The mullet and the man-bun. The buzz and the bowl. The Caesar and the crew. The Mohawk, the faux-hawk, the no-hawk. Men’s hair, particularly young men’s hair, has enjoyed a rich history—some moments have been as high as a pompadour; others, we’d just as soon comb over. But what’s happening today isn’t just another post on the Pinterest board of boys’ hair.
“Imagine a piece of broccoli on the top of your head—that’s the general idea,” says hairstylist Chris McMillan, owner of Chris McMillan the Salon, in Beverly Hills.
The hairstyle of boys ages roughly 11 to roughly the age of “should know better” can best be described as … obstructive. It’s usually short on the sides and in the back—history is with me so far—but then an explosion of layers, curls, or waves is pushed to the front until a broccoli shape perches on the forehead, and, if you’re on your game, grazes eye level. The message is: If you can’t see, keep at it. You’ll get there.
Every hair trend, like every election, is a repudiation of the last. After the slick, zipper-tight cuts of years past, broccoli hair was almost inevitable. What wasn’t inevitable: its extra-firm hold on Gens Z and Alpha.
This isn’t something I’ve noticed from afar. As the mother of a 13-year-old boy, I’m in it. At school pickup every day, I watch boys saunter out with their necks craned backward just to see the ground in front of them. I’ve clocked hair so abundant it resembles a wet mop or a bird’s nest or, in the case of a few kids on the baseball team, a giant scoop of ice cream—round on top of the head with the excess flowing outward in every direction. It’s important to note that we’re not talking about bangs, which touch the forehead. What this is is hair that travels from the top of the head … everywhere. Up, down, right, left—protruding out to occupy every available space possible.
This is as much an observation of boyhood as it is a P.S.A.: this hair is so dumb.
“I call it ‘the puff,’” says New York City hairstylist Nunzio Saviano, who has an 18-year-old son. “You don’t usually see a trend this strong among teenage boys, but this one doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. And there’s not a parent that doesn’t complain about it. No one says, ‘My son’s hair looks great!’”
Anyone who has been a teenage boy, raised a teenage boy, or met a teenage boy also knows that the number of them who take their parents’ style advice has remained at zero since the dawn of time.
“You know, some of these boys are actually getting perms,” explains Saviano. “You have to remember that the technology of perms hasn’t changed since we were young, so you have all these boys willing to sit with perm rods on their head in the salon for two and a half hours. They’ll do whatever it takes to get the curls.”
The ones who aren’t giving up a Saturday for this look have hacks of their own. “They’ll put on a baseball hat and blow-dry the hair straight up over the brim,” says McMillan. “It’s an easy cheat to get the volume if you have straight hair.” Then there are the products. You could say all the products—every last one. “Thickening powders, paste, mousse, diffusers, curling irons, and you finish it off with hair spray,” says McMillan. “It’s what we were all doing back in the 80s.”
As a population, teenage boys are not known to have an abundance of confidence—which might explain the staying power of this look. “It’s a security blanket,” says Saviano. “Like, Don’t look at me but look at my hair. Think of Wham! Think of George Michael. In the 80s it was the same thing: the security of hiding behind our hair.”
It’s as if every other person in the Western world has joined one big boy band. When your hair comes halfway down your face, it’s not a long walk to equally voluminous clothing—perhaps that’s how we arrived at jeans so big and baggy they seem to swallow the boy whole. Back at school pickup, I’ve seen pants so enormous that boys have to hold them up like they’re wearing a ball gown. The coolest kids in school look like Elizabethan ladies-in-waiting.
In true adolescent fashion, this style seems dead set on defying both logic and parental control. Saviano notices that when these hirsute boys wear a hoodie, “the hair is supposed to poke out of the top.” He did what many parents wished they could do: “I trimmed my son’s hair, and I cut the puff down so much that it was hidden in the hoodie. He didn’t talk to me for two weeks.”
Danielle Pergament is a Los Angeles–based writer. Formerly the editor at Goop, she frequently contributes to The New York Times
