My workplace is very lively and we have fun activities in a nearly unbroken succession. The latest wackiness involves my pals delivering pictures of themselves in high school to a bulletin board. These photos are posted with no labels. We then guess who is who.
It is easy to spot the younger members of the team, of which there are many. Let’s admit that the rest of us have changed over time. Some of us have changed for the better, some for the worse.
I submitted my senior portrait. The consensus is that I look like a 70’s news anchor or a game show host. Not a game show host like Howie Mandel, more like John Davidson.
I’ve explained that young men did not wear their hair short in the 80’s. The only fellows that had their ears exposed in those days were convicts and service members. It was then that I had an epiphany. The reason so many 70’s and 80’s TV shows were easy to spot as cheesy was due to the guys all having contemporary hair styles.
Look at Happy Days, Fonzie had an almost pompadour, but it was feathered. Chachi TOTALLY looked like he stepped off the disco floor.
Look at the cops in TV shows of the era. They all had a massive head of hair. Their mustaches extended FAR beyond the corners of their lips. Don’t even get me started on the Village People.
Finally, look at STRIPES. Only John Candy and Sgt. Hulka had regulation haircuts. John Larroquette’s hair was just this site of Oscar Gamble.
So, here is my new law. If you are not committed enough to your character to get a haircut, you will be an object of ridicule when the current trend fades.
So true about the contemporary haircuts in movies/TV! Though I think the 60’s were even worse (think Kirk Douglas in Spartacus.) Another peeve of mine is when actors and actresses have gleaming white teeth in period dramas, but that is a different subject.