Lose the Peter Pan Haircut

Principessa

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 22, 2006
Posts
18,660
Media
0
Likes
135
Points
193
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Female
Lose the Peter Pan Haircut

If you're old enough to drive, you shouldn't be asking your stylist for bangs.
-By Katherine Wheelock

Take a cut at the boyish hairdo below.
[URL]http://stylemens.typepad.com/details__thegadabout/images/2007/10/01/haircut.jpg[/URL]
Image credit: Photofest

Taking the occasional style cue from guys a decade younger than you isn't the worst idea. It keeps you a safe distance from the threshold of grandpa-dom. Laceless All Stars. Denim jackets. Rugby shirts. A man over 30 can get away with these youthful accents from time to time. What a man over 30—a man over 20—cannot get away with is the most recent trend to emerge from the hallways of American adolescence: side-swept bangs. Zac Efron, 20, the pearly-toothed, sapphire-eyed star of the Disney Channel's High School Musical, is the poster child for the cut. But men like 28-year-old Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz are propagating it too.


"A lot of guys are coming in saying they want bangs," says New York hairstylist Takamichi Saeki, who has a salon in the city's East Village. Thirtysomethings who are in the market for a slightly cool-kid aesthetic are walking into Saeki's place clutching photographs of the Peter Pan cut.

"It's usually banker guys who want to be a little more fashionable," Saeki says. "A lot of them are coming in with pictures of Tom Cruise."

The news that men are visiting their hairstylists armed with pages torn from Us Weekly is disturbing enough. The fact that they're bringing in recent snapshots of Tom Cruise is chilling. Cruise's hairstyle has always been reminiscent of a Lego guy's, but the brow-skimming bangs he's had for the last few months have been for a movie—one set in WWII-era Germany, in which he plays a mutinous Nazi.

This highlights another of the associations pin-straight boy bangs have (besides Jonny Quest, the sixties cartoon hero, the von Trapp boys, and Dorothy Hamill): Hitler. They were as essential to his look as his moustache.

Chances are, the fashion-forward preadolescents who are spurring grown men to ask their barbers for long bangs that sweep across their foreheads and curl out whimsically at the ends haven't connected those dots.

Sally Hershberger, the celebrity coiffeuse who gave Meg Ryan a shag in the nineties—and, much more recently, John Mayer his anti-folksy crop—says she gets requests for the Peter Pan cut all the time. From teenagers.

"All the surfer kids in California started wearing their hair like that about a year ago, with the bangs swept across the forehead," Hershberger says. "It's got a mod, Beatles-esque thing about it."

But just because the cut has a history doesn't mean an adult male can co-opt it with stylish irony, like Prefontaine-style Nikes. Boy bangs aren't a classic. They're the male equivalent of pigtails.

"We picked up my friend's daughter at school the other day. She and her friends wanted me to give her little brother the Zac Efron cut," Hershberger says. "He's 8. He wasn't into it."
Smart man.




October 01, 2007
 

sdbg

Superior Member
Verified
Gold
Joined
Apr 9, 2007
Posts
4,209
Media
35
Likes
2,811
Points
433
Location
San Diego
Verification
View
Sexuality
100% Gay, 0% Straight
Gender
Male
It's funny how people imitate styles to make them look younger. The hair care and cosmetic industries capitalize on this big time.

Being I'm mostly bald, I don't have many hair options other than to keep it short. Buzz cuts work for me.
 

andysmith

Just Browsing
Joined
Feb 8, 2008
Posts
53
Media
0
Likes
0
Points
91
That link wouldnt work for me but If am right its that stupid kind swept bowl head look. No one should have that style its effing horrible. To make it worse that constant head spazim to keep it out the eyes is sooo annoying.

No wonder girls are maoning they want their men to be men again

:D
 

snoozan

Experimental Member
Joined
Sep 23, 2006
Posts
3,449
Media
0
Likes
22
Points
183
Sexuality
No Response
i like the cut, but generally on younger men. hell, i have that cut. i prefer to the buzzcut jarhead look anyday. maybe we just don't like them as adult women because that's what our fathers had in the 70s and 80s.
 

Not_Punny

Superior Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2007
Posts
5,464
Media
109
Likes
3,056
Points
258
Location
California
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Female
Nice 'stache, Snooz. :wink:

- - - - - - -

The article has a valid point, but that is NOT a "new" haircut at all.

Maybe it's new to middle America, but not in Los Angeles -- it was stylish about 5 years ago, and now it's on the way out.
 

Principessa

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 22, 2006
Posts
18,660
Media
0
Likes
135
Points
193
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Female
That link wouldnt work for me but If am right its that stupid kind swept bowl head look.
It's a pic of Johnny Quest.

No one should have that style its effing horrible. To make it worse that constant head spazim to keep it out the eyes is sooo annoying.

No wonder girls are moaning they want their men to be men again

:D

It's not about age, it's about having the face structure to pull it off.
No, it's about age no male over 16 should sport that wimpy ass emo look. A man of 30, 40, or heaven forbid 60 with bangs looks silly.
 

Steamboy

1st Like
Joined
Sep 16, 2007
Posts
46
Media
2
Likes
1
Points
91
Location
Anywhere the engine will take me.
Sexuality
99% Gay, 1% Straight
Gender
Male
Nice 'stache, Snooz. :wink:

- - - - - - -

The article has a valid point, but that is NOT a "new" haircut at all.

Maybe it's new to middle America, but not in Los Angeles -- it was stylish about 5 years ago, and now it's on the way out.


Unfortunately, where I live, this look is on the way in.

I live in Puerto Rico. Two years ago it was the Regeton tight shave, then So You Think You Can Dance became the hot show and we had a summer of the multi-color faux-hawk, and now the swept bangs are the mark of the uber-cool.

We're very impressionable here in PR.
 

Qua

Legendary Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2007
Posts
1,600
Media
63
Likes
1,260
Points
583
Location
Boston (Massachusetts, United States)
Sexuality
No Response
Gender
Male
I definitely did that, but it was out of a LACK of a haircut. Eventually it'd just get too long, and being fine and poker straight girl blond, I'd have to flick it out of my face. I've grown out of that as of two months ago; decided to drop the long-haired blonde guitarist stereotype (though it actually got a lot of positive attention from girls, which I thought funny). Does a decent job of hiding a slightly receding hairline, since it's practically a youthful long mild comb(or flick)over. As one of the few long cuts that can do that I can see appeal there.
 

Qua

Legendary Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2007
Posts
1,600
Media
63
Likes
1,260
Points
583
Location
Boston (Massachusetts, United States)
Sexuality
No Response
Gender
Male

D_Prudence_Admonition_Drightits

Experimental Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2006
Posts
2,207
Media
0
Likes
7
Points
183
For contrast, there are worse styles, for instance, bald on top and the rest in a ponytail.

That is a good one. You just want to say...."Let it go, please, let it go."

I always called the Peter Pan style the Page Boy look? Is it the same? Yep, not too many grown men have to face to pull it off.