The Mohawk

For Matt :)  I had this moment when I was in college and seriously acting the out of control art student into rough sex and what not.  It seems that everything risque, wild, and "hard" is becoming a lot more mainstream and "been there done that."  It's like verything gets sucked into American culture and then gets vomited back out as cliche.  Like watersports for example, and I am not talking about water skiing.  When did piss become so popular with little twink boys or the boring AF crew?  Do they even understand what it means?  Seriously?  I once said this same exact thought at brunch less than a month ago when everyone was kinda chit chatting to themselves and I basically burst out with, "I am so over watersports.  Everyone is doing it.  It is just so cliche now."  Needless to say I turned a few heads.

The Mohawk Becomes, Well, Cute - New York Times.

Perhaps it was the wave of stylish men in New York and Los Angeles in the late 1990's who gelled their hair into luminous crests known as fauxhawks who paved the way for more extreme versions as a popular summer look. Or perhaps the Mohawk has re-entered the vocabulary of stylists who operate far from the barbershops near St. Marks Place, the city's historic thoroughfare for alternative style, thanks to the well-documented and ever-evolving Mohawk of one man, Maddox Jolie, 4.

Maddox, the adopted son of Angelina Jolie, is a regular face in the pages of Star and Us Weekly, and in the way of so many trends born in the pages of celebrity magazines, he has done for Mohawks what Harry Potter did for round spectacles. They are often wider and flatter than the Mohawks of the 1970's London punk scene and are worn naturally, without a glutenous product.

Some are curly and extend down the back into mullets or are gently buzzed along the sides. The result is a hybrid of looks, including the mulladour - half mullet, half pompadour - or as in the case of Maddox Jolie, the hawkapoo, referring to the popularity and cutesiness of certain curly mixed-breed poodles.

"Like a lot of things in beauty, what was considered ugly last week is probably going to be beautiful next week," said Howard McLaren, the creative vice president of the Bumble & Bumble salon in New York. Mr. McLaren is an advocate of the modern Mohawk, which is also making a comeback on skateboarders in Santa Monica, Calif., and among hipsters in Hoxton, London's answer to the meatpacking district in Manhattan.

"Everyone should have one at some point in their life," Mr. McLaren said. "The first really cool one I saw was about five years ago in Paris when the designer Jeremy Scott shaved one side of his head and wore his hair off to the side. It was floppy and not all gelled up, trying to be some kind of fin."

"Everything begins on the outside, and eventually America brings it to the center. It's hard to take."  Mohawks were once a signifier of aggression, a visually intimidating extension of the human backbone, or so Celtic warriors believed. They yanked out the hair along the sides of their heads to appear scary to the Romans, who thought they were barbaric. The Mohawk owes its very name to a hardy American Indian tribe who plucked their hair into a strip in times of war. But the battle is over.

Thanks to their youngest adopters, Mohawks are now merely adorable

Comments

[e]

and the mohawk thing is a fashion trend, which quite predictably does the rounds from some random fringe to hipster to mainstream to cliche. Just change the name to anything from "Nose Piercing" to "Leg Warmers" and the dates, and it is pretty much the same circut as every other fad.
e

[e]

Some Romans probably already had this conversation.
The water sports thing is more about you getting jaded than it does about anything becoming mainstream. Housewives in Albuquerque are not suddenly all having water sport parties, or even giving their hubbies head more often. I’m sure there are some water sport housewives out there, but so too were there some of them in the 60’s before you or I were even born. Kink has never been new, its only new…. and now old… to you.

If anything the only thing that is new is that more people are more informed younger due to avenues of information like television and Internet.

[SJ]

The mohawk can look pretty cool ... doesn't work for me at the bank though
:(

By the way, here's a coupla links on Beck's flirtation with the Mo ...
(The article about Japanese women shaving their pubic hair to match is particularly hilarious).
:P

http://www.usatoday.com/life/gallery/uncool/contenttemplate1.htm

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/17/1055828330865.html

[frank]

I think the "trend" is all about being the "trend." To them, especially homo's, it doesn't mean anything. It is a trend and they have a mohawk or faux hawk because Tom, Dick, and gay Harry have one too. They think, like an idea from high school that they can't quite grow out of, "can I be cool too?" Instead of you who feels cool, hot, and above the trend, without the need for reassurances from all of the other Tom, Dicks, and Harrys. Haha.

[Matty]

Its funny. I was just thinking today how its time to get rid of the hawk. everywhere i look, now, there they are. I am starting to feel the need to prove that ive had it for quite a while, that im not part of that dumb "prep-turn-faux rebel" trend. im neither of those and i dont like being confused with it. haha.
one last shave tomorrow, and then im moving on. here goes nothing...