Today, while traversing that long Siberian stretch from Northwest Labs to Adams, I fell in love. I fell in love with the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life. The laces on his dirt-smacked boots had come untied. His washed jeans, slung sinfully low on his hips, smirked at me across the space that is the stopping of heartbeat when one first catches sight of one’s soulmate. Above these denims was more denim, a jean shirt flapping in the wind. And atop this curated ensemble, perched oh-so-precariously, was a knot of hair, a man-bun, as it is colloquially epitheted, balancing and shimmying to and fro with each pounce of a step.
(Please note: for the remainder of this article, the “man” in “man bun” will refer to anyone who desires to be identified as a “man.” I do not support the gender binary. I do, however, support the purposeful use of “man” in “man bun,” as opposed to “boy,” because a whole chasm of difference exists between these two spheres of identity. I am looking at you, average dating prospect of 02138.)
The man bun is a paradox. On one hand, it suggests the sensuality of an artist, a man who spends an entire Sunday afternoon tasting the air and bringing to life with charcoal pencil the form of a voluptuous nude, a man who can’t be bothered to grab scissors from the kitchen drawer for a trim, a man who engages all five, and perhaps even six, of his senses deeply, reverently. On the other hand, it suggests a lone lion in the billowing grasses of the Serengeti, lazily flicking his sight over a herd of soft gazelles, until one catches his eye, and suddenly he becomes a coiling ball of tension, ricocheting toward what will surely amount to all-consuming pleasure. It suggests the hunt. The most primitive pursuit.
In a college where “have you started the pset yet” and “HUDS is serving potato pierogies!” are the foremost preoccupations of the student mind, a man-bun is a welcome reminder of the better species we once used to be. Before the frivolous institution of higher education and all its nefarious siblings (pseudo-intellectualism, dialectic debate, social studies) rampaged through our history, we were a simple group of beings, with simple, pure thoughts and simple, pure actions. Constructs such as “the gender binary” and “social capital” had not yet sullied our thinking. We were a wild conglomeration of individuals, surviving one with nature in the jungles and deserts and ice caps of the far-flung regions of the world. The man-bun is a throwback to all that. It recalls to mind our most basic instincts.
So go forth, men! Grow out your hair! Let those manes roam free! At the very least, it is a recognition of our primordial selves, and all our urgent desires.
