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.
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.