BadHairFilter

March 6, 2008 4:44 PM

Explain the persistence of bad (as in seriously out of date) haircuts.

Why would hair stylists, who presumably keep up with present styles, perpetuate haircuts from the 1980s or earlier? Are these styles the requests of the customers, or are certain hair salons more likely than others to reproduce decades-old styles? Does the client want to maintain a particular identity? The most artificial instances are probably Republican Congressmen and journalists, whose haircuts are often frozen in the styles of other decades.

Before I get attacked as a snob, I'm a fairly young person from a cosmopolitan and relatively well-to-do metro area.

I also wonder when a person's personal style tends to freeze.

posted by bad grammar to clothing, beauty, & fashion (46 comments total)

I think the hair stylist will cut a client's hair however he/she asks for it.

FWIW, one time I asked my barber if people ever come to him asking for ridiculously outdated haircuts. He said that it happens pretty often and that he has to cringe when someone asks for a flattop.
posted by rancidchickn at 4:48 PM on March 6

There's no accounting for taste.
posted by Max Power at 4:54 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

You mean like Sam Champion's hair which almost looks like a tidal wave my sister had frozen about her forehead in 1994? Yeah. Not sure.
posted by yeti at 4:55 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

You may think the 1980s belong at some antediluvian point in history, but they really weren't that long ago. People stick to what they were comfortable with.
posted by popcassady at 4:55 PM on March 6

Before I get attacked as a snob, I'm a fairly young person from a cosmopolitan and relatively well-to-do metro area.

I'm not sure why you think this excludes you, because it's pretty much the demographic of hipsters everywhere, but whatever. Stylists cut the way they're paid to cut. Furthermore, if you can believe it, some people do not identify their preferred hairstyle with the dates in which they were most popular. I know, crazy huh? You have to wonder where the fashion mullet of a few years ago, as well as the fauxhawk, came from, because certainly they weren't going for a style that was out of date (and what self-respecting stylist would cut a fashion mullet if they thought it actually referred to the historical version?).
posted by rhizome at 4:56 PM on March 6

I have a pretty drab haircut. About two years ago I finally decided to grow out the bangs I've had since, oh, I was eight (I'm in my early twenties). Last year I made the jump to, gasp, slight layers. Both of these were nigh-traumatic experiences. I have had long, past-shoulder length hair for as long as I can remember. It's what I know and it's what I'm comfortable with. I don't know what else to do with it. I know something more styled, more modern, something that's not just long would look better, but I don't know what that haircut is and I'm terrified I will take my hair to a hairstylist and they'll butcher it. Finding a good hairstylist who knows you and your likes and dislikes is not an easy thing. So instead I just let it sit there, getting the occasional trim. I imagine people who maintain their hairstyles work the same way.

(Also, saying you're a young person from a fairly cosmopolitan and well-to-do metro area does absolutely nothing for your claims that you are not a snob)
posted by schroedinger at 4:58 PM on March 6 [5 favorites]

If you've ever watched a makeover show along the lines of What Not To Wear you'll know that people often get stuck in a hairstyle they think looks good on them and hold on to it for dear life not because they still love it but because they are scared of change.
posted by loiseau at 5:00 PM on March 6

A long public career would provide quite embarassing set of pictures if you always had the latest trend hairstyle. Your 10 year old photo would look like, well 10 year old photo when everyone wore that stupid hairstyle. You want to look like you can keep your own head.
posted by Free word order! at 5:06 PM on March 6

Conservative is called "conservative" for a reason. Sorry for that flippancy of that answer, but it might be just that simple. Styles that are dated may look bad to hipsters and progressives, but to those that idealise a Golden Age before liberal moral permissiveness eroded the foundations of society, these dated things may be part and parcel of the Good Life that people strive for.

Plus of course, because it's the status quo, Venture too far from the known, and too far from what everyone else is doing, at your own risk, thus it becomes institutionalised. Conservative audience? Dress conservatively.
posted by -harlequin- at 5:07 PM on March 6

I have another possible suggestion.

For years, my mother took me and my sisters to the same place to get our hair cut, a little family place. A weird woman in her sixties and her fortyish son were the only stylists. I would always bring in photos from the internet, but my haircuts would never really look like them at all. They'd be... floofier. And, no matter how sleek the hair in the photo was, she'd style it with an enormous round brush, so that I had a massive case of curl-under. For years, I just took it for granted that this was how salons were. Then, at age seventeen, I finally went somewhere else and realized that that was not the case. I'm pretty sure the problem was that the woman had gone to beauty school forty years before, and was just completely clueless about how the young folk actually wanted to look.

Maybe all these people started going to their mom's stylists and never stopped.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:10 PM on March 6

People aspire to look a certain way for their own, sometimes unfathomable, reasons. I say let them and their 80's hair be.
posted by fire&wings at 5:11 PM on March 6

I also wonder when a person's personal style tends to freeze.

I'm guessing a common one would be when they have kids, and no-longer have the time, energy, need, or inclination, to be beautiful :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 5:12 PM on March 6

I think it's a combination of both. I once had a haircut at college, in town, and...wow. My hair went back in time to a time before I was born, and not in a 'cool, retro' way. I actually went back to the dorm, re-washed my hair, and begged a blow-dryer off someone to fix it.

Now I live in a place with a multitude of options, unlike where I was in college, and I still see people with the same ancient hair styles. Changing your hair is scary - although when I cut seven inches, people around me winced a lot more than I did - and some people are more or less afraid of a very visible change.

As a secondary note to that, people who have significant others and pair-bonded in a certain era might be less likely to change their hair from that due to pressure from their SO. Mine was very nervous when I went from longish to shortish, and I'm not 100% sure he's still okay with the change a year later.
posted by cobaltnine at 5:18 PM on March 6

Maybe the hairstyles you dislike are coming back into vogue and it's you who are losing touch with current trends :-)
posted by winston at 5:20 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

I'm glad you specified you're not a snob, because some of the other things you wrote might suggest otherwise.

And the haircuts? Some people have more important things to worry about. Or, to put it less judgmentally, fashion is not equally important to all people. A CEO may be more concerned with giving off an air of prosperity and confidence. A farmer may be more concerned with practicality and durability. Fashion critics and journalists mostly seem to aim for 'stylish' rather than 'fashionable.' Stevie Wonder likes the way that the braids make him look like an Egyptian king. I made that last one up, but you get the drift.
posted by box at 5:29 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

People also have different ideas of what is attractive or flattering on them. The receptionist at my doctor's office clearly thinks she looks awesome with a mullet, and (I assume) has a stylist who cuts her hair the same way she likes it every time she goes. And, you know, more power to her. You have to be comfortable in your own skin--er, hair. There's something to be said for considering an update now and then, but if a certain style that was popular years ago still makes you feel attractive, then that's how you'll wear your hair.
posted by Meg_Murry at 5:51 PM on March 6

The most artificial instances are probably Republican Congressmen and journalists, whose haircuts are often frozen in the styles of other decades.

Those are the haircuts that professional adult men wear.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:11 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

there is a cashier lady at my supermarket who is somewhere in her fifties. she has a turban-hair-thing going on like marge simpson, only blonde. combined with the dramatic make-up it looks astonishingly close to some of the young girls you saw in the fifties. everything else about her indicates that she's not a very style-conscious person, so I always assumed that she just stopped changing something that she had done in her youth. perhaps she still thinks of herself as young and pretty the way boys back then told her she was. or perhaps she's got a fifties-dance group thing going on. I could be wrong but hey, I always thought she held on to her youth.

I sometimes also see men in their 40s and 50s with those 1970s type hairstyles. same deal, I figure.
posted by krautland at 6:18 PM on March 6

Possibly some people do not care about haircuts as much as you do and simply get the same haircut every time, consequently ending up with a haircut similar to the one they had when they were younger or when they were a little kid. People who do not pay much attention to personal style probably have “frozen” by your description there.
posted by XMLicious at 6:22 PM on March 6

Some people used to like to keep their hair in fashion, lost interest in it as they got older and just ask for the same haircut now because they don't care.
posted by scabrous at 6:24 PM on March 6

Also, it occurs to me as someone who started going bald in high school that this was a factor in my case - I was basically like “Oh, what the hell, now it's not going to look good no matter how it's cut, I don't care.”
posted by XMLicious at 6:25 PM on March 6

The hairdressers responsible don't take continuous education & training seriously.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:53 PM on March 6

I've had the same haircut, with minor variations (bangs/no bangs) for the past 18 years. Any time I try something new it involves more work to maintain than I am willing to impart upon my hair, so it just looks crappy. So I stick with something that may not be OMFG TOP OF TEH LINE FASHION but also doesn't make me want to throw things at the mirror.
posted by Lucinda at 7:09 PM on March 6

All the way through high school, I combed my hair in a style that nobody else had, it did not exist. My barber never said, "Man, this is not cool, why don't you I fix this for you." He cut and combed it the way I wanted it. For the record, I was combing my hair straight back, after applying a bit of Brylcream so it would stay that way. Why? I have no idea. I started doing it one day, I personally thought it was OK, so I kept it that way. I endured the occasional derisive comment. My folks never suggested any alteration. My girlfriend never said a word about it. After a while, I think I started to say to myself, you know, a regular hairstyle would be a better idea. But, inertia held sway. I think that I thought, the comments I would get for changing it would be worse than the comments I got for having it that way.

Finally, when I went off to college, I changed it by putting in a part. On the left, as it happens. Whenever I got a haircut, after the initial wash, the barber of stylist would ask where the part was. It seems they never take note of this beforehand. "On the left," I'd say. And there it stayed for 25 years. Quite honestly, I never liked it that way, because I'd get a cowlick across my forehead, but again, nobody ever suggested any change. Not my wife, not one of several barbers and hairdressers.

Until finally I went to a shop where the proprietor, the first time he touched my head, said, "Why is your part on the left? It belongs on the right." He showed me why; it has to do with the way the hair naturally falls and parts on the scalp. By this time, I was 45 years old, and I had finally encountered a stylist who told me what I needed to do with my hair. The result is, no more cowlick, and a much more natural appearance. Statesmanlike, if I say so myself.

So, why is there a persistence of bad hair cuts? In my opinion, (1) because there is a persistence of barbers and stylist who lack the ability to tell a person what they ought to be doing with their hair (bad diagnostic skills as well as bad salesmanship), and (2) because most people, themselves, don't know what the hell to do with their hair and are reluctant to change.

To bring things full circle, today I comb my now silver-gray hair exactly as I did in high school, except I leave out the Brylcream -- out of the shower, I towel it off, and comb it straight back without blowdrying. As it dries, it parts naturally somewhere on the right. It turns out I was doing it right to begin with, except for the Brylcream.
posted by beagle at 7:16 PM on March 6 [4 favorites]

after a while (generally after high school or college) you stop getting much explicit feedback from your peers on your looks. people become kinder, or better about keeping their comments to themselves, or just indifferent. so unless you are in an image-conscious industry or an image-conscious society, you will probably settle into whatever you looked good in during your early 20's, give or take a year, because that was the last time anyone said anything to you about it.

also, since fashion has become such a youth-centered market, once you age out of it, you sort of don't care. it become what "the kids" are doing. they're not your peers, and they're certainly not your superiors. it's irrelevant to your life. (again, unless you are in an image-conscious society or industry).
posted by thinkingwoman at 7:20 PM on March 6

I wonder that when I am at the gym, toiling away on a treadmill and people watching. I think many people just get stuck on the hairdo they had when they finished high school and they never change it. You can tell who graduated when based on their hair.
posted by 45moore45 at 7:29 PM on March 6

Not snark, this is a serious answer: some people would ask, in the exact same way you are asking this, "Why do some people chase trends and change their hairstyles at the whims of popular fashion?"
posted by Bookhouse at 7:36 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

(1) because there is a persistence of barbers and stylist who lack the ability to tell a person what they ought to be doing with their hair (bad diagnostic skills as well as bad salesmanship), and (2) because most people, themselves, don't know what the hell to do with their hair and are reluctant to change.

I think these two reasons are very high on the list, along with what you said about just doing whatever you've been doing and nobody tells you otherwise because they don't know either and besides, it's you. I have surely questioned the continued existence of the mullet, but that's because I live in an area where you rarely see them. I mean, I had a jheri curl last year, who am I to judge?

And sure, a lot of men will stick to the style that's worked for them for years and have no idea "where the part should be". But there are a lot of women who don't know what to do with their hair either, and if they can find one style that got them compliments with 20 years ago they'll stick with that. I'm a woman who knows NOTHING ABOUT HAIR, and guess what? Every time I've gone to a hairdresser, they had no idea either and always just did what I asked, even when I begged for suggestions (I always gave up and just went with what I knew). Most people don't go to fancy designer salons.

I've had all my hair cut off several times endeavoring to finally figure this out. Right now I have a teeny weeny afro and maybe I'll find someone who can tell me what to do because I wasn't born knowing. I'm definitely looking for a style that I like and I admit that once I find it I will be wearing it for the next few decades.
posted by Danila at 8:06 PM on March 6

Some people have more interesting things to worry about in their lives than hair. I get two haircuts a year and don't really worry too much about how the hair cutter does it. I usually tell them something like, "cut it out over the ears and shave the back." When it's short, I don't do anything to it, when it gets longer, I run a brush through it after I shower. Hopefully, I'll go bald soon.
posted by octothorpe at 8:07 PM on March 6

I was thinking about posting this very question not long ago!

And I was thinking about my own hair, which has not been frozen in time, but is more cut-and-uncared-for. The last time I paid enough attention to hairstyles to know how to spend more time on my hair, you used a curling iron to get big Farah Fawcett feathers swooping back on both sides. Or, a couple of years later, you slicked it back on the sides and tried to get the top as tall as possible. If I wanted a stylish hairdo of the twenty-first century, I would have to go through a whole process of learning what products and what techniques one uses to maintain it on a daily basis, and I'm just not that motivated. If I hadn't become a low-maintenance hair kind of person, I'd probably still be walking around looking like a Thompson Twin.

As other people have said.

Why don't stylists try to change these people's minds? I'm curious about that, too, but one reason I can think of, again from my own experience, is that if people are going for inexpensive haircuts, like I tend to, they're not getting their hair cut by a person who knows how to advise them. They're going to someone who says, "What do you want me to do?" and wants to hear specific details, not "I want something a bit more contemporary that will flatter the shape of my face and work with my hair type."
posted by not that girl at 8:29 PM on March 6

There are only six basic haircuts possible, blunt, low graduation high graduation, equal layering, light layering, and heavy layering. Some purists argue that there are only two haircuts, up blend and down blend. Style is what you do with it, humanity has been recycling combinations of the forms for centuries.
posted by hortense at 8:55 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

There comes a time in one's life when the latest fashions are just too horrible. Right now hip hair, or hip hair for teenagers, reminds me of the eighth grade. I'm okay with the adult styles right now, but I picture a time in the future where I'd rather be freakishly unfashionable than look like the 8th grade boys who used to call me faggot and beat me up.

In the same vein, I will NOT go back to velour.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 9:03 PM on March 6

With the male professional thing it appears that haircut change has slowed or perhaps even stopped. It'd be pretty hard to pick a talking head in a white shirt and tie from the 1990 from one today.

Wheras there would be more difference between 1990 and 1973. The hair would be longer and the ties more florid.
posted by sien at 9:36 PM on March 6

Terms like "the 80s" are pretty nebulous. I lived in central Pennsylvania for several years, and I can assure you, it's only about 1994 there. I've heard that in certain central European nations, it's still 1987.
posted by hifiparasol at 9:43 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

hifiparasol made me LOL, that's exactly what I think about my home town every time I go back. "WTF it's not '1997".

Hair. Some of us just don't care... I haven't been to a Barber or Stylist in 15 years now. When it got long I pulled it back and chopped off a few inches. Then it pissed me off one day and I shaved it all off.

Now I look like a monster when I wake up, but a bit of water and some hair gel and it's all good. No desire or need to go to some place every couple of weeks to have my ends trimmed and my hair shaped into current fashion.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:56 PM on March 6

People adopt the hairstyle of their cohort. Men on construction sites wear mullets, because all the dudes around them favor the mullet look (which, due to its unshorn length in the back, signals "born to be wild.") The female cashier in the rural bank sticks to her highlighted perm because her coworkers prefer this cut. Likewise, lesbians hold true to the short, mullet-y lesbian cut because it's a sexual-orientation identifier.

It's all about socialization and fitting in in subgroups.
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:53 AM on March 7

Why would hair stylists, who presumably keep up with present styles, perpetuate haircuts from the 1980s or earlier?

If your assumption does not match the data, you should consider the possibility that the assumption is incorrect. People I know have gotten enough bad haircuts for me to know that there are stylists who do not keep up with the current styles.

To the more specific question, why do republican congressmen and journalists have such bad hair: because if they're hair actually looked good, the people who pay attention to them would take them less seriously.
posted by 23skidoo at 2:57 AM on March 7

I'm a mid-30s guy with boring hair.
I remember as a teenager trying to convince my dad to wear cooler jeans. He just said he liked his because they were comfortable. I would kind of like a more modern haircut, but I don't care enough to pay extra or maintain it, so I choose cheap and easy. It just doesn't matter to me enough. I can see myself in a couple of decades being the same, even though it would have horrified the teenage version of myself.
When your priorities in life change to something other than how other people see you, well, hair cuts are just a hassle.
posted by bystander at 3:31 AM on March 7

Why don't stylists try to change these people's minds?

For what it's worth, I don't care about hair and actively dislike trendy haircuts, but a few years back I went to get my hair cut and asked for what I wanted, and he looked at my hair and said "You know, I'd recommend that rather than going with that, you go with [something else] instead..." and explained why. Once I'd received assurance that he wasn't trying to give me some wanky trendy haircut I went with his suggestion and it was indeed much better.
posted by chill at 3:48 AM on March 7

Some people simply don't care what their hair looks like. I have a simple cut that, if necessary, I can do myself. Any idiot with a Wahl can do it, so I never have to care who cuts my hair, I never have to pay more than a few bucks and there's no preparation time in the morning. The best part is, it's essentially a timeless male cut; the basic premise of it hasn't changed in something like fifty years or more.

I may keep it until I die.
posted by aramaic at 6:10 AM on March 7

I went through a bunch of different haircuts in my early twenties. One day I just shaved it off with a pair of clippers on the lowest setting, and never looked back. Its easy, looks good (my head seems to be shaped for it), and timeless. Why would I want some trendy haircut that will look silly in pictures a decade from now?
posted by nameless.k at 8:51 AM on March 7

Because I like it this way.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:59 AM on March 7

I think peoples' fashion plateau (hair or clothes) corresponds with the time when they were most happy in their lives. Judging by a lot of hairstyles I see of middle-aged people around me, that was sometimes in the mid-80s -- maybe high school?
posted by parilous at 1:45 PM on March 7

Also, another factor that I haven't read yet is that if you get a bad haircut or too much cut off, it's a mistake that can't be corrected until it grows back, and that takes time. It's not like choosing a nail polish color, you can just take that off with remover. But getting your hair cut, especially in a new way, is a permanent thing. A bad cut is pretty hard to hide and something everyone would notice. This could explain why people stay with a cut they like and they think they look good in. Sure, with today's technology, you can see what your new 'do will look like before they cut, but I don't think many people pursue that option.
posted by NoraCharles at 3:32 PM on March 7

Oh and the "care" your stylist gives you is pretty much in proportion to how much you're paying. Places like The Hair Cuttery couldn't care less about giving you advice on a cut that's right for you, you want the mullet, they'll do the mullet, you pay your $10 and it's done. However, having your hair done at an upscale salon, where they know you're going to go tell all your girlfriends you got your hair done there, is going to give you much more consultation about what looks good on you.
posted by NoraCharles at 3:36 PM on March 7

I actively dislike my hair. We've reached a sort of detente over the years, mostly due to my accepting the fact that the forehead-cowlick will never go away, no matter how hard I try, that it will always be pitifully thin and have the limp, lanky texture of a 2-year-old's, and that if I look at it the wrong way it breaks, resulting in a ponytail the size of my pinky finger if I try to pull it back.
I haven't been able to acquire the alchemical skills required to make it look the way it does when I leave a salon, either through lack of ability or lack of desire to spend that much time on my appearance. So it stays in a boring cut--longish, tapered up around the face, part placed to minimise the hated cowlick (thanks, dad). I really don't like it, but I don't know what else to do with it. I've had stylists try stuff out on me, and it's either too much maintenance or doesn't look good to me. My next step, honestly, will probably be to shave it all off.

My mother has the same texture/thickness hair, and she's been setting it in rollers twice a week for as long as I can remember, just to fight with those characteristics she hates most. I'd submit that there are probably a lot of other people out there who feel the same way, and stick to their hairstyles because they've finally found something that sort-of works for them, and they're loath to start the process over again.
posted by the luke parker fiasco at 11:29 PM on March 7