I always wondered why Johnny Depp cut his long hair. His 1993 flow was otherworldly—Depp with a cigarette and a glass of wine, photographed by Greg Gorman, was to me the epitome of cool. But after 18 months of flowing hair myself, it didn't take me long to figure out.
Depp was probably offered a lot of money to cut it for some movie—very different than the reason I decided to cut mine. I remember the first time I could pull my hair up in what we're all calling the man bun these days. It was May of 2014—and after a succession of pretty awkward hair stages, at last over, I could finally comb it back into a ponytail. Coincidentally (or maybe I just called it), the style was just cresting on a popularity wave, and the Internet couldn't make up its mind as to whether or not the man bun was cool. There were man-bun memes, man-bun slide shows, man-bun tutorials—clips everywhere of dudes styling their long hair into a bun, including, uh, me. "The Top 20 Celebrity Man Buns," it seemed like, were leading every site out there.
Myself, I mostly steered clear of the debate part of it. Who cared if they were cool or not? Personally, I felt a sense of confidence in how different it was to have long hair. Before being able to pull it back, I had gone through a solid six months of patiently waiting through shaggy, gawky styles, usually hidden under a beanie. I purchased a lot of hats in those six months, knowing it was the only way to stop myself from giving up and cutting it short again—something I'd done every other time I'd tried to grow my hair out.
Finally, when my hair was long, I cared about it and cared for it—even if it was work. Long hair felt worth the effort and investment to me, to say nothing of the actual savings, given the price of haircuts in New York City.
But then, it happened.
Getting Depp-length hair, I thought I'd wear it down or up or however, depending on my mood. But that wasn't actually the case. I slowly began to wonder why I would always just put the long hair I'd taken forever to get up in a bun. Wasn't that boring?! I wore it the same every day.But the truth was, I didn't feel completely comfortable walking into an office setting with my hair down. I would wear it loose around my friends and girlfriend, but it always felt slightly too crazy to keep it that way if we went anywhere remotely formal.
Even as I started questioning it, my feelings were counterbalanced by the attachment I felt to my actual hair: I didn't want to let it go after all the work put into growing it out. That's the thing about being pro-man-bun—it takes all this time to grow out, so no matter what, you won't want to whack it off on a whim and to start at square one again, living through the five-months-minimum of goofy-looking growth.
Just like growing a man bun, it takes time to decide to cut one.
But after moving to Los Angeles from New York,I was done. I scheduled an appointment at Blind Barber before I could change my mind. It was a nerve-racking half-hour, and I hardly looked as my stylist Leah continued to chop away, some guy sweeping away big chunks of my hair every other minute or so. I would catch glimpses of what I looked like throughout, but really had no idea how I'd feel about losing so much of it until I left. Walking out of the barbershop, I immediately regretted the decision, thinking about how the man bun was a piece of my personality. I wondered about the person I became with my first man bun—and what to do now that it was gone.
That was five days ago. And looking back, I'm really glad I finally cut it. There will be another time for the man bun, but now is not that time. It feels good to think about randomly shaving my head one night, about not really caring how it's going to look today, and to finally be able to use hair pomade again. Eventually, any hairstyle is going to go through phases of cool and not cool—and really, there's no good reason why. The good thing is, hair grows.
As for my hair and me, Johnny Depp photographed by Herb Ritts in 1990 sitting on a stove is just as badass of a haircut in my view. And that's where I'll be—for the next few months, at least.
Jace Lumley is a photographer currently living in L.A.
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