The Faux-Hawk

It's probably not even called a faux-hawk any more. They probably have some new name for it. You know what it is: a man cuts his hair a teeny bit shorter on the sides of his head and when he gels up in the morning, with praying hands, he self-consciously shapes the longer part into a crest. When he's done he looks like a chicken. The longer hair sticking up in the middle of his head resembles the far more daring, but every bit as cliche, mohawk, and because it resembles a mohawk but isn't, it is a fake mohawk, or faux (that's French for fake and rhymes with mo) hawk. It's a ridiculous looking style, and it says of its wearer, "I'd like to be more outrageous than I am but I don't dare."

I once cut out of the New Yorker a cartoon of a guy in a barber's chair looking at his new mullet in the mirror and saying to the barber, "no, leave it long in back so I can look like a nincompoop." The mullet, or neckwarmer as we used to call it, is now one of humanity's most reviled hairdon'ts. Anyone who still dares to wear a mullet (it takes balls and/or a complete lack of any sense that it is the 21st century) is guaranteed ridicule by children, strangers, and even old grandmas. Someday we'll look back on the faux-hawk in the same way.

I have to say, there doesn't seem to be any other major men's sport that's as narcissistic as "futbol". I don't actually care much about sports so I'm probably totally wrong. It's one of the only major sports where its players are not required to wear hats or helmets (basketball being the other) so the amount of attention each player seems to pay to his hair is noteworthy. I do like some World Cup action, however, and I can see the faux-hawk is alive and well amongst many of the world's soccer stars. I would prefer to see them all in mullets.

Bring back the neckwarmer!