Posts tagged: mohawks

Any kind of extreme hair makes a statement, but none so unambiguous as the Mohawk. A shaved head makes a statement, but you have to parse it out. A shaved head can say near anything: “I’m a javascript programmer who cuts his own hair,” “I’m a 136 lb. passive-aggressive Vegan dickhole,” “Welcome to the Brotherhood, prag,” “Hi, I’m Dave Attell, and welcome to Insomniac,” “The girls can come in, but you losers have to leave,” or “No, I’m not the Dalai Lama, I’m Hunter S. Thompson, you little screwhead.”

A Mohawk says one thing: “Fuck you.” A Mohawk is a tonsorial middle finger to the world.

A Mohawk is different from a set of whitewalls, which is frankly not so far from a mullet. Lank, greasy sk8hawks also verge into mullet territory. A Mohawk stands up, bristling and sharp, and does not flop onto your forehead giving you a comical strip of extra-dense forehead zits.

When seen in nature, the Mohawk is there to intimidate. A raised strip of fur along the spine is the universal sign for “I’m ready to kick your ass, boy.” Rhodesian ridgeback dogs have permanent Mohawks, and they were bred to take on lions. You don’t want to get caught with your hackles down when your job is fucking with bigger, badder species. Think hyenas, or wild boar.

The name comes from the Mohawk tribe of native Americans, who held a bunch of territory around what’s now upstate New York. They actually didn’t sport Mohawks any more than the Huron and Iroquois or anyone else did at the time, but “Mohawk” sounds more badass than “Algonquin”. Brits call the haircut a “Mohican”, which is cute.

(Daniel Boone was captured by Indians around 1778 and given a Mohawk as a test …

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100 AD: Roman Legions. Actually they all had those Eminem haircuts, but the helmets had bolt-on Mohawks. Original wig-hawkers: Romans suck.

1976: Bobby DeNiro as Travis “Taxi Driver” Bickle. Travis’ hawk was a wig (DeNiro had another job lined up and needed to keep his hair), but it got the job done with style. Inspired presidential assassin John Hinckley, who was apparently too busy beating off over Jodie Foster to watch all the way to the end.

1977: Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics. Hatchet-faced punk rock bitch W.O.W. is owed by everyone who gets off on electrical tape pasties, shaving cream shirts, and women rocking chainsaws and shotguns onstage. The Dark Bros. classic New Wave Hookers vidporn series never would have happened without Wendy O. Tell me I’m wrong.

1982: GBH. Seminal UK triple-initial punk rockers. A bunch of jolly Thatcher-era working-class kids, the sort who would more likely use broken pint glasses on your face like cookie-cutters than bore you with student Marxism. The initials stood for Grievous Bodily Harm, but those were some Great Big Haircuts.

1982: Lawrence “Mr. T” Tureaud. Beat the shit out of Sly in Rocky III, shot AKs with eyes closed in The A-Team. Took the long way around rationalizing beard/hawk combo, mostly relied on the “YOU tell him he looks ridiculous” factor. Must shoulder no small blame for the jockhawk.

1984: The Kid in Suburbia. Come on, you choked up when the little bastard hit the windshield.

1986: Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Wig-hawkers extraordinaire. Looked like post-apocalypse Rip Taylors. Supposed to be some sort of post-ironic Max Headroom anti-consumerist performance screed that would make money no matter how much it sucked because we’re all sheep and deserve to be told it. The music sucked plastic dogshit and the whole thing sank …

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