Reflections on a haircut

When I arrived at the philosophy program at Boston College, I noticed that an unusual number of men associated with the department—both graduate students and professors—groomed themselves in one of two distinct styles, both of which struck me as somehow more “philosophical.”

The first was to allow one’s beard to grow long and unkempt. Unlike the unkempt beards I had seen on undergraduates at NCSU, this was not a token of laziness or disregard for one’s personal appearance. The individuals wearing beards were otherwise impeccably well-groomed, and oftentimes found in class wearing suits. I came to call this look “The Socrates.”

The second look was to be completely clean-shaven, and wear one’s hair gelled back and up, in order to create the illusion that one’s head was several inches taller than it really was. I called this “The Derrida.” My hair was kind of already going in that direction, and I thought it looked like a good, modern look for a man in a philosophy program, so this is the style I adopted.

(After finishing up at BC, I wore my hair down with a loose part for several months. I never really liked it, so I’m back to The Derrida, or the “Wall Street hair” as one of my coworkers calls it.)

Having formulated these observations, I recently enjoyed reading Barthes’ “The Iconography of the Abbé Pierre” in his Mythologies collection:

The Abbé Pierre’s haircut, obviously devised so as to reach a neutral equilibrium between short hair (an indispensable convention if one does not want to be noticed) and unkempt hair (a state suitable to express contempt for other conventions), thus becomes the capillary archetype of saintliness...

For among priests, it is no due to chance whether one is bearded or not; beards are chiefly the attribute of missionaries or Capuchins, they cannot but signify apostleship and poverty... Shaven priests are supposed to be more temporal, bearded ones more evangelical...

Barthes worries about the overconsumption of these signs, in place of true justice and charity. I think this is a legitimate concern. But I have also noticed that in our socially constructed world, truth must come with a little bit of rhetoric in order to find a foothold.

What does all this have to do with technology? Consider the industrial design explosion of the last decade. There are quite a lot of individuals who find it all a lot of fuss with no substance. If your box works well, who cares what it looks like? These are the folks who would never buy an iPod, because you would have to be an idiot to shell out for one when you can get a player that has more storage space for less.

But the market disagrees with the theory that an iPod is worth less than a SanDisk. The iPod signals to others, among other things, an appreciation for Apple products, for fashion, and for modern design. Your choice of mp3 player may not play a role in determining your identity, but it does play a considerable role in communicating your identity. It has value, in short, as a Barthesian myth.

If you need confirmation of this theory, just count how many times in a day your friends and coworkers emote—either in disgust or appreciation—at the personal appearances, affections, and possessions of people they don’t know, or know only marginally. The things we surround ourselves with have utility not merely in pursuing our individual tele, but in pursuing our goals as social actors, as well. This is common sense, but too often disappears from discussions of an artifact’s utility as such.