What Does Your Hairstyle Say About You?
By MICHAEL GONCHAR
You might wear it long, straight, curly or braided. Maybe you obsess over it every morning — blow drying, brushing, combing or gelling. Or perhaps you sport a crew cut and don’t worry much at all. No matter how we wear it, our hair can be an important way in which we express ourselves.
What does your hairstyle say about you?
In “The Afro as a Natural Expression of Self,” Ruth La Ferla writes about a new iteration of the Afro — a conversation that was started, at least in New York, by atelevision commercial for a Democratic mayoral candidate starring his 15-year-old son, Dante de Blasio.
Dante de Blasio’s towering Afro, a supporting player in his father’s mayoral campaign, riveted attention once more last week when it caught the eye of President Obama. Introducing Bill de Blasio at a Democratic fund-raiser in Midtown, Mr. Obama digressed to point out, “Dante has the same hairdo as I had in 1978. Although I have to confess my Afro was never that good.”Nor was it as voluminous, or as apparently devoid of a political charge. As 16-year-old Dante implied in an interview with DNAInfo.com, an online local news source, hair is just hair. “Some people want to take photos and I’m really just happy,” he said. Others want to reach out and touch it, and some did at last week’s fund-raiser, their enthusiastic petting prompting the elder de Blasio to joke that he might have to call security.The mayoral candidate was doubtless aware that Dante’s outsize hair placed him in a league with a current generation that has adopted what once was a badge of revolt as an emblem of style’s cutting edge. Resurgent in films and television and the streets, inspired by a galaxy of pop culture idols, the Afro today seems friendly enough, even downright disarming — a kinder, gentler “natural” pretty much shorn of its militancy.
Students: Tell us …
- What does your hairstyle say about you? Why?
- Does your hair affect your personality? Does it make you more or less confident, for example? Or more serious or spontaneous, depending on the style?
- Do you spend a good amount of time and money trying to get your hair right? Do you think about your hair a lot? Explain.
- If you could change your hair for a day, just to try on a different look, what would it be? Why?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.
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