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Rage against the regular hairdo
By Tahel Frosh

For a while now, an increasing number of men can be seen walking the streets with a surprising tuft of hair standing straight up on top of their heads. Unkempt, mussed up or done up - this is all proof of a new phenomenon: Mohawks have made a comeback. Thus begging the question - why now?

A random stroll around Tel Aviv revealed numerous variations of this hairdo - shaved or shortened on the sides, allowing the hair on the crown to take center stage. Styles range from a meticulously trimmed Mohawk to a rockabilly forelock - but the main impression is very manly, of hair cut offhandedly. There are disharmonious elements to it, and we are definitely talking about a look that attracts, if nothing else, attention.
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Nadav Yabo, a salesman in a Dizengoff Center clothing store, has wild, curly hair that rises up in a charming thatch. He says he always wore his hair long. About four months ago he decided "To take off the sides, so I wouldn't look like everyone else." The intent to be unique, however, disappeared in the blink of an eye as, he says, "Everyone started to wear their hair like me."

Very few women boast these crests, though. One is Michal Greenberg of Tel Aviv, who works in public relations. She boasts a glorious forelock, which she says brings her back to her adolescence in the 1980s. "When I went for a haircut, my hair was long, and for some reason I felt I wanted to see myself as a young girl - on the border between femininity and masculinity - and this hairstyle did it for me."

We met Gil Abramov at the Prozdor Bar in the Nahalat Shiva neighborhood. His style is sort of Afro-rockabilly, with an explanation: "I had a kind of spongy do for several years and I decided to get an exciting hairdo." Abramov, a musician among his other pursuits, is part of a group of indie performers who were the first in Israel to adopt the look: Asaf Avidan, Isser Tennenbaum of Rockfour, Charlie Megira, Guy Goldstein of the Reines Girls, Yehu Yaron, and Boris Martzinovsky of the Panic Ensemble.

Martzinovsky says his hair style has a life and even a name of its own - known on the streets as "the Boris." "The truth is it started out as a mistake, two years ago," he recalls. "I always shorten the sides and leave the hair on top, because that's a good solution for someone with thin hair who can't afford real styling. During the shortening process, my girlfriend took off too much, and it's been that way ever since." Martzinovsky says the hairdo "is a cross between [that of] a punk rocker and an accountant."

Goldstein's hair is cut by his wife, who specialized in punk styles in the 1980s at the legendary Penguin Club. "It comes out better without a professional hairdresser," Goldstein says. "At the start of the decade, a pointed top was fashionable. David Beckham adopted it and the look became extremely stylish, and I started to grow the back out too. At a certain stage my hair was shapeless and I had to shorten the sides, and then the Mohawk made a comeback. I tried to get the hairdresser to give me a sloppier Mohawk, but it didn't work; he made it too neat." According to Goldstein, "There's no ideology behind it. It's 1980s with a wink at punk, a style I also relate to in the music we make."

The roots of the present coxcomb extend back to Elvis Presley, James Dean and 1980s punk - which gave us the Mohawk. Those wearing them on their heads now are not beholden to any of these trends: not to rockabilly hedonism, to 1950s stars with stretch limousines and greasy food, and not to anarchistic-nihilistic punk with its aesthetics of toughness.

The first to wear these contradictions on his head, but in a metrosexual way, was soccer player David Beckham. Celebrity hair stylist Vidal Sassoon, who created for Beckham the first Mohawk of the 2000s, took the anarchistic-punk style and made it more rockabilly, says hairdresser David Vittorio. The current style, he says, is retro on top of retro, a kind of unending series of Russian matryoshka dolls.

According to Vittorio, "Punk in the 1980s reverted to the 1950s. Morrisey is a good example. Now we have the retro that goes back to the 1980s, which went back to the 1950s."

Musician Daniel Rotem is a firsthand witness to the phenomenon, boasting the hairdo himself as well. "The '50s influenced me, the attempt to return to the American South, but in the 1980s it came out more punk."

Uzi Batish, owner of the Gazoz hair salon, adds that the current look - a combination of Mohawk and rock - is sloppier and rougher than in the punk days.

Stylist Maayan Goldman says the fashion statements made by Mohawk and rock haircuts are very different from what is being said by the current Israeli male variations.

"The present style says, 'Yes, I am not [necessarily] radical in any way, but I am here. I have fashion sense, but I'm not going to die for it.' Because of the similarity to the Mohawk and the rockabilly forelock, it's proof that rock and roll runs through the veins of everyone who wears it."
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