Over lockdown, as barber shops lowered their shutters, we had little choice but to arm ourselves with clippers and take matters into our own hands. Suddenly, the buzzcut emerged as a default choice: one of the most uncomplicated haircuts out there, relatively difficult to screw up.
Even celebrities, so used to the expert hands of top hairstylists, were at it. Sound of Metal actor Riz Ahmed took to Instagram to show off his DIY #lockdownhaircut (admittedly, done as part of the CovHead challenge), as did Stephen Graham and Manchester United footballer Paul Pogba, a player who usually tended towards avant-garde hairstyles. And yet, while many of us thought this would be a fleeting trend we’d leave behind once the world reopened, the buzz for the buzzcut is still going strong two years on.
Fashion has played a part in it too, with our return to the real world coinciding with a strong nostalgia for the '00s. Were we all desperately yearning for simpler times? Who knows, but from baggier fits to Matrixcore and normcore, Y2K fashion was quickly becoming mainstream. As a result, the shaved hairstyles of the decade’s biggest icons enjoyed something of a renaissance. Gen-Z It-boys such as Romeo Beckham paid homage to his trendsetting father with a silver-blonde do, while social-media star and Gossip Girl actor Evan Mock and musicians Machine Gun Kelly and Jaden Smith soon followed.
Before long, #buzzcutchallenge trended on TikTok, breeding millions of shaved-headed disciples around the world, while the hashtag #buzzcut had racked up almost 1.3 billion views on the sharing platform.
But is there something bigger going in here? It was only this weekend that Riverdale actor KJ Apa took to Instagram to show off his newly sheared locks. “Reset'' he captioned it, accompanied with a rather zen-looking selfie of himself. At a time when the world feels like it’s going through a major transition, the shaved head as a symbol of renewal seems oddly appropriate.
There are many reasons for men to take up the buzz in 2022: boredom, empowerment, creativity, or just the fact that hair isn’t important to them. But having the autonomy to do whatever you want with your hair – at a time when we seem to be losing control of everything else – is a trend we’re completely and wholeheartedly into right now. Is it time to catch the buzz and go against the grain? Why the hell not.
