Early this year, I became aware of the name “Justin Bieber,” courtesy of my three young daughters aged eight, 11 and 14. They said that after the Jonas brothers’ phenomenon, Bieber seemed to be the next big thing in the music industry. I caught parts of his songs streaming from the kids’ computers as I walked in and out of their rooms and espied his photo in some publication or other lying on their beds or dresser tops. He seemed to me like any other tween sensation: big to-do about the hair (just like the Jonas brothers); bubble gum music with catchy tunes; skinny jeans; hoodies; T-shirts; nice voice — in a cookie cutter sort of way.
I had expected the Bieber fever on my girls to escalate as the Jonas Brothers affliction did back in the day; but no, that didn’t happen. I became curious as to why because I had read in the papers that a few months back, Bieber fans in Australia grew so unruly that his concert in Sydney was canceled and a security clampdown in New Zealand ensued. I mean, Bieber has become a riot-inducing tween sensation but all was quiet on the home front. Something was amiss.
So, I asked my 14-year-old, Isabel, first: “What’s with Justin Bieber? I used to hear you sing his songs.”
“Eeew, Mom,” was all I got.
I then asked 11-year-old Sophi, “What happened to Justin Bieber?”
With her trademark shoulder shrug, she said, “He’s weird-ish,” and promptly walked away.
So I approached the littlest one, Amaya, the eight-year-old with infinite wisdom, and asked her. “What happened? Nobody likes Justin Bieber anymore?”
She looked up at me from where she was seated on the floor playing with miniature dolls and declared, “It’s the hair thingy!”
You see, Justin Bieber’s hair is straight and long and he wears it all pushed to the front with side-swept bangs. The hairdo covers his entire forehead, temples, and the upper half of his cheeks and his eyes. Surely he can’t see, right? Surely it’s uncomfortable, right? But this was all I knew at this point.
Immediately, I searched on YouTube for Bieber videos and caught, first, his guest stint on Ellen and later, the segment of Katie Couric’s interview with him. Whoa! I was taken aback. What’s with the head twitch — that repeated hair flip/head shake with a shoulder shimmy move? It can’t be Tourette’s Syndrome, otherwise the media would have announced it way back when he broke onto the scene.
In that clip, Katie Couric seemed to have been bothered as I was because she brought it up, asking why he kept doing it. His answer was, “Because if I don’t I can’t see.”
That’s why the hair flip — repeatedly, compulsively, like a tic! For someone like me schooled in the university of pragmatism and personal comfort, the solution was obvious: if it bothers you, get rid of it.
This riot-inducing tween sensation is sending millions of young girls screaming their heads off so could it be that age is what’s getting in the way of the oldies’ appreciation for “The Bieber ‘do,” which is what it has come to be known as?
I wasn’t quite ready to concede to this “age” explanation so I watched more videos of him in an effort to come to a fair conclusion. His follicular arrangement is very stylish, I must say. It is a precision haircut that can’t be executed by any wanna-be stylist with a pair of kitchen shears. It’s full on top and strategically thinned at the ends for lightness and easy movement. It’s similar to the mod shag of the Beatles in the ‘60s, but longer. It’s also a bit like a traditional bowl cut, but again longer and twisted above the head not only to keep the hair out of the eyes, but also to give it that little bit of extra je ne sais quoi that transforms it from a styling mishap into The Bieber.
Kids his age were reared in the era of the metrosexual, when men were determined to be a viable target of beauty marketing and therefore encouraged to use products both by the media and the women in their lives.
Men from my generation were raised by fathers whose haircuts were done by labaha-wielding barbers in traditional shops with barber’s chairs and barber’s poles out front. My father’s daily hair regimen, which took all of one minute, included a slapping on the head of Vitalis hair oil if not Three Flowers Pomade — that was it. My brothers’ hair regimen? Totally nonexistent. It was straight from the shower out the door. A dry-off with a towel was for special occasions only.
And so it is with the staunchest of resolves that I do not associate with any man who spends a longer time and more money than me styling his hair. It’s a deal breaker. That’s why the Bieber thing is totally alien to me.
In defense of it, though, it could just be the best he has done for the Justin Bieber brand (as all artists now aim to develop their names into a brand) by associating himself with such an iconic look. I can’t tell you the name of one song that he sings, but just the mention of his name brings this unique tonsorial creation to mind. And every iteration of it on teenage boys you see will have you thinking of Bieber. It’s like The Rachel (Jennifer Aniston’s hairdo from Friends days) during my time: a very specific thing for a very specific person.
But wait! Jennifer Aniston sporting The Rachel didn’t do those distracting hair flips. Other celebrities with remarkable hair that could easily take on their own personalities such as Owen Wilson or David Beckham or Matthew Morrison (Mr. Schuster of Glee) don’t do it either. It’s not the hair per se; it’s the flip that’s the problem!
So I got back to my three daughters, who hadn’t quite caught Bieber fever, armed with these thoughts.
I told the oldest, Isabel, “It’s the hair flip, right?”
“Yup, it’s gaylord,” she said.
To Sophi, I said the same thing and she replied, “It’s baclaran, Mom.”
And finally, I entered the room of the youngest, Amaya, while she was busy on the floor with her toys again. I lay down prone on her bed right beside her and extended my head out so that my face was merely a foot or two away from hers. I kind of said to her, in the manner you use when talking to little girls and expecting a candid, uncalculated answer, “Justin Bieber’s hair thingy is gross, right?”
She carried on with what she was doing without regarding me and said, “It is gross. I saw a boy on the bus in Shanghai wearing the same hair, all on his face. But I get it.”
“You do?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, quite impatiently.
“I don’t,” I mumbled.
She then looked up at me and said, with a sigh: “Mom, it’s your age thingy.”
* * *
Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.