Thom Nickels: The mystery of the man bun
An Inquirer article a long time back focused on the so-called “man bun,” which means, essentially, a man who does his hair up in a bun.
While this hairstyle is fairly common today, it still registers as strange. Not because a man or woman doesn’t have the right to wear their hair anyway they want to wear it, but because of what the average hair bun has come to symbolize for many.
Let’s consider famous female buns in history.
There’s the ballerina bun, Emily Dickinson’s schoolmarm bun, the Princess Leia French roll bun, and the messy hair bun with chopstick antennae.
Then there is the notorious — and very ugly — top knot bun, or a bun that sits directly on top of the woman’s head like a corn muffin or an apple.
On most women, buns have a severe and restrained look because the hair is pulled back very tightly on the head. This “pulled back” look exposes the bun wearer’s face to undue scrutiny. Everything is accented, like big noses or large ears, but especially big noses because noses always look bigger when the face is not framed by free flowing hair. Free flowing hair often acts as an aesthetic distraction or enhancement, and can beautify even the humblest of faces.
Regarding noses, I’m reminded of what writer/novelist Muriel Spark once wrote. Noses, she said, “Is our tether between spirit and substance.” She quotes Genesis: “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” then adds, “The first thing that happened to Adam happened to his nose. Therefore the nose is an emblem at once of our dusty origin and our divine.”
Getting back to buns: A bun that sits on the very top of a woman’s head has a buffoonish look, recalling the Judy Collins song, Send in the Clowns, whereas a bun that rests behind the head (like a pony tail) has a more refined and cultivated look.
The majority of women, it seems, wear buns when they don’t have time to “do” their hair: the bun as the end result of a hair emergency. Sometimes a bun can be a work-related necessity. Ballerinas, for instance, do their hair up in buns to avoid getting hair in their faces during performances. Yet this does not mean that they have to keep the bun look while traveling home on Amtrak or SEPTA.
The advent of the “man bun,” however, is proof positive that western civilization has not only “ended” but is now in that anarchic post apocalyptic phase known as the Theater of the Absurd.
Why a man would want to put his hair up in a bun is one of those questions that cannot be answered simply. Is it because he wants lots of eye contact in the street? Or does he want to be known as the instigator of a new hair style?
No, he wants to be noticed.
Most of the “man buns” I’ve seen have been on male model types who have little to lose by going ugly. In other words, because these men tend to be extremely attractive, they can afford to take gross liberties with their looks.
A balding man with bifocals who struggles with his weight might be advised to stay away from the “man bun,” because, as is the case with women with top knot muffin buns, it will only showcase his physical imperfections.
“Why sir, are you wearing a little Tower of Babel on the top of your head?” (No answer.)
So, what kind of man (besides models) wears the “man bun?” Perhaps he’s a sensitive, artistic type, a musician, band promoter, artist or a (music) sound control engineer who wishes that he were a musician….
To understand the perversity of the “man bun,” let’s quickly recap the recent history of male hair.
When long hair first came on the scene, public reaction was not good. In the late 60s, high school students were expelled from school for refusing to cut their hair. Newspaper articles showcased debates on the “ethics” and “morality” of long hair on boys and men.
Long hair was associated with the Beatles and then with radical politics. It was a badge showing sympathy or identification with anti-war demonstrations and the 1960s counterculture. Animosity against long hair was intense; it bordered on outright hatred and the pathological. Suburban home dwellers, truck drivers, World War II vets, policemen, and businessmen of every stripe heaped scorn and ridicule on long hairs. Longhaired hitchhikers were sideswiped off the road; fired from jobs or not hired in the first place; or called fags or chicks. Intolerance ruled the airwaves.
Then, suddenly, long hair on men stopped being about politics. Yale educated political conservatives with long locks began appearing on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. Those same truck drivers who used to run hippies off the road were now sporting hippie hairstyles themselves. The same was true for those motorcycle gangs who used to castigate “peacenik” hippies. In the meantime, “dangerous” political radical types contented themselves with the retro-beatnik goatee.
Ira Einhorn, Philadelphia’s Earth Day co-founder and self-styled New Age guru, copied the long hair and beard styles of Abbie Hoffman and poet Allen Ginsberg. Einhorn, of course, was charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, in 1979 and became the target of a massive FBI hunt after he fled to France to escape prosecution.
Charles Manson certainly denigrated the long hair and beard look with his nefarious deeds.
“The culture of hair is most obvious in the United States,” writes French journalist Hadrien Laroche in his book, The Last Genet, about the famous playwright and novelist Jean Genet, who had a completely bald head. Laroche quotes Genet on hippie hair: “Any style would do, apparently: long; medium length; with a fringe; straight; black and greasy; flowing; all over the place, brown and frizzy; blonde and curly…This fashion, carried to extremes and even beyond in England, was born in California and grew out of the American army’s reverses in Vietnam…”
One of the most interesting “hair” things that Laroche says in his book is the development of the Afro at that time.
Laroche mention’s Ralph Ellison’s book, Invisible Man, and then elaborates on the slogan of those times, Black is beautiful, stating that “men who had been hidden now became visible…by provocation by hair and outrageous hair styles.”
The contemporary “man bun” is basically ideology-free although chances are the wearer is a progressive Democrat rather than a Trump supporter. Yet even this is changing. If one were to reduce the “man bun” to politics it would probably be the politics of personal narcissism. The “man bun” is a kind of cosmetic provocation, something that proclaims, “I’m different,” when in fact “man bun” men are more likely to be far more ordinary and conventional than guys walking around with hair styles you don’t notice.
It may be going out on a limb to suggest that when a person — in this case a man — has nothing internal to rebel against — he’s a super “normal” type totally in step with the status quo — he still may clamor to “rebel” against something and so in chooses to deviate cosmetically.
The man with the Iroquois haircut who hates the anonymity that working as a bank teller brings; or the man who tattoos his neck or forehead because he never made it as a live sketch artist and wants to be noticed — by any means possible — for something.
One interesting thing about the “man bun” is that it toys with notions of androgyny, although in a contrived, unattractive French maid kind of way.
After all, if most women don’t look good in buns, the numbers quadruple and multiply exponentially with men.
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest, “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest” was released in May 2023.
So your entire article boils down to, women who have buns are lazy and unattractive when it comes to personal grooming and they fail to meet my beauty standards. You know who else had long hair, the Founding Fathers, some of them even wore wigs.
When a woman gets dressed its for herself and how it makes her feel. At no time is she thinking will Thom Nickels think I am attractive
Have at it! Buns and ponytails cause split ends and look messy on men.
Upper-case Judah,
Your comments (and various name spellings) are interesting on many levels from the time stamps to the punctuation choices.
Mexico just elected as President a person with four (4) European grandparents. She is a socialist, roughly 80% of Mexico is Catholic, and almost every other major candidate was assassinated. I’m not offering more conspiracy “theories” just wondering how she wears her hair?
By the way did you see that legacy news outlets in NY, annoyed that a migrant shot two of their police officers this Monday, June 3rd, reported that more than 350,000 asylum cases have been closed by the US government since 2022 for applicants who do not have a criminal record and are not seen as national security threats by the Biden Administration? That is not a theory! But it is indeed another conspiracy. Guess what those 350,000 people can do now? Did you guess apply for state IDs? Correct! How many U.S. states currently have only “opt out” options to register to vote when obtaining a state I.D.? About half the states and Washington, D.C., have enacted or implemented automatic voter registration. Another conspiracy? Just part of the same conspiracy actually! And the following claim: “government software recognizes who should be automatically enrolled”? That is just theory, actually.
She is a socialist, roughly 80% of Mexico is Catholic, and almost every other major candidate was assassinated.” Who were the other candidates running for President that were assassinated?
“350,000 asylum cases have been closed by the US government since 2022 for applicants who do not have a criminal record and are not seen as national security threats by the Biden Administration?” How are these people a threat to national security?
“Guess what those 350,000 people can do now? Did you guess apply for state IDs?” If they are legal residents of the U.S. they can get legal ID’s, they just won’t be able to vote.
“About half the states and Washington, D.C., have enacted or implemented automatic voter registration.” Which only applies if you are a citizen, not a legal resident.
“How many U.S. states currently have only “opt out” options to register to vote when obtaining a state I.D.?” Why would any American opt out from doing their civic duty. Being registered to vote does not mean you have to vote.
Straw-Judah:
1. “350,000 asylum cases have been closed by the US government since 2022 for applicants who do not have a criminal record and are not seen as national security threats by the Biden Administration?” {How are these people a threat to national security?} [Nobody claimed they were threats to national security…but it is indeed fact that 350,000 asylum cases were just simply closed. That is a conspiracy, it happened, and you cannot refute that it happened, so you try to twist the subject matter.]
2. “Guess what those 350,000 people can do now? Did you guess apply for state IDs?” {If they are legal residents of the U.S. they can get legal ID’s, they just won’t be able to vote.} [Says who? You? “…they just won’t be able to vote” according to WHO EXACTLY? Where is your evidence that they won’t be registered to vote in an only “opt out” program?]
3. “About half the states and Washington, D.C., have enacted or implemented automatic voter registration.” {Which only applies if you are a citizen, not a legal resident.} [Again, a completely baseless claim without any proof.]
4. “How many U.S. states currently have only “opt out” options to register to vote when obtaining a state I.D.?” {Why would any American opt out from doing their civic duty. Being registered to vote does not mean you have to vote.} [What are you even trying to communicate here? 350,000 migrants are not United States citizens. I recognize you used the word “American” very cleverly. Yes, most of the 350,000 are Americans. But they are not from North America nor citizens. And then you try to say it is honorable to be registered to vote but that does not mean you have to vote… you are not a serious person.]
“I recognize you used the word “American” very cleverly.” The country that I live in is the United States of America., which is a single country. The ones coming from South America are referred to by their country of origin, as there is no country known as South America.
” “About half the states and Washington, D.C., have enacted or implemented automatic voter registration.” {Which only applies if you are a citizen, not a legal resident.} [Again, a completely baseless claim without any proof.]” – That is not a claim, that is Federal law, only American citizens can vote in American elections.
Upper-case Judah,
Javier Torres Barrera (PAN) – Aspiring candidate for mayor of Chiautla de Tapia, Puebla – assassinated on July 13, 2023
Wilman Monje Morales (MORENA) – Aspiring candidate for mayor of Gutiérrez Zamora, Veracruz – assassinated on October 11, 2023
Alejandro Lanuza Hernández (PAN) – Regidor of Salvatierra, Guanajuato – assassinated on October 11, 2023
Miguel Ángel Cruz Robles (MORENA) – Precandidate for federal deputy – assassinated on October 26, 2023
Armando Pérez Luna (PRI) – Former mayor of Amatenango del Valle, Chiapas – assassinated on April 9, 2024
Noé Ramos Ferretiz (MORENA) – Aspiring candidate for governor of Veracruz – assassinated on April 19, 2024
Jorge Huerta Cabrera (PRI) – Aspiring candidate for local office in Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla – assassinated on May 31, 2024
Alfredo González Díaz (PT) – Candidate for mayor of Atoyac de Álvarez, Guerrero – assassinated on March 12, 2024
Diego Pérez Méndez (MORENA) – Incumbent municipal treasurer of San José Independencia, Oaxaca, and mayoral candidate – assassinated on January 14, 2024
Juan Pérez Guardado (PRI) – Secretary of Social Development in Fresnillo, Zacatecas – assassinated on March 19, 2024
Gisela Gaytán (MORENA) – Aspiring candidate for mayor of Celaya, Guanajuato – assassinated on April 1, 2024
Julián Bautista Gómez (PRI) – Former mayor of Amatenango del Valle, Chiapas – assassinated on April 9, 2024
Rocío Nahle (MORENA) – Aspiring candidate for governor of Veracruz – assassinated on April 19, 2024
Hipólito Deschamps (MC) – Aspiring candidate for governor of Veracruz – assassinated on April 19, 2024
None of these people were running for President. “She is a socialist, roughly 80% of Mexico is Catholic, and almost every other major candidate was assassinated.” – So once again, what other candidates running for President were assassinated?