David Beckham kicks balls with 99-percent accuracy to the thrill of football lovers. His mohawk hair looks bellicose and wild one day, comely and beguiling another day. His heartthrob face on giant billboards dominates the cityscape of Europe.
His mohawk is a fantasy for millions of women around the world. (He’s the pet footballer of Queen Elizabeth.)
Barbers and hairdressers dictate our handsomeness by the way they frame our faces.
The shape of our heads and the haircut that suits our personality (or image projection) reveal the stages of our evolution to manhood.
“Gupit mabait”—that was Inay Aurea’s instruction to Ma Tino, the barber in Majayjay, Laguna, when I was a young boy. Ma Tino knew exactly what to do. He’d give me a high cut, shaven clean on all sides, with just enough growth on top to be parted on the left.
Three Flowers Brillantine or Tancho Tique pomade kept it in place and shiny. Clean and spiffy with my “gupit mabait”—that was how I looked going to Mass on Sundays.
On my way to manhood, in the ’60s, Mang Nito, the best barber along España, in front of the University of Santo Tomas, gave me two alternating haircuts, the “binatilyo cut” and the “ROTC crew cut” or “Aguinaldo cut.”
The “binatilyo cut” made me look “binata na,” also naughtily called “makakabuntis na.” I sported it during long vacations, when my thrill was to be in the company of pretty dalagitas.
The “binatilyo cut” was hair full, thick and black with razor trimmings just below the ear. It framed my face, giving me the best profile, and I combed my hair in its black abundance a la Leopoldo Salcedo, the movie star and lady-killer of the ’40s and ’50s. Pomades, creams and Tancho Tique gave the cut a plantsado look, which drew raves from the girls of those times.
Clean-shaven
The crew cut (gupit ROTC) made all boys in college look generic, bereft of individualism. It was a clean-shaven head all around with the shortest cut on top of the head.
The crew cut was also called the “Aguinaldo cut,” referring to Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo’s hairstyle when he was caught by the Americans.
During ROTC drill days, we were all dressed in quasi-military uniforms, marching like robots, obeying the barkings of our martinet commanders.
Some breakthroughs in men’s hairdos happened in the ’60s while I was chasing my career in advertising.
The Beatles sported the “hair mop.” I didn’t buy it. Ang korte niya ay parang bunot na pang-lampaso sa sahig na ipinatong sa ulo.
But Beatles music became “Beatlemania,” and teenagers worldwide became mop heads, too. I thought the hair mop looked comical.
The hippies (flower people) from America came next.
They started as a protest youth group against the hawkish US president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent thousands of American soldiers to die in Vietnam in a war of independence that was none of America’s business.
The hippie mantra was “make love, not war.”
The hippie evolved into a vagabond subculture with their own look. They wore their hair unkempt and long (beyond shoulder length or longer) and looked unwashed in their torn denims.
They were also known as backpackers traveling cheap, looking for freebies in the Greek isles, Kathmandu squares and the temples of Bali. They were compulsive marijuana users. Their hairstyle, thank goodness, did not encroach—except for some poets and painters—on our working middle class society.
For a while I wore my hair down to my neck. I was working in advertising, doing highly creative work and I succumbed to a little trendiness.
When I became chairperson and CEO, I quickly changed to the “Don Draper” look (the suave ad executive in the TV series “Mad Men”), also called “gupit lalaking disente.” It was a neat and fresh look, clean-shaven, just a centimeter above the ears, neatly combed and parted left or right of the head. A dab of Three Flowers pomade kept it in place all day long.
The role models were handsome faces with matangos na ilong, like movie stars of the ’50s—the late Rogelio de la Rosa and Pancho Magalona. From Hollywood came the late Cary Grant and Paul Newman, suave lovers of the big screen.
“Gupit lalaking disente” was also known as “gupit maginoo,” exemplified by the late Sen. Soc Rodrigo, a devout Catholic and a brilliant orator who delivered impeccable speeches at Ateneo English or proved the eloquence of Bulakeño Tagalog.
Today’s mohawk is an irreverent intrusion on the clean-cut, open-faced and honest innocence of the male species.
The mohawk is a game changer, transferring some volume of the business to the beauty parlors of hairdressers (usually gays) who gave way to their untrammeled artistry, rendering the human head a veritable artist’s canvas for fashion, graphic arts and design symbolism. The result is a real wow!
Killer instinct
The mohawk has a rich culture in tribal plumery imbued with the bravery of Indian warriors, the Mohawks in the upper state of New York.
Mohawk hair is art with a killer instinct and fearful mood. The Mohawk head is shaven clean on both sides, with a bushy island standing stiff and black in the shape of a sickle.
It appeals to men who play competitive sports, and the pioneering model was David Beckham, the devilish football star of Manchester United in the 1990s.
The modern mohawks are warriors in the pitch, such as Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid and Neymar of Barcelona AC, footballers who made the ground tremble in the recent World Cup in Brazil.
But it was Beckham who displayed a hundred mohawk possibilities, taming the wild hairdo to the level of male elegance, the version of which looks great on George Clooney.
Out here for public viewing, you see mohawks on hip-hop dancers on TV noontime shows. In the basketball telecasts, it’s Asi Taulava’s top mound, colored gold, that stands out.
In the house of Congress, Rep. Toby Tiangco is the lone mohawk who appeared in the Corona impeachment with pointed spikes on top of his head, making him look distinctly contrarian.
Rep. Toby Tiangco is still at it. Last seen, he colored his middle head spikes canary yellow, giving him a bird look, but still handsome in his perfectly fitted suit. In a sea of barongs in Congress, Toby stands out like a trendy mohawk.
There’s one look that’s a fact of life—the bald head. Most men would resort to toupees to hide their bald noggin, only to shock themselves in front of the mirror when they take off their toupee before bedtime.
The late comedians Pugo and Tugo made their bald heads bring laughter to our lives.
In Hollywood, bald actors like Kojak, the inscrutable detective on TV, and Yul Brynner, the intimidating King Mongkut in Broadway’s “The King and I,” made bald men appear libidinous.
In our midst, P-Noy’s fast receding hairline indicates the hazards of governing the ungovernable, us fickle voters, and our “talangka politics.”
If P-Noy loses his hair totally by 2016, that’s the price he pays for his kind of statecraft.
I’ve been on the “gupit lalaking disente” since my early 60s with one legislation from my young wife: the use of hair color to preempt the coming of white hair.
Last year, I switched back to the ROTC crew cut of my youth. Wow! All white! So full of wisdom!
My wife didn’t object. At 78, I’m very senior to her.
***
Erratum:
Oops, sorry!
In my column two weeks ago, I made a mistake when I wrote that the “Iba ang may pinagsamahan” San Miguel beer ad was created by PAC (Philippine Advertising Councilors).
The real creator is McCann Erickson. This information was relayed to me by Chito Zaldarriaga, who was account director at McCann when “Iba ang may pinagsamahan” was produced.
E-mail the author at hgordonez@gmail.com.