Why Tinder users swipe left on the undercut
Photos Spencer Selvidge / Reuters
Words Vadim Poulet
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Short hair on the sides, long on top: the undercut is incredibly popular, and easy to ask to your barber. Unfortunately, it's also associated with the alt-right. Time to cut it off.
The undercut is a Grooming Hall of Famer. Short hair on the sides, long on top, often styled backwards, it quickly became the symbol of our century’s gentlemen, liberal and progressive. Men who sported the haircut were liked for the positive associations of the undercut : it was modern, in phase with the zeitgeist.
But recently, Americans, and more particularly those of the so-called “alt-right” (which honesty requires that we call “nazis”) have taken a fancy to the style, now very popular amongst young fascists.
Since then, Tinder users have discover a new defense reflex : they swipe left as soon as they spot an undercut. For them, it’s now impossible to know if the guy is fashionable or just a neo-nazi. Because dating online needs to take a decision based on a limited set of criteria, and because the face is more visible than a pair of svastiskas tattooed on the chest, the undercut became a deal-breaker after its extremist adoption. Ironically, nazis already made the haircut mainstream in the 40s.
Its story is indeed shifting. It was first a working class hairdo in the beginning of the 20st century, before being made popular by the Wehrmacht and Hitler Youth. Those references were not quoted when the undercut came back into fashion : Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire, with their gominaed machismo, were the inspiration.
Like a lot of bad memories, the nazi parenthesis of the undercut was forgotten. When Macklemore, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling or David Beckham elected the style, it became a real cultural phenomenon without political roots. Until it was given a new meaning by neo-nazis, because history repeats itself.
Fortunately, natural and sexual selection will take care of it, like it does with beards.