DADWAGON

Taylor Pugh's hair

Continuing our discussion of small boys with long hair: My opinion is clear but bifurcated. I believe that those Texan folks are nuts for trying to prohibit any hairstyle–and I say this as a man who grew up in New Jersey in the eighties, amid the world’s greatest concentration of mullets and, briefly, something called the rattail. (If anything should be banned by law, it’s that one. I tried it for about six hours once, and then had the thing clipped off, because even as a teen, I knew it was flat-out stupid.) No, shoulder-length hair is not a sign of hippie Commie  pinko ‘Murica-hating subversive radical leanings, and it hasn’t been for at least a generation.

It is, however, a major aesthetic offense. Babies are adorable partly because their looks are so pure. Tender new skin and perfect little cheeks and tiny fingernails are beautiful. Setting those beauties off with the simplest possible hair is the way to go. Gum it up with styling cues, or out-and-out fashion, and you may as well tag some graffiti on that perfect little face.  Less is more.

I should also add here that long hair is unlikely to work in our household; both my wife and I have dense curls, and when I grow my hair to any substantial length, it heads not to my shoulders but upward. As I get older and grayer, my long-hair options grow ever closer to the Albert Einstein/mid-period Bob Dylan idiom, and I wish that on no child of mine.

In other words, I don’t believe in banning any particular haircut from school. I believe in creating an environment where parents who choose stupid haircuts are so ashamed that they change their minds. An exercise of soft power, as they say in the State Department.