Every other day is plenty for hygiene purposes, and more often is hard on your hair.
Once your hair is too long to brush in a single stroke, pull it back in a bunch like a ponytail, and then pull it over your shoulder. Brush from the bottom up.
*Bear in mind that not all people can grow their hair really long. Every hair follicle has a cycle, which is why your eyebrows don’t grow down to your chin. The length a hair from a particular follicle can reach is the duration of the cycle times the rate of growth. These factors vary from person to person, and can also vary within a person’s lifetime. If your hair gets to a certain length and the ends get really straggly even though you’re taking good care of it, it may have reached its limit.
These principles should work for varied hair types, and should allow you to get your hair long. Hopefully, by the time it’s really long, you’ll be used to it and won’t do anything stupid, like the time I did a backbend, adjusted my feet, and then tried to stand up without realizing I was standing on my hair.
Do you have to ask for the child’s price or do they just give it to you? My hair doesn’t come as far as my knees, but I do have to stand up to get it cut and usually don’t want it washed there. (I even brush it myself.)
They just gave it to me after I’d been there once or twice, but I suspect that if you pointed out that you just want a straight line and asked nicely, they might give it to you. If that is what you want, and have a friend or relative you trust to cut a straight line, it is also one of the few hairstyles that can be trusted to a nonprofessional. Just make sure you get a pair of good sewing scissors first.
If you live in a larger city, see if you have an Aveda Institute or Academy. Having your hair cut by a student means it’s $25 as opposed to $60 (Canada, cut only, no color), and they’ll redo it if the student does something terrible, though this has never happened to me. Also all natural products, which I really like.
As for hair maintenance, scrub your scalp with shampoo. Unless your hair is past your shoulders, you shouldn’t need more than about the size of a quarter in your palm. Focus the scrubbing on your scalp and not your hair, as the scalp is where oil comes from and the hair itself will be cleaned as the shampoo rinses from your scalp (this applies for hair dirty from daily living, not if you’ve lost a mud-fight or similar).
Apply a similar amount of conditioner to the hair, avoiding the scalp more. If you tend to be very oily, use less. If you have lots of frizz, use more. Let sit for at least thirty seconds, rinse, preferably in cooler water.
I get a haircut (trim for dead ends) from my mother about once a year. The haircuts I have paid for in the past were NEVER as much as $40. Then again, as a student maybe I can get away with the scruffier look.
I concur. In my opinion, men are best served by a proper barber, not by a “hair stylist” at a strip mall Fantastic Sam’s.
A good barber knows not only what kind of haircuts look fashionable for men, but the also how to cut the hair so it’s easy to maintain. You know you’ve found a decent barber when you get a hot lather and straight-razor shave for your neckline at the end of the cut.
Further, a good barber won’t charge more than $20 for a haircut. $15 is average. I pay $18, but I really like the place.
This from a fellow who averaged one haircut a year for 15 years, and now keeps it cut rather short.
A good barber knows not only what kind of haircuts look fashionable for men, but the also how to cut the hair so it’s easy to maintain.
Barbers can help you look like a fashionable normal guy, but what’s most likely to happen with a barber is that you come out looking like an average normal guy.
Here are a bunch of haircuts that your barber probably can’t help you with. All these guys are very popular, and most of them are sex symbols.
Here are a bunch of haircuts that your barber probably can’t help you with. All these guys are very popular, and most of them are sex symbols.
I don’t think these photos make such a good case.
First and foremost, some of them are examples of extreme peacocking, or in case of that guy with dreadlocks, of extreme “I’m shabby but still high-status” countersignaling. This can indeed be spectacularly successful if done with utmost competence and in a suitable context, but it’s apt to backfire with an even more spectacular failure if any of these conditions are less than perfect.
I’d say there’s a more important general lesson here: just because high-status, sex-symbol men do something, it doesn’t mean that it’s wise for the average Joe to try imitating it. You must learn to walk before trying to run, which means that if you’re not able to pull off a rock-solid and competent “conservative normal guy” image, you probably won’t be able to pull off any of those more advanced peacocking/countersignaling strategies. (There are examples of men who can naturally do the latter but not the former, but it’s very rare.)
This is why modern pop-culture is highly confusing and misleading for shy and socially inept men who look for role-models. There are few, if any examples of straightforward masculinity among the celebrities nowadays whose behavior and image would be a realistic direction for men like that; what they see instead is unfathomably complex and subtle counter-signaling and peacocking, which they can’t possibly imitate with any success. That’s why I think many men could find much more valuable inspiration in pre-1970s movies than in anything produced today.
(Also, we can compare some of these guys to what they look like with much simpler haircuts. The prime example would be Beckham—how much return does he get in terms of good looks with that elaborate fauxhawk relative to a simple buzz cut? Not much, I’d say, if any at all. Finally, some of these are professionally done promotional photos. What looks good in those often looks much worse in real life, even if you take the huge effort to keep it picture-perfect at all times.)
Then I think I failed to be clear about what case I was making with them. The point is that there are many ways for men to do hair that barbers don’t support, and that barbers are not at the cutting edge of what is fashionable. I showed the photos to display some of the “design space” for men’s hair that is kept off limits to them.
This can indeed be spectacularly successful if done with utmost competence and in a suitable context, but it’s apt to backfire with an even more spectacular failure if any of these conditions are less than perfect.
I see the costs and benefits about differently. Peacocking can be super-powerful, and getting it wrong while learning isn’t actually terribly costly, especially for those who are already low in social status and attractiveness. Of course, this depends on culture: some cultures punish male appearance nonconformism (particularly around gender) more harshly than others.
I’d say there’s a more important general lesson here: just because high-status, sex-symbol men do something, it doesn’t mean that it’s wise for the average Joe to try imitating it.
True, but it’s useful to understand the cultural schemas around masculinity. Once he does, then he can tap into them in more subtle ways.
You must learn to walk before trying to run
Yes. I wouldn’t advise jumping straight to one of these hairstyles until you can put together the right sort of outfit to support it.
Which means that if you’re not able to pull off a rock-solid and competent “conservative normal guy” image, you probably won’t be able to pull off any of those more advanced peacocking/countersignaling strategies.
Putting together a strong normal guy image can quickly start overlapping with peacocking. If you can pick out good pieces that fit you, then you are practically peacocking already.
Normal guy looks just don’t suit some guys very well, and developing a normal guy look isn’t necessarily the best use of effort. In my case, even though I’m probably above average in looks, I just don’t look very remarkable in jeans and a T-shirt, with <1 inch hair. Other guys with different builds would look much better in those clothes and hair. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t going to beat guys at doing the normal guy look. So I started doing something more niche, and the attention I got skyrocketed.
I’m actually much better positioned to try a normal guy look now. In some ways, doing a normal guy look well is actually hard, because the options are so limited. There is a benefit to doing a crazy look, then incorporating elements of it backwards to spice up your normal look.
This is why modern pop-culture is highly confusing and misleading for shy and socially inept men who look for role-models.
That’s true. And I probably traumatized some of those guys with the pictures I linked to. But those pictures demonstrate the end results of runaway sexual selection, and they need to understand what the playing field looks like.
There are few, if any examples of straightforward masculinity among the celebrities nowadays whose behavior and image would be a realistic direction for men like that; what they see instead is unfathomably complex and subtle counter-signaling and peacocking, which they can’t possibly imitate with any success.
Unfortunately, Western middle-class “straightforward masculinity” has very little design space for hair. Rockstars and subcultural are making out like bandits in the unused design space.
While some of those hairstyles do seem like unfathomably complex signaling games, peacocking isn’t all that they are about. They are also about culture, and subculture. The notion of short hair as “straightforward masculinity” is ethnocentric.
Even some of those seemingly crazy hairstyles are normal in some subcultures. In some cultures, dreads are “straightforward masculinity.” In other subcultures, Jade Puget’s hairstyle is “straightforward masculinity,” even though it looks effeminate or gay to mainstream male observers. Mainstream heterosexual men often make fun of “hipster” and “emo” men, yet the joke is on them. While they snicker, the hipster and emo boys are getting with the cute hipster and emo girls, and have less competition in their niche.
The peacocking of rockstars only looks crazy and complex because typical Western middle-class heterosexual white men have been aesthetically straight-jacketed and lobotomized by their culture, and they don’t even know it. It’s understandable that in their straight-jacketed state, these men would benefit from models of aesthetically straight-jacketed masculinity. But I would like to see if the straight-jacket can be taken off, assuming that corporations, gender-typical heterosexual women, and men’s own comfort zones will allow it.
Rockstar hair countersignals against current white middle-class Western masculinity, but it also speaks to how masculinity has been performed in the past, and how it could be performed in the future. Look at the mohawk, for instance. It’s considered a shocking signal in mainstream culture now, but that’s only because men have been forced to surrender it. Rockstars don’t own the mohawk, unless normal guys let them. If you were an Iroquois Indian or Scythian warrior, a mohawk was part of your work attire.
That’s why I think many men could find much more valuable inspiration in pre-1970s movies than in anything produced today.
For behavior, definitely. Movies provide horrible models of behavioral masculinity. Yet I wouldn’t look to the past for hair, unless you are deliberately doing a retro look.
The prime example would be Beckham—how much return does he get in terms of good looks with that elaborate fauxhawk relative to a simple buzz cut? Not much, I’d say, if any at all.
Not much for him, because he already good-looking and high status. But a guy other than Beckham could get significant returns.
Different hair length changes the apparent proportions of the head and face. This influences perceptions of masculinity/femininity, and perception of age. Hair long enough to frame the face changes the perception of facial structure. This is all design space that is thrown out with a buzz cut.
What looks good in those often looks much worse in real life, even if you take the huge effort to keep it picture-perfect at all times
That’s true. But it can be better to have a haircut that looks awesome 50% of the time and crappy 50% of the time, rather than a haircut that looks bland 100% of the time.
The peacocking of rockstars only looks crazy and complex because typical Western middle-class heterosexual white men have been aesthetically straight-jacketed and lobotomized by their culture, and they don’t even know it. It’s understandable that in their straight-jacketed state, these men would benefit from models of aesthetically straight-jacketed masculinity. But I would like to see if the straight-jacket can be taken off, assuming that corporations, gender-typical heterosexual women, and men’s own comfort zones will allow it.
I think you’re being much too idealistic about subcultures. Any subcultural or countercultural milieu will feature the same human universals that exist everywhere else, and will therefore impose its own status markers and standards of conformity no less strict and demanding than the mainstream society. (Of course, the mainstream can usually threaten more severe punishments for disobedience, but the loss of status among people whose opinion one cares about is a terrifying enough threat for anyone.)
What you see as escaping the straight-jacket is at best just a change of masters, not an escape into freedom. (With the exception of a small minority who find that their natural inclinations and abilities lend themselves to achieving high status in some particular milieu especially well, but even this works both ways.)
Mainstream heterosexual men often make fun of “hipster” and “emo” men, yet the joke is on them. While they snicker, the hipster and emo boys are getting with the cute hipster and emo girls, and have less competition in their niche.
Trouble is, the girls in various groups like those respond positively to the same essential traits in men as anywhere else. Whether you have a mainstream image or any particular subcultural image, it’s basically orthogonal to how attractive you are to women. Now clearly, a given way of dress and behavior will be acceptable in one place and unacceptable in another, but chances are that if you adjust your dress and manners to a different milieu, the women there will find you about as attractive as those in the previous place found you with your previous image. That has at least been my experience, both personal and observational, and I’ve certainly changed my image and the circles I’ve hung out in a great deal through the years.
I’ve thought about our disagreement, and I think there are several important points.
First, at the risk of sounding vain, it is possible that I’m biased because I’m handsome enough that I didn’t have problems attracting attention even in the most misguided years of my youth. (My problem was that I’d usually be oblivious to indications of interest, or I’d sabotage myself by responding to them in naive and clumsy ways, not that I was invisible to girls.) It is possible that for less handsome men, being invisible in the crowd is a big enough obstacle that trying to break it by peacocking is a better option than I’d think.
Then, it also depends on what exactly your goal is. If you’re striving to become a full-blown player—which I never did, both because I was already a bit too old to start working on it when I realized that it’s actually a feasible goal, and also because it doesn’t suit me temperamentally—then I suppose more extreme options like heavy peacocking become the order of the day. For less adventurous goals, however, I still think that working on a strong and solid “normal” image is overall a better option for most men.
I’ve already pointed out that if your face or head shape is not very handsome, you can significantly improve your looks with a suitably shaped haircut. But if you already look handsome with a buzz cut, there are rapidly diminishing returns to what you can do with your hair, if we consider it in terms of handsomeness rather than peacocking. (I hope it’s clear what I mean by that distinction.)
Regarding various subcultural styles, I’ll reply in a separate comment.
Otherwise, I agree that our age is probably too restrictive in what passes for mainstream respectable men’s fashion, and has in fact been ever since the early-to-mid 19th century. I find the 18th century aristocratic men’s fashion very appealing, and the 17th century Cavalier style even more.
Here are a bunch of haircuts that your barber probably can’t help you with.
So a barber can’t help me. Say I want to end up with hairstyle 9 (primarily because I like his music :P), what process would I go through to end up with that hairstyle from a start of ‘ordinary, kinda spiky’? Also, what sort of facial features, body type and clothing style would be required to pull it off?
If you have curly hair, a this haircut is probably a bad idea. The ends will look too wispy. It’s probably going to take you some product to maintain.
Also, decide on the color. Looking up some other photos, in some he looks all blond, and in others he looks a highlighted dirty blond. You could of course do this cut without coloring your hair.
This cut should work for any facial features except perhaps a round face. That’s because it goes over the ears, which creates a rounder look, which could be too much roundness if your head is already round. As for clothes, something edgy would go well with it. Maybe add a couple accessories like a necklace or a wristband. Look at the sorts of stuff Bon Jovi wears with it.
Thanks, that was great. I’ll have to think about it a bit. The ‘curly’ thing may be in issue. I always think of my hair as straight but when it gets some length to it it curls a bit. Constant straightening could be tiresome.
To everyone who’s day this comment makes: you’re welcome.
With a Bon Jovi hairstyle recommendation? You’ve definitely made mine. And it doesn’t look like it would be too hard to grow out to that length either. Any suggestions on how to grow from short to medium length without it looking terrible in between?
Any suggestions on how to grow from short to medium length without it looking terrible in between?
When I’m overdue for a haircut, I find that wearing a tuque for a while makes it look significantly less bad. This might be highly individual-specific, though.
Ahh, wikipedia tells me a tuque is what we commonly referred to a beanie here. A good idea. Fairly individual specific, as you say. I’ll definitely have to get a hat though. Are fedoras too overdone these days or could that work too?
Actually, I meant wearing a beanie for a while to iron out your hair and make the overgrown parts stick out less conspicuously, not wearing it around to hide bad hair.
Fedoras can look cool, but like other uncommon headwear, it can be a major fail if it fits you less than perfectly. I suppose if you decide to wear it, you should also stick to the old custom that it’s impolite to wear indoors, so I don’t think it’s a good option for hiding bad hair.
Actually, I meant wearing a beanie for a while to iron out your hair and make the overgrown parts stick out less conspicuously, not wearing it around to hide bad hair.
A $15 haircut looks like a $15 haircut. A good haircut looks good wet, dry, with product, without product, straight out of bed, straight out of the shower, and six weeks after you got it.
For this, if you have curly hair? You pay big money. Period.
That is absolutely correct in my experience. It is hard, as a curly person, to find a good stylist, which is why until two months ago, I was still getting my hair cut in Kansas even though I live in Vancouver, BC. (The one in Canada. Yes, really.)
Now I’m working to train my current excellent stylist that yes, I do actually have to wash my hair every day, and not washing my hair is really not an option (allergies). But at least she cuts my hair so it looks great.
I can’t really use product (allergies) so straightening was never an option for me.
I am female. I put soap on a washcloth and rub it on my body, then rinse well. Once out of the shower or bath, I use body lotion. I am frequently told that I smell good and/or delicious, so I’m pretty sure I am doing it right. :) If you have dry skin, use lotion or look for a soap that is milder. I have a lot of allergies so I use Ivory, which doesn’t have a lot of extra perfume and no colourants or other additives. You can also use small-batch artisanal soaps, which are risky if you have allergies but may be less drying because a lot of them are superfatted and/or made with goat’s milk and that sort of thing.
I don’t like bath poufs because they feel weird and are gross over time. I own a loofah gourd, which I use when I feel particularly needful of exfoliation, but mostly it’s the washcloth for me. Basically it’s going to be what kind of texture you like to feel, as far as what you use for scrubbing (a lot of people use their hands, but I don’t feel clean enough if I do that), and product wise, use what makes your skin feel good.
For hair, go get a good haircut from a good stylist. If you are paying less than $30 in most markets you are getting a dreadful haircut. I routinely expect to pay $70 for a haircut because I have thick curly hair. If you like what the stylist does, ask them to recommend products and show you how to use them. If you do not, wait till it grows a bit, try another stylist. Ask your friends and coworkers where they get their hair cut. If you have a male friend who always looks particularly well-groomed, ask him who does his hair. This is how most people find stylists.
Products and tools are very important for hair.
So… what exactly does it do?
It makes you pettably soft. (Modulo hair type.)
I’m not really clear as to what this is intended to be opposed to. Hair generally is soft, no?
Conditioner makes it softer, and (for me at least) easier to work with. Plus it moisturizes your hair, and helps detangle it.
Conditioner is important if you have any parts of your hair bleached (e.g. prior to coloring), to add moisture back.
Easier to work with in what sense? Why is moisturizing it good?
Easier to work with for styling. Moisturizing helps take care of your hair and avoid damage, and it’s especially necessary if any part of your hair is bleached. It also feels good for other people to touch.
For someone with <1 inch hair who doesn’t style it and doesn’t have other people touching it, conditioner probably doesn’t make a difference.
...that’s really not informative. :-/
Dry hair is more likely to break, split, and peel.
Thank you.
It varies to a surprising extent. Frizzy hair feels kind of wooly, while hair that’s unusually dry or fried from abuse of styling treatments can feel noticeably coarse, almost straw-like. Greasy hair is limp and kind of sticky. Even well-maintained hair feels different from person to person, but those differences are subtler.
It varies to a surprising extent. Frizzy hair feels kind of wooly, while hair that’s unusually dry or fried from abuse of styling treatments can feel noticeably coarse, almost straw-like. Even well-maintained hair feels different from person to person, but those differences are subtler.
?!
That sounds highly female-specific (but even so, I still find it shocking). My idea of haircut price range is $10-20.
You can’t get a $30 haircut if you’re a woman. It’s $40-$60, minimum. Let’s not even get started on styling.
I used to get my hair cut at barbershops because of the price; lately I don’t live near a barber who’ll make an exception for me, unfortunately. (No, I don’t have a man’s haircut. Some barbers will just cut a woman’s hair if you ask nicely.)
Honestly, I would be surprised if being more “serious” about hair (blow-drying, styling product, straightening) made much of a difference in my appearance and people’s impression of me. Am I underestimating the importance of hair?
It depends on where you live and what sort of cut you want. My haircuts are ridiculously cheap, because I have long, straight hair and I just want a straight line across the bottom, so they generally charge me the child’s price ($10). Fair warning, though, I may get charged less out of sheer novelty, because my hair comes to my knees, or because I always wash my hair at home before going, rather than having them wash it for me there, because my hair is simply too long to be washed in a sink.
I have lots of hair advice, but it is largely limited to very long hair, and thus minimally useful, and not worth using space on. If anyone wants advice on having or growing long hair, I’ll be happy to respond.
I’ve been interested in growing long hair, and would love to hear advice :)
Principles for growing long hair:
It takes a long time. I’ve been growing mine for fourteen years, and it was at least seven before it was long enough to be at all remarkable. Growth rates vary, and mine isn’t all that fast (4-5 inches a year), but it may be a long time. Don’t get fed up and chop it all off.
Stop doing damaging things. No more blow-drying or coloring or straightening or curling. Minimize the amount of product you put in. Never tease your hair.
Get trims. A half inch trim every three months or so will take off the split ends and make your hair healthier.
Conditioner is your friend. Use it liberally. As your hair gets longer, less of it will have any exposure to scalp oils. Be sure to condition all of your hair, not just the ends. I always brush my hair with the conditioner in it before I rinse. This makes sure the conditioner is evenly distributed and there are no tangles.
Braid your hair before sleep to prevent tangles, and brush gently. Work knots out patiently, don’t just tear through them.
Don’t wash your hair every day. Every other day is plenty for hygiene purposes, and more often is hard on your hair.
Once your hair is too long to brush in a single stroke, pull it back in a bunch like a ponytail, and then pull it over your shoulder. Brush from the bottom up. *Bear in mind that not all people can grow their hair really long. Every hair follicle has a cycle, which is why your eyebrows don’t grow down to your chin. The length a hair from a particular follicle can reach is the duration of the cycle times the rate of growth. These factors vary from person to person, and can also vary within a person’s lifetime. If your hair gets to a certain length and the ends get really straggly even though you’re taking good care of it, it may have reached its limit.
These principles should work for varied hair types, and should allow you to get your hair long. Hopefully, by the time it’s really long, you’ll be used to it and won’t do anything stupid, like the time I did a backbend, adjusted my feet, and then tried to stand up without realizing I was standing on my hair.
Do you have to ask for the child’s price or do they just give it to you? My hair doesn’t come as far as my knees, but I do have to stand up to get it cut and usually don’t want it washed there. (I even brush it myself.)
They just gave it to me after I’d been there once or twice, but I suspect that if you pointed out that you just want a straight line and asked nicely, they might give it to you. If that is what you want, and have a friend or relative you trust to cut a straight line, it is also one of the few hairstyles that can be trusted to a nonprofessional. Just make sure you get a pair of good sewing scissors first.
If you live in a larger city, see if you have an Aveda Institute or Academy. Having your hair cut by a student means it’s $25 as opposed to $60 (Canada, cut only, no color), and they’ll redo it if the student does something terrible, though this has never happened to me. Also all natural products, which I really like.
As for hair maintenance, scrub your scalp with shampoo. Unless your hair is past your shoulders, you shouldn’t need more than about the size of a quarter in your palm. Focus the scrubbing on your scalp and not your hair, as the scalp is where oil comes from and the hair itself will be cleaned as the shampoo rinses from your scalp (this applies for hair dirty from daily living, not if you’ve lost a mud-fight or similar).
Apply a similar amount of conditioner to the hair, avoiding the scalp more. If you tend to be very oily, use less. If you have lots of frizz, use more. Let sit for at least thirty seconds, rinse, preferably in cooler water.
I get a haircut (trim for dead ends) from my mother about once a year. The haircuts I have paid for in the past were NEVER as much as $40. Then again, as a student maybe I can get away with the scruffier look.
I concur. In my opinion, men are best served by a proper barber, not by a “hair stylist” at a strip mall Fantastic Sam’s.
A good barber knows not only what kind of haircuts look fashionable for men, but the also how to cut the hair so it’s easy to maintain. You know you’ve found a decent barber when you get a hot lather and straight-razor shave for your neckline at the end of the cut.
Further, a good barber won’t charge more than $20 for a haircut. $15 is average. I pay $18, but I really like the place.
This from a fellow who averaged one haircut a year for 15 years, and now keeps it cut rather short.
Barbers can help you look like a fashionable normal guy, but what’s most likely to happen with a barber is that you come out looking like an average normal guy.
Here are a bunch of haircuts that your barber probably can’t help you with. All these guys are very popular, and most of them are sex symbols.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
To everyone who’s day this comment makes: you’re welcome.
HughRistik:
I don’t think these photos make such a good case.
First and foremost, some of them are examples of extreme peacocking, or in case of that guy with dreadlocks, of extreme “I’m shabby but still high-status” countersignaling. This can indeed be spectacularly successful if done with utmost competence and in a suitable context, but it’s apt to backfire with an even more spectacular failure if any of these conditions are less than perfect.
I’d say there’s a more important general lesson here: just because high-status, sex-symbol men do something, it doesn’t mean that it’s wise for the average Joe to try imitating it. You must learn to walk before trying to run, which means that if you’re not able to pull off a rock-solid and competent “conservative normal guy” image, you probably won’t be able to pull off any of those more advanced peacocking/countersignaling strategies. (There are examples of men who can naturally do the latter but not the former, but it’s very rare.)
This is why modern pop-culture is highly confusing and misleading for shy and socially inept men who look for role-models. There are few, if any examples of straightforward masculinity among the celebrities nowadays whose behavior and image would be a realistic direction for men like that; what they see instead is unfathomably complex and subtle counter-signaling and peacocking, which they can’t possibly imitate with any success. That’s why I think many men could find much more valuable inspiration in pre-1970s movies than in anything produced today.
(Also, we can compare some of these guys to what they look like with much simpler haircuts. The prime example would be Beckham—how much return does he get in terms of good looks with that elaborate fauxhawk relative to a simple buzz cut? Not much, I’d say, if any at all. Finally, some of these are professionally done promotional photos. What looks good in those often looks much worse in real life, even if you take the huge effort to keep it picture-perfect at all times.)
Then I think I failed to be clear about what case I was making with them. The point is that there are many ways for men to do hair that barbers don’t support, and that barbers are not at the cutting edge of what is fashionable. I showed the photos to display some of the “design space” for men’s hair that is kept off limits to them.
I see the costs and benefits about differently. Peacocking can be super-powerful, and getting it wrong while learning isn’t actually terribly costly, especially for those who are already low in social status and attractiveness. Of course, this depends on culture: some cultures punish male appearance nonconformism (particularly around gender) more harshly than others.
True, but it’s useful to understand the cultural schemas around masculinity. Once he does, then he can tap into them in more subtle ways.
Yes. I wouldn’t advise jumping straight to one of these hairstyles until you can put together the right sort of outfit to support it.
Putting together a strong normal guy image can quickly start overlapping with peacocking. If you can pick out good pieces that fit you, then you are practically peacocking already.
Normal guy looks just don’t suit some guys very well, and developing a normal guy look isn’t necessarily the best use of effort. In my case, even though I’m probably above average in looks, I just don’t look very remarkable in jeans and a T-shirt, with <1 inch hair. Other guys with different builds would look much better in those clothes and hair. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t going to beat guys at doing the normal guy look. So I started doing something more niche, and the attention I got skyrocketed.
I’m actually much better positioned to try a normal guy look now. In some ways, doing a normal guy look well is actually hard, because the options are so limited. There is a benefit to doing a crazy look, then incorporating elements of it backwards to spice up your normal look.
That’s true. And I probably traumatized some of those guys with the pictures I linked to. But those pictures demonstrate the end results of runaway sexual selection, and they need to understand what the playing field looks like.
Unfortunately, Western middle-class “straightforward masculinity” has very little design space for hair. Rockstars and subcultural are making out like bandits in the unused design space.
While some of those hairstyles do seem like unfathomably complex signaling games, peacocking isn’t all that they are about. They are also about culture, and subculture. The notion of short hair as “straightforward masculinity” is ethnocentric.
Even some of those seemingly crazy hairstyles are normal in some subcultures. In some cultures, dreads are “straightforward masculinity.” In other subcultures, Jade Puget’s hairstyle is “straightforward masculinity,” even though it looks effeminate or gay to mainstream male observers. Mainstream heterosexual men often make fun of “hipster” and “emo” men, yet the joke is on them. While they snicker, the hipster and emo boys are getting with the cute hipster and emo girls, and have less competition in their niche.
The peacocking of rockstars only looks crazy and complex because typical Western middle-class heterosexual white men have been aesthetically straight-jacketed and lobotomized by their culture, and they don’t even know it. It’s understandable that in their straight-jacketed state, these men would benefit from models of aesthetically straight-jacketed masculinity. But I would like to see if the straight-jacket can be taken off, assuming that corporations, gender-typical heterosexual women, and men’s own comfort zones will allow it.
Rockstar hair countersignals against current white middle-class Western masculinity, but it also speaks to how masculinity has been performed in the past, and how it could be performed in the future. Look at the mohawk, for instance. It’s considered a shocking signal in mainstream culture now, but that’s only because men have been forced to surrender it. Rockstars don’t own the mohawk, unless normal guys let them. If you were an Iroquois Indian or Scythian warrior, a mohawk was part of your work attire.
For behavior, definitely. Movies provide horrible models of behavioral masculinity. Yet I wouldn’t look to the past for hair, unless you are deliberately doing a retro look.
Not much for him, because he already good-looking and high status. But a guy other than Beckham could get significant returns.
Different hair length changes the apparent proportions of the head and face. This influences perceptions of masculinity/femininity, and perception of age. Hair long enough to frame the face changes the perception of facial structure. This is all design space that is thrown out with a buzz cut.
That’s true. But it can be better to have a haircut that looks awesome 50% of the time and crappy 50% of the time, rather than a haircut that looks bland 100% of the time.
Also, regarding this:
I think you’re being much too idealistic about subcultures. Any subcultural or countercultural milieu will feature the same human universals that exist everywhere else, and will therefore impose its own status markers and standards of conformity no less strict and demanding than the mainstream society. (Of course, the mainstream can usually threaten more severe punishments for disobedience, but the loss of status among people whose opinion one cares about is a terrifying enough threat for anyone.)
What you see as escaping the straight-jacket is at best just a change of masters, not an escape into freedom. (With the exception of a small minority who find that their natural inclinations and abilities lend themselves to achieving high status in some particular milieu especially well, but even this works both ways.)
Trouble is, the girls in various groups like those respond positively to the same essential traits in men as anywhere else. Whether you have a mainstream image or any particular subcultural image, it’s basically orthogonal to how attractive you are to women. Now clearly, a given way of dress and behavior will be acceptable in one place and unacceptable in another, but chances are that if you adjust your dress and manners to a different milieu, the women there will find you about as attractive as those in the previous place found you with your previous image. That has at least been my experience, both personal and observational, and I’ve certainly changed my image and the circles I’ve hung out in a great deal through the years.
I’ve thought about our disagreement, and I think there are several important points.
First, at the risk of sounding vain, it is possible that I’m biased because I’m handsome enough that I didn’t have problems attracting attention even in the most misguided years of my youth. (My problem was that I’d usually be oblivious to indications of interest, or I’d sabotage myself by responding to them in naive and clumsy ways, not that I was invisible to girls.) It is possible that for less handsome men, being invisible in the crowd is a big enough obstacle that trying to break it by peacocking is a better option than I’d think.
Then, it also depends on what exactly your goal is. If you’re striving to become a full-blown player—which I never did, both because I was already a bit too old to start working on it when I realized that it’s actually a feasible goal, and also because it doesn’t suit me temperamentally—then I suppose more extreme options like heavy peacocking become the order of the day. For less adventurous goals, however, I still think that working on a strong and solid “normal” image is overall a better option for most men.
I’ve already pointed out that if your face or head shape is not very handsome, you can significantly improve your looks with a suitably shaped haircut. But if you already look handsome with a buzz cut, there are rapidly diminishing returns to what you can do with your hair, if we consider it in terms of handsomeness rather than peacocking. (I hope it’s clear what I mean by that distinction.)
Regarding various subcultural styles, I’ll reply in a separate comment.
Otherwise, I agree that our age is probably too restrictive in what passes for mainstream respectable men’s fashion, and has in fact been ever since the early-to-mid 19th century. I find the 18th century aristocratic men’s fashion very appealing, and the 17th century Cavalier style even more.
So a barber can’t help me. Say I want to end up with hairstyle 9 (primarily because I like his music :P), what process would I go through to end up with that hairstyle from a start of ‘ordinary, kinda spiky’? Also, what sort of facial features, body type and clothing style would be required to pull it off?
If you have curly hair, a this haircut is probably a bad idea. The ends will look too wispy. It’s probably going to take you some product to maintain.
Also, decide on the color. Looking up some other photos, in some he looks all blond, and in others he looks a highlighted dirty blond. You could of course do this cut without coloring your hair.
This cut should work for any facial features except perhaps a round face. That’s because it goes over the ears, which creates a rounder look, which could be too much roundness if your head is already round. As for clothes, something edgy would go well with it. Maybe add a couple accessories like a necklace or a wristband. Look at the sorts of stuff Bon Jovi wears with it.
Does that answer your questions?
Thanks, that was great. I’ll have to think about it a bit. The ‘curly’ thing may be in issue. I always think of my hair as straight but when it gets some length to it it curls a bit. Constant straightening could be tiresome.
I love 2, 7 and 9.
With a Bon Jovi hairstyle recommendation? You’ve definitely made mine. And it doesn’t look like it would be too hard to grow out to that length either. Any suggestions on how to grow from short to medium length without it looking terrible in between?
When I’m overdue for a haircut, I find that wearing a tuque for a while makes it look significantly less bad. This might be highly individual-specific, though.
Ahh, wikipedia tells me a tuque is what we commonly referred to a beanie here. A good idea. Fairly individual specific, as you say. I’ll definitely have to get a hat though. Are fedoras too overdone these days or could that work too?
Actually, I meant wearing a beanie for a while to iron out your hair and make the overgrown parts stick out less conspicuously, not wearing it around to hide bad hair.
Fedoras can look cool, but like other uncommon headwear, it can be a major fail if it fits you less than perfectly. I suppose if you decide to wear it, you should also stick to the old custom that it’s impolite to wear indoors, so I don’t think it’s a good option for hiding bad hair.
Ahh, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Good idea.
A $15 haircut looks like a $15 haircut. A good haircut looks good wet, dry, with product, without product, straight out of bed, straight out of the shower, and six weeks after you got it.
For this, if you have curly hair? You pay big money. Period.
It’s also worth it.
I’ve read that the way most stylists are taught to cut curly hair is flat-out wrong—apparently, the standard method is optimized for being able to straighten the hair, rather than having curls that look good.
That is absolutely correct in my experience. It is hard, as a curly person, to find a good stylist, which is why until two months ago, I was still getting my hair cut in Kansas even though I live in Vancouver, BC. (The one in Canada. Yes, really.)
Now I’m working to train my current excellent stylist that yes, I do actually have to wash my hair every day, and not washing my hair is really not an option (allergies). But at least she cuts my hair so it looks great.
I can’t really use product (allergies) so straightening was never an option for me.
Voted up for interesting link.