The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, September 27, 2018 — 5B
Bangs are a telltale sign that
something is wrong. Nobody just
wakes up one morning and thinks,
“I should get bangs today.” No,
bangs are premeditated. They
take planning and plotting and
panicking. And when judgment day
comes, the verdict is most definitely
going to be guilty.
I have spent hours — nay, nights
— searching through the depths of
Pinterest for the perfect bangs. My
research has shed light on the fact
that each face shape is conducive to
a different style of bang. Therefore,
to select your most bangable bangs,
you must first identify the shape of
your face. The problem is that my
face increases in circumference
proportionally to the amount of
MSG, carbs and alcohol I consume
in any given week. But bangs are
forever. Or, at least until they grow
into side bangs that — like froyo,
shrugs and Victoria Secret lip-gloss
— should stay in the mid-2000s.
And yet, there comes a time
when you find yourself thinking
about getting bangs at 2:00 in the
morning. You Google messy bangs,
Reese Witherspoon bangs, bangs
that will draw attention away
from your chin. You’re frantically
pinning, pinning, pinning … until
the melatonin kicks in.
There will inevitably come a
time when you ask your friends,
“Should I get bangs?” If they are
good friends, loyal friends, they
will tell you “NO!” with the fury
of a hundred monsoons. If they
are liars, they will lie and say you
are someone who can totally pull
them off. Let me be clear: Bangs
have only ever looked unspeakably
fantastic on Julian Casablancas, but
that’s a different story entirely.
Bangs are, really, a cry for help.
So, I have created this choose-
your-own-adventure to help a lost,
bang-ridden soul in need. Also, I
overheard a girl telling her friend
she “like, literally, can’t stop doing
Buzzfeed quizzes” and all I have to
say to that is: I aim to please.
If you’re the poster child for
unrequited love, you should get:
Side-swept bangs
I’ve
always
been
an
avid
supporter of break-up hair. Your
boyfriend cheated on you and
smashed your gullible heart into
a million shards of damage? Go
blonde! Who cares if your hair no
longer matches your eyebrows. But
what if you didn’t have a boyfriend
to cheat on you in the first place? If
your particular brand of low self-
esteem stems from years of getting
the short end of the unrequited love
stick, side-swept bangs are here to
say “loneliness” so you don’t have
to.
If you have no direction in
life, are broke and have a liberal
arts degree, you should get: Long
bangs
You’re trying to be someone
you’re not. Your bangs looked OK
for a total of two seconds just after
they were professionally styled,
and in that moment you vowed
to make them look whimsical
every goddamn morning. You
even purchased a round brush.
But, honey, you will never have
the patience to style your bangs.
Not ever. You will not get the right
products, or blow-dry them when
they are just the right level of
dampness. They will (dare I say) air
dry, and they will not look good. But,
you chose to major in English, and
think you can adapt to whatever
challenges come your way. Let’s
hope you’re Zooey Deschanel.
If you fear you are not
interesting, you should get: Baby
bangs
You hopped on the manic-pixie-
whatever train and haven’t quite
been able to hop off. Sure, you’re
a feminist, but it’s 2018 and that
should be the bare minimum. Your
quirkiness has run its course and
you fear that you may be, simply,
boring. In the Voltaire vs. hair
debate (See “The Princess Diaries”
if you are drawing a blank on this
particular witty reference), you’d
rather pin bangs ceaselessly into
the night. So, you sign up for a
class. You try finger painting so you
can tell people that you do finger
painting, but you really, really hate
finger-painting. Then you take
a wine seminar, but realistically
there is no way you can afford such
a bourgeois hobby. You could be
interesting, you think, if you had
the funds. Having interests is so
expensive these days. Good thing
narcissism is in.
If you push people away and
need an emotional laxative,
you should get: Blunt, straight-
across bangs
I am the most worried about you.
Especially if you have curly hair,
but choose to straighten just your
bangs. This eludes to Christopher
Nolan
level
psychological
labyrinths à la “Inception” that not
even the cutest version of Joseph
Gordon-Levitt can lead you out of.
Blunt bangs are just the first line of
defense into the emotional turmoil
that you keep locked away. The key
lies in pinning those babies back.
If
you
can’t
commit
to
anything, not even bangs, you
should get: Parted Bangs
Get parted bangs, and not a
tattoo.
I used to hate my Jewfro.
As is the case with most
curly-haired
Jewish
people,
I would often fantasize about
what my hair would like like
if it were short, slick and
straight,
something
akin
to
Alex Turner’s high pompadour
or Brad Pitt’s undercut or even
Adam Levine’s relaxed waves.
I’ve even considered altering
the color of my hair and shaving
it off completely. The specific
tightness and thickness of my
curls make it difficult to get a
haircut that wasn’t just “long
on the top, short on the sides.”
It didn’t help either that, along
with my last name and the shape
of my nose, the style of my hair
made my Jewishness stick out
like a sore thumb.
This, of course, is not to say
that I’m ashamed of my Jewish
heritage (far from it). But like
anyone who comes from a
marginalized
background,
I
had trouble reconciling with
the inextricable tie between
my identity as a Jew and the
hair on my head. Even though
I was surrounded by a Jewish
community for the majority
of my life, my hair was still a
constant reminder that I was
different.
Jewish or not, big, kinky and
dark hair is something that has
always been seen as an aesthetic
accessory needing to be tamed
in order to heed the societal
standard of short, straight and
light hair. In the more specific
context of the Jewfro, the
unkemptness of curly Jewish
hair on men can often be seen as
unattractive, asexual, awkward
and out-of-fashion.
Famous
Jewish
male
celebrities like Jonah Hill, Seth
Rogen, Jesse Eisenberg and Andy
Samberg helped popularize the
Jewfro early in their careers,
but have long since abandoned
those
hairstyles
for
more
refined ‘dos. TV characters who
sported Jewfros — like Robbie
Shapiro (Matt Bennett, “Grey’s
Anatomy”), the geeky puppeteer
from Nickelodeon’s “Victorious,”
and Kevin (David Bloom, “CSI:
NY”), the lonely pre-teen from
Netflix’s “Wet Hot American
Summer: First Day of Camp” —
were usually the butt of the joke
or simply comic relief, which
inevitably reinforces negative,
stereotypical representations of
Jewish masculinity.
For me, the Jewfro represents
a paradox of pride and shame.
My parents, sister and I all
share curly hair, though each of
us possess different textures:
My sister’s is bouncy, my mom’s
is flowy and my dad’s is rigid
(though it was radically bulkier
in the ’70s, which resulted in him
getting the nickname “Poodle”).
Hair is one of the few traits that
my family and I can appreciate
sharing together, but growing
up, that didn’t always feel like
enough.
Whenever my hair grew long,
I brushed it for what felt like
hours, trying to get rid of the
knots and cowlicks that refused
to be subdued. Trips to the
barbershop made for both an
exciting and anxiety-inducing
experience. On rare occasions,
they were humiliating, like when
my mother coerced me into
getting a haircut one day after
school in sixth grade when she
saw it was getting too big. As I
sat weeping in that chair in the
Yellow Balloon Barbershop while
my barber ran her coarse fingers
through my hair, all I could think
about was how I was missing
out on playing Guitar Hero and
eating popcorn with the boys
who were in my carpool. My hair
had quite literally inhibited me
from socializing.
Moments like those deepened
my embarrassment for having a
Jewfro. After ninth grade, I kept
my hair mostly on the short side
and made sure to get a haircut at
the beginning of every month.
Before embarking on a six-week
summer program in Israel in
2013, I asked my parents to give
me a buzzcut, since it was a
trendy look among my friends
at the time. Unfortunately, their
attempt at shaving my hair with
the incorrect set of clippers in
my backyard led to the worst
haircut I’ve ever received (sorry,
Mom and Dad). The flattened
strands, which were later fixed
by a professional barber, made
my hair lose its curly quality,
causing me to briefly consider
that perhaps a shaved look was
not the best idea in the first place.
In other instances, my Jewfro
became
a
source
of
actual
physical agony. At my first ever
“Rocky Horror Picture Show”
midnight
screening
in
the
summer of 2015, a young woman
yanked my hair and proceeded to
violently rock it back and forth
during what’s known as the
“Virginal Sacrifice,” an initiation
in
which
“Rocky
Horror”
first-timers are subjected to
aggressive
dry-humping
by
a crowd of “Rocky Horror”
veterans. After it happened and
my initial mortification subsided,
I tried to laugh the whole thing
off, thinking that the more
important thing was to just
have fun. But I couldn’t shake
off how much her grabbing my
hair hurt, how painful it was to
have something so integral to my
identity be violated for the sake
Embracing the curl: Learning to love my Jewfro
SAM ROSENBERG
Senior Arts Editor
FOX SEARCHLIGHT
NOTEBOOK
What style bangs should you get,
based on your deepest insecurity?
DANIELLE YACOBSON
Managing Arts Editor
NOTEBOOK
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW:
MACHINE GUN KELLY’S
‘LATELY’ IS A TOTAL
BORE
“LATELY”
Machine Gun
Kelly
Interscope
Records
INTERSCOPE RECORDS
In his recent video for
“LATELY,” from new EP
Binge, Machine Gun Kelly
certainly seems to stay
on his narcissistic brand.
Once
having
watched
him scream at a small
audience during a panel
about how he is possibly
the most underrated hip-
hop artist of all time, the
song and video’s self-
reflexive nature comes as
no surprise.
From the get-go, MGK
makes a nod towards his
own creative inputs with
a title shot that states
“Shot by Machine Gun
Kelly.”
What
proceeds
is a tripped-out fever
dream with most of the
shots being entirely of
his own face. It’s a rather
repetitive formula: close
up, extreme close up,
cigarette/blunt,
wine,
repeat. There seems to
be little else left for MGK
to focus on when he’s
“having crazy thoughts.”
And
MGK’s
shot
choices seem to be just as
crazy as these thoughts;
chaotic handheld camera
movements contribute to
the viewers’ inevitable
disorientation, mirrored
in his manic, disjointed
lyricism.
He
switches
topics
from
being
abandoned as a kid to
treating women poorly
within the span of a few
lines before making his
return to the banal chorus
— what MGK often lacks
in originality, he makes
up for in aggression.
Frankly, if you aren’t a
fan of MGK’s face or some
good, old-fashioned drug
use, there’s really nothing
else to see here. The
video content is almost
more minimalistic than
the
songwriting
itself,
leading
to
inevitable
boredom
within
the
first minute or two of
the track. He closes his
choruses with “And you
know I’m tryna change,
but it’s very hard,” which
couldn’t be more obvious
with such static material.
-Dominic
Polsinelli,
Senior Arts Editor
of spectacle.
As time has passed, I’ve
started to embrace the Jewfro
look a bit more. I’ve realized
that cutting my Jewfro was both
flattening my hair into a more
neutral appearance and erasing
an important facet of my Jewish
identity. Based on the suggestion
of a barber I met in New York
this summer, I bought American
Crew forming cream to help
volumize and brighten my curls,
and since that purchase, my
insecurity over my curls has
lessened dramatically. A friend
recently told me, after seeing a
picture of me on my Instagram
story, that my hair looks better
when it’s longer. I mentioned
that I was thinking about cutting
it soon, which was followed by
a message of three eye-rolling
emojis. Maybe he’s right.
So often we are told to
suppress who we are in order
to appease the expectations of
others or to change ourselves
in order to stand out among
the masses, and these primal
fears can be traced through our
need to cut or alter our hair and
other parts of ourselves. I used
to think that my Jewfro made
it harder for me to navigate the
straight-haired world, but the
more I’ve learned to appreciate
it, the more I understand why it’s
necessary to who I am and who I
am becoming.
COURTESY OF SAM ROSENBERG