The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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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

