The Man Bun

When did this become a thing?

I first started noticing it on hipsters. Yoga-pants wearing males sporting sandals who seemed to be saying I’m expending so much energy that I just cannot have my hair on my neckline preventing my sweat from escaping. Look at me, olfactory mess that I am, I’m a living, breathing human specimen you can only envy.

But you wouldn’t want to touch.

That’s the thing about man buns. The women make fun of them. I’ve never ever heard a guy talk about someone’s bun but women constantly confide and snicker, laughing at the wearer.

And now it’s expanded. If you’ve got enough hair it’s a reasonable choice. You can no longer tell the personality by the bun. I was at the hospital yesterday and a blue collar denizen escorting his mother was sporting one.

Now when I was in college, and even nerds started growing their hair long, I cut mine off. But no one wants to stand alone anymore, everybody wants to join in.

And why should the man bun be any more acceptable than the ponytail? Maybe if you’re a movie star, or a rock star, you can get away with long locks, indicating you’re an outsider, marching to the beat of your own drummer, even though you’re usually just a slave to the financial grind. But for decades we saw aged men with thinning hair pulling what was left back into a wimpy ponytail that would have any horse in the barn running away.

But that look has evaporated. Now you tie it all on top of your head like a Teletubby. As if it were a hook we could swing you by. Radiating to all the message that you’re a follower, not an individual, trying to gain some cred when actually you’re losing some. Kinda like all those bald guys who shave their heads so they think we won’t know…

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