Mohawk hairstyle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mohawk or Mohican is a hairstyle. In the most common variety, both sides of the head are shaved leaving a strip of noticeably longer hair in the centre. Mohawks became common in punk subculture and Rivethead subculture in the early 1980s and were then adopted by various other groups, becoming more diverse in style. Today, Mohawks are still associated with the punk subculture, but have also become part of mainstream fashion.
The Mohawk hairstyle is named for, and often associated with, the people of the Mohawk nation, an indigenous people of North America who originally inhabited the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York to southern Quebec and eastern Ontario.
In modern punk fashion, the Mohawk is often dyed brilliant colors and worn so that it points straight up, often to impressive height. The Mohawk is also a feature of goth fashion. The Mohawk is also known as the signature hairstyle of Mr. T, the actor who first became famous playing the boxer Clubber Lang in the movie Rocky III and later as Sgt. B.A. Baracus in the television series The A-Team.
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[edit] History
Mohawk people did not always wear what is today known as the Mohawk hairstyle. Like members of many other North American indigenous tribes, Mohawk women traditionally wore their hair long and braided and sometimes decorated with beads, cutting it only in times of mourning. Men also wore their hair long, sometimes with feathered caps. Mohawk men shaved their heads in times of war, leaving a "scalplock" down the center of the head sometimes decorated with feathers or porcupine and deer hair.[1]
This hairstyle was also known among other peoples. For instance, the Clonycavan Man, a 2000-year-old male bog body discovered near Dublin, Ireland in 2003, was found to be wearing a Mohawk styled with plant oil and pine resin[2]
The Mohawk became part of mainstream fashion in the early 2000s in the form of the fauxhawk. In a 2005 article in The New York Times, "The Mohawk Becomes, Well, Cute," Eric Wilson argued that the revival was partly inspired by the hairstyle of Angelina Jolie's adopted son, Maddox Jolie.
[edit] Style and maintenance
Depending on how it is worn, the Mohawk can be a high-maintenance style. Regular, careful shaving or trimming is required to maintain a clean line between the shaven and unshaven (or short and long) portions of the hair; this can be especially complicated in bi- and tri- hawks.
If the hair is to be worn up, brushing, backcombing, blow-drying, and twisting are required, as well as the application of sprays and in some cases other holding agents like white or clear glue, egg whites, cornstarch, or gelatin. The amount of time required for styling may increase considerably with longer hair or complicated styles such as liberty spikes (sometimes known as a libertyhawk).
Some wearers enhance the look of their Mohawks with hair dyes. This, too can require a great deal of initial effort and maintenance, especially in styles where the color(s) form an integral part of the style. In some cases, for example, Mohawk-wearers who normally wear their hair up in a fan style dye the hair in even lines or stripes of color, either horizontal or vertical.
[edit] Varieties
[edit] Bihawk or double Mohawk; trihawk
Two or three Mohawks separated by one or more shaved centre lines.
[edit] Deathhawk
A Mohawk featuring voluminous teased hair common to the deathrock/gothic subcultures and often associated with deathrocker Johnny Slut.
[edit] Dreadhawk
A dreadlocked Mowawk.
[edit] Fauxhawk or faux-hawk
A "fake" Mohawk which approximates the style but without shaving the sides of the head[3] The fauxhawk is typically worn with a small but noticeable spike in the middle, though usually considerably shorter than many traditional mohawks. The style re-emerged in the late 2000s, one of the popular wearers being David Beckham. The fauxhawk is known in the Hoxton and Shoreditch districts of London as the "Hoxton fin."[4].
The ponyhawk or pony hawk is a type of fauxhawk created by a row of ponytails going down the middle of the head. This look was worn by contestant Sanjaya Malakar on an episode of the television show American Idol.[5]
[edit] Halfhawk or tophawk
A Mohawk that extends only from the forehead to the crown, on the top part of the wearer's head, rather than to the nape of the neck.
[edit] Reverse Mohawk
Rather than the strip of longer hair in the centre of the scalp, a reverse Mohawks features a shaved strip from the forehead to the nape of the neck leaving hair on either side of the line.
[edit] Sunhawk
A Mohawk in which, rather than front to back, the unshaved hair extends over the head from side to side.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Facts for Kids: Mohawk Indians (Mohawks)
- ^ Template:Cite web http://web.archive.org/web/20060818023351/http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060801/od nm/ireland bogbodies dc
- ^ "Word Spy: fauxhawk", Word Spy, September 2003, webpage: WSpy-fauxhawk
- ^ "Where have all the cool people gone?", The Guardian, November 21 2003 (link)
- ^ Ryan Seacrest Gets Everyone Laughing
[edit] See also
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mohawk |
