Punk Hair FAQ

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.