“But when the crown thins out while the nape keeps on truckin', some men --primarily vegans, tantric sex therapists and smooth-jazz musicians -- see a golden opportunity.”

~ E. Bougerol

By E. Bougerol  |  Send to Friend

Hair. It's not astrophysics. If you have hair on your head, the rules are few and fairly simple: Wash it. Keep it neat. Cut it when it gets unruly. Styling products are fine, but you should not be able to knock on hair. If you don't have hair, or you have it in some places but not others, the rules are a little different, but not much. Again, keep it neat. At worst, man up and shave the rest off. Why are these rules so hard to follow? Your mother taught you these rules when you were young. If you'd listened, we wouldn't even need this list.

Top Ten Worst Hairdos:

10. The Straight-Up (a.k.a. the Artichoke, the Don King) This style can be hard to pin down, because it shows up in so many different iterations. A good rule of thumb: If it looks like the wearer dangled upside down and his hair stayed that way, it's a Straight-Up. Hair is traditionally fixed with a combination of gel, wax, spray and steely determination, and is frequently used to add inches to a man of smaller stature (see Kim Jong Il). Extreme versions show up in early '90s rap culture (see Bel Biv Devoe, Kid 'n Play), and one can't chart the style's course without invoking Don King, but it's the Straight-Up's popularity in greaseball culture that lands it on this list. Designed to withstand hours of hanging out of a speeding SUV or clubbing in Daytona Beach, it's meant to confer manliness upon the wearer, but really makes you wonder how much of that stuff winds up on his pillow.

9. The Bozo (a.k.a. the Gallagher) They could cut it close or buzz it off, but no. Some men, faced with a remaining ring of hair halfway down, decide a 'do usually associated with a honkable nose and a dunking booth is the way to go. The style shows up in history as early as 1586 with William Shakespeare, to whom the trademark style of TV's Bozo the Clown has most often been attributed. Bushy/curly hair makes for the best Bozos --guaranteeing that the wearer looks like a Quarter Pounder from the back -- but a fluffier texture works well too. It's usually accompanied by a mustache (to show that the wearer can too grow hair anytime he wants), a Hawaiian shirt and the conviction that smashing watermelons is hilarious.

8. The Rapunzel (a.k.a. the Earth Mother, the Wiccan Wig) The Rapunzel is less a style than a refusal of style. It's not that women with floor-length hair are angling for a spot in the Guinness Book, or that their religion says hair embodies the soul or anything like that. They just… don't… cut it. It's left to grow down their backs until it pretty much grazes the ground, the ends wispy and brittle from incessant brushing and the sheer stress of dangling off the same scalp for 20 years. It's sometimes seen braided, but usually presents loose, middle-parted or kept off the face with a velvet headband, as its wearer drinks in (read: misreads) the attention (read: sideshow fascination) her hair garners. Rapunzel devotees can be found at renaissance fairs, looms, cat shows and twirling with a tambourine in Fleetwood Mac. Often, they have daughters who refuse scissors, too.

7. The Jewfro (a.k.a. the Welcome Back, Kotter)
It's not that this late-hippie hairstyle -- which came to prominence in urban areas in the 1970s, when not cutting one's hair was sticking it to the Man, man -- is so inherently bad, it's that anyone who wears it is pretty much destined for ridicule and/or failure. Between Kotter and the Sweathogs, the only one who escaped without a 'fro is John Travolta. Gabe Kaplan and the gang happily 'froed it up, but where are they now? Even today, perma-punchline Richard Simmons gives us classic J.F., and is it any wonder that Paul Simon's jetting around the world scooping up songwriting awards while Art Garfunkel's parking cars? (The notable exception has been documented extensively in what's commonly known as the Gene Wilder Paradox.)

6. The Sensitive Ponytail (a.k.a. the Bald Ponytail; the Jazzbo) Middle-aged men with a healthy head of hair don't grow a ponytail. No-one doubts their follicular prowess, so they don't need to carry around proof thereof cinched into a rubber band or man-scrunchie. But when the crown thins out while the nape keeps on truckin', some men --primarily vegans, tantric sex therapists and smooth-jazz musicians -- see a golden opportunity. So they put down their tofu scramble/turquoise jewelry/pan flute and they grow a ponytail. Actor Steven Seagal, a PETA activist, practicing Buddhist and accomplished musician of dentist's waiting room jazz-influenced world music, is the towering icon of the sensi-tail. A terrible look, yes, but infinitely preferable to the same hair worn loose (the Nape Cape).

5. Caucasian Cornrows (a.k.a. the Rasta Redeye, Honky Goes Hawaiian) There was an eight-month period in 1979, after the movie "10" hit theaters and teenage boys everywhere fell asleep counting not sheep but tawny-limbed Bo Dereks bouncing down a beach, when cornrows on white people were officially sexy. Up until that point and every minute since, they've said only one thing: We just got back from a Sandals resort where I totally killed doing "Kokomo" on Steel-Drum Karaoke Night. Cornrows may seem like a good idea in Negril, but back in your cubicle, they'll merely reinforce the gaping abyss between your two allotted weeks of funtime and real life. Also, they'll make you look stupid. If that's not reason enough, look at Axl Rose. The man used to be a badass, if only for singing in a register that only dogs can hear, but then he tried cornrows, and now "Chinese Democracy" will never be finished.

4. The Rat Tail (a.k.a. The Tennessee Tendril) In 2007, the Rat Tail (cousin to the Mullet) is almost fully extinct, and rare sightings are usually on males, but at the height of its popularity in the 1980s, the rat-tail was an equal opportunity offender: Men, women, even innocent children walked around with a brush cut interrupted by a single lock of hair snaking down their back, resembling the tail of a rodent. "Individuality" was frequently expressed by the pimping of one's Rat Tail, which could be braided, frosted, colored, curled and even beaded into a sort of mallrat dreadlock. Celebrity versions are virtually nonexistent, though some early photographs of Menudo show the boy band's members in matching colas de rata. This style is frequently confused with the Sensitive Ponytail, but their demographic reach is very different indeed.

3. The Jersey Prom (a.k.a. Eighties hair, a.k.a. the Bon Jovi) While Cornrows and Combovers prove that bad taste knows neither time nor place, some 'dos are like little time capsules. So while unisex big hair -- the kind that's permed, frosted, teased and moussed, with feathery wings and a sunroof-grazing crown that looks like a pyrotechnic finale -- shows up everywhere from early Wham! Videos to modern-day Manitoba high school yearbooks, to us, it'll always signify a Bon Jovi concert in Asbury Park, N.J., circa 1986. And not just because J.B.J. himself rocked one of the most righteous version in hair history. (Bonus points for the shellacked-to-death bangs formation known as The Claw.)

2. The Jheri-Curl Mullet: (a.k.a. Hockey Hair, a.k.a. BUFPIB [Business Up Front/Party in the Back]) The mullet landscape is vast, too vast to be catalogued here. It's easily the most iconic of bad hairdos, defying taste and common sense simultaneously, whose victims include country-music one-trick pony Billy Ray Cyrus and Motown appropriator Michael Bolton, entire swaths of the NHL and NASCAR populations, and David Bowie, who should really know better. It may be the only hairstyle to be derided in almost every major language and culture: the Greek, Czech, Dutch, Slovenian and Italian terms for mullet translate as "mudflap," "newt," "little carpet," "small broom" and "MacGyver," respectively. So if we have to pick one offender, we call on the Jheri-Curl Mullet, which combines the style's general awfulness with an ultra-vile "wet look" finish. The J.C.M. was most memorably worn by Lionel Richie in the video for 1984's "Hello," where a poor blind woman had to sculpt the damn thing out of clay.

1. The Combover: (a.k.a. the Comb-Over) Nothing provides a peek into an individual's unhappy childhood, textbook narcissism and controlling nature quite like a Combover, which results when men grow hair where they can, and maneuver it to conceal the part (usually the dome) where they can't. Traditionally, it sprouts from the sides or the back and is either plastered down with pomade or teased into a fluffy cloud. The Combover provokes a combination of mockery, pity and bewilderment in its onlookers (does he think he's fooling anyone?), but its deceitful intent makes it far more egregious: it betrays a rare capacity for denial and alternate-reality creation in its agent. History is full of Combover-wearing maniacs with terrible taste and stupid, dangerous ideas about world domination (see Hitler, Adolf and Trump, Donald).

 

E. Bougerol lives and eats in NYC, but her heart will always remain in her chest.