Hate It: Man Buns

This is a public service warning about a phenomenon taking over the trendster world.

You’ve seen it around. Shang, the hot warrior from Disney’s Mulan has one. Orlando Bloom has one, when he’s not sporting a blonde elf wig or...actually what is Orlando doing these days? David Beckham has one; it’s blonde and soccer chic. Shia LaBeouf has an adorkable lil’ nub of one.

Enter the man bun: worn by celebrities, emulated by wannabe hipster boys, stealing the hearts of fangirls across the nation. A Tumblr is dedicated to this abomination: it’s an infinite filtered-photo scroll of men with sensitive eyebrows, and wavy locks effortlessly caught into buns at the nape of their necks or the top of their heads.

The man bun says to world: I’m cool. I’m chic. I’m potentially a samurai warrior. Want to grab a drink after work/indie concert/art gallery opening? The man bun seems to have it all.

Except when it doesn’t. In fact, the man bun possesses a fatal flaw. Its trendy history is too short to reveal the devastating truth. It is more like a slow acting disease, because, in about 15 years or so, men wearing buns will enter the depths of despair.

You see, the man bun is directly correlated with traction alopecia, otherwise known as going bald. Remember those cool Japanese samurai warriors? Remember how the top of their heads are also completely bald? That’s the doing of the man bun. Remember Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons? How about his greasy receding hairline? Yep, man bun again.

Picture a young, attractive male celebrity. Now picture him twenty years older and not completely bald, but bald-ish with just a few remaining wisps of hair, which he has tied into a sadly defiant and scraggly man bun. Horrifying, right? This, unfortunately, will be One Direction’s Harry Styles in his mid-forties.

Remember Prince William’s ginger mane, the one with which he wooed Kate Middleton? His hair, alas, has grown patchy of late. Bits of pale scabby English scalp peek through the royal strands. If the horrors of alopecia haven’t hit you by this point, here’s how it works: every time a man bun is made, a hundred hairs die as they are pulled screaming from their follicles. Make enough man buns, and that bushy mane goes kaput.

Men of the world, don’t do the man bun. It’s too risky. Fleeting, ephemeral coolness will end in decades of regret, when you begin spending hours in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at your naked noggin and ruefully recalling the good ol’ days.