Punk Hair FAQ

March 25, 2006

Pros and Cons of Manic Panic versus Special Effects Dye

Filed under: hair colour, info — Ruadhán McElroy @ 6:26 pm

I’m naming these two by brand name specifically because they’ve both been around forever and they’re both what a lot of people know best.

Manic Panic Pros:

  • veggie-based and non-toxic — great for homes with small children or curious pets like cats and dogs
  • vegan friendly — if you care about that
  • company owned and managed, still to this day, by two women from NYC’s punk scene — if you care about that
  • wide variety of colours, some of which claim to glow under blacklight
  • semi-permanent and thus gentler on hair

    Manic Panic Cons:

  • the fact that it’s veggie-based and “natural” means that the results (colour, longevity, etc) won’t always turn out uniform — take their semi-permanent Black (called “Raven” in their catalogue): on some people it turns out a very dark green, on others it’s turned out a very dark or medium purple or red. A lot of people also report that the colour washes out faster than the wording on the jar implies while others claim that it stays just fine. They say they’ve tweaked the formula to improve its longevity and colour uniformity, but it’s still “all-natural veggie based” which means it will always have this flaw. Generally, though, their “gel formula” in the bottles (available on the company website, most retailers don’t carry the bottled stuff, only the stuff in jars) stays better and has a noticable better history of colour uniformity than the cream-stuff in the jars.
  • better uniformity in the MP jars seems to be brought about by abusing your hair more. Yes, if you check the website, Tish and Snooky’s hair looks great, just keep in mind that these two dolls have been killing their hair for about twenty-five years now. The more you abuse your hair (with bleach and perm solutions), the more porous it can become and thus the more willing it is to absorb any kind of colour you put on it. Manic Panic cream colours work best on hair that’s been chemically beaten into submission.

    Special Effects Pros:

  • Chemical-based, so it’s like doing your hair with SCIENCE! Also, the chemical basedness creates more uniformity of colours and increases longevity (still, as a rule, any semi-permanent dye will last longer and have brighter colours on hair that’s been bleached and otherwise been treated enough to be more porous).
  • vegan friendly — if you care about that
  • wide variety of colours, some of which claim to glow under blacklight

    Special Effects Cons:

  • Toxicity indeterminate. The bottle of toner I have states that it’s not tested on animals (which, these days, implies that animal testing is no longer necessary for the ingredients used), but also warns that using this product too close to the eyes may cause blindness
  • may be harder to find than Manic Panic — if memory serves me, MP has a few years on SpFX and has a bigger reputation, so a lot of beauty supplies (especially Sally) are urged to push MP, and more often than not, the employees pushing MP are pushing it because it’s been sold at Sally for, like, a hundred years or something and not because they actually know anything about the hair-dye itself.
  • Stains are often more ornery than MP stains (though not always)
  • You really shouldn’t dye animals1 with it, due to its chemical base and “may cause blindness” warning. I know a lot of people liked giving Kelly Osbourne crap over having her dog dyed to match her hair, but Manic Panic is an OK dye to use for temporarily dying pets — Special Effects should be avoided on animals. I’ve had cats accidentally get into my MP and the worst thing to happen was their hairballs came out slightly pink, and the cat was going to upchuck a hairball anyway, and as best as I could tell, the dye didn’t make it worse at all (and other people have on-purposely spotted a cat with MP cos they were dying their hair and the cat was being annoying). In fact, SpFX should be avoided in you live with animals that have tendancies to get into stuff or lick your head or something; if you have pets like that, and, say, they lick your head before your first shampooing, it may not cause any immediate problems from one or two licks, but the more they ingest in one sitting (before poping it out again) will increase the likliness of causing problems and your pet may need to get her stomach pumped.

    Note:
    1: I don’t advocate dying your pet on purpose, in fact, I advise against it most of the time, not because it puts the animal in danger or because you have to hold the animal down to do it (I know a girl, I stayed at her house for a few days, and her little longhaired teacup chihuahuas seemed to actually enjoy getting dyed to match her hair — but then again, I’m of the opinion that chihuahuas are actually an alien race that got stuck on this planet (cos contrary to popular belief, the Aztrecs or whoever didn’t have to breed those fuckers down to that tiny size, chihuahuas just kind of happened and it’s an evolutionary anomoly that they’re somehow the same species as, say, a real dog, like a pitbull). I advise against it because I’m not totally comfortable with people using critters as fashion accessories. Still, some of you people are going to want to dye your dog or cat anyway, so if you’re going to do it, might as well advise you on doing it right.

    • How to Cut a Mohawk In three Easy Steps

    Filed under: how-to, mohawks — Ruadhán McElroy @ 12:30 am

    This seems simple-enough to me, but I guess some people are idiots, so here goes it….

    You will Need:

    • a head of hair
    • a comb
    • clippers that can be used on either wet or dry hair
    • running water
      Optional (for shoulder-length hair or longer):
    • scissors
    • at least three rubberbands

    First things first: Wash your hair! I don’t care how you wash it, just wash it. When you get out of the shower or pull your head out of the sink, towel-dry it, but don’t blow-dry it.

    Next, part your hair. If you’ve got longish hair, you might want to keep it back with rubberbands (preferably those “superelastics” that promise to be “snag-free” or those good ol’fashioned hairties with fabric woven around them). Part your hair into three sections for a standard Mohawk (five sections for a bi-hawk, five -or- seven sections for a TRUE tri-hawk). You may want to have a friend make the parts for you, but only if you care about it looking nice.

    Step Three: If your hair is longer than three inches, you may want to cut the sections to be buzzed with scissors first — if you don’t, there’s a chance that the clippers will get tangled up in your hair, so don’t say the guy with the website didn’t warn you about this.
    *If you’ve decided that your hair is short enough to go without scissor-cutting, just plug in the clippers, turn them on, and buzz your hair down. I suggest using a #1 (¼”) or #2 (⅓”) guard, but you may want to skip the guards and get as close as you can. If you want to skip the guards, you may want to have a razor, moisturising shave-later and a hand lotion to make your sides bald — just be careful with the razor, a band-aid on your scalp looks stupid. (Of course, one time, a friend of mine was shaving her ‘hawk sides down to the scalp, cut her head like a dumbass, and then realised that she didn’t have any band-aids. Since she was bleeding pretty bad, she needed to do something, but she didn’t have a gauze and medical tape, either, so she folded up a paper-towel and used duct-tape. That looked kinda cool for, like, a day, but she says it hurt like a bitch to rip out.)
    *Repeat for the other side.

    At this point, you’ve pretty much cut your ‘hawk. How easy! Can you believe that I used to get, like, five e-mails a week of people asking me that? Or, better yet, people on the street asking me where I got my hair cut and when I told them that I did it myself, they just blinked in disbelief? Yeah, seriously, people would ask me this shit all the time.

    There are some variations here:

    One variation I know of is colloquially known as a “chick ‘hawk” and the main difference is that it has bangs and sometimes those face-framing dingys on a Tradskin girl’s “feather cut.” WHOO! BIG DIFFERENCE!!! I will say though, it does look pretty sweet on some girls, and it’s easier to cover this one up for shit like Prom, if you really care about pleasing your mom that much.

    Goths and deathrock kids often cut their Mohawks wider than punks, and they often keep “sidelocks” a’lá Johnny Slut (although, in that photo, those sidelocks aren’t hair, it’s MAKE-UP) or TJ Van Shock. Keep in mind, that sidelock shit looks stupid on a LOT of people and unless you’re one of those blessed bastards that actually looks good with that crap, even other deathrockers will laugh at you. Oh, will they laugh at you.

    Rozz Williams also popularised the “half-hawk” with only one side buzzed or flat-topped and the rest all ong and flowing. It looks good or at least OK on a lot of the people I’ve seen copy it and it’s pretty versatile. On the downside, you’ll probably get a lot of people thinking you’re some silly obsessed Goth kid who can’t accept the fact that it’s not 1997 anymore. You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you get “1334″ tattoo’d across your knuckles. Trust me on this.

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