Lee Suckling: Why I'm wearing the most hated modern hairstyle for men

"Without realising it, I've just adopted the most hated hairstyle in modern male history." Photo / 123rf

Without realising it, I've just adopted the most hated hairstyle in modern male history.

My hair has grown long enough to fall in front of my eyes. I like my longer hair when styled properly, but it is particularly annoying during exercise. So a couple of weeks back – without thinking much of it – I found a hair-tie and wanted to see if it was long enough to tie back. It was. I then gleefully went about my workout unencumbered by a floppy fringe in my face.

You remember the man bun, aka the top knot. Thanks to celebrities like Jared Leto and Jake Gyllenhaal, it was all the hipster rage circa 2014-2015. You couldn't buy a soy latte on Cuba Street without seeing some dude who looked like he walked out of Vice magazine. It was often partnered with a beard, yet unlike facial hair – which has prevailed in modern men's lifestyles – the man bun died out as a fad. For five years or so now, you haven't been able to find them anywhere.

After trialling the man bun out at the gym a few times, I decided it didn't look half bad on me. As I wore it out socially, I expected my friends to notice a different hairstyle. But what I was not prepared for was the vitriol that is directed towards the notion of a man tying his hair up.

"You should have prepared me for the man bun", remarked one friend. "Oh, you have a top knot?", sneered another before miming a pair of scissors with their hands across the top of my head. Comment after comment, I felt like I was being real-world trolled by my mates. Never before has my appearance been so controversial: it made me feel like I'd just had "misunderstood" tattooed on my face.

I took to the internet and discovered this sentiment was felt worldwide at the height of the man bun trend. I found articles from 2014-2016 titled "The male top knot must die now", "We hate man buns", "The top knot is the worst male fashion trend in all of human history", and I even found a video of men who loathed other men's top knots so much they literally cut them off strangers' heads.

Women weren't immune either. "The top knot bun trend: Ladies, please don't do this to yourselves" is one of many articles from the same era by women, shaming other women's choices for choosing what they think is an "unflattering" hairstyle.

What on earth is all this top knot hatred? It seems people take umbrage with the "perfectly imperfect" nature of it. Like everything hipster (from beards to felt hats, tote bags to sepia filters), man buns are made to look messy and effortless, but in fact, are highly curated. It takes time to style and pull all those stray hairs into place.

Yet most of the hate directed towards this hairstyle comes from one antiquated perception: long hair is supposedly "girly". Men's Fitness once did a survey of 100 women on man buns, and 74 said they didn't like them. The shaving company West Coast Shaving found that 62 per cent of women dislike man buns, and the primary adjective that came to mind about them was "feminine".

In the last five years, our conversations about masculinity have changed a lot. We're more celebratory of gender non-conformity than in 2015. But the negative reputation of the man bun (which, when you think about it, is a gendered description that implies that a hair bun should only be for females) remains a hangover.

I don't buy the argument of man bun-haters that the hairstyle is simply unflattering or doesn't look good (and even if it did, since when it another person's style choices anything you can appropriately comment on?) Man bun-hatred is rooted in misogyny. It's not that they are hipster; the malice comes from the man bun's contradiction of gender norms. We still don't like men who "look like women". To be "femme" is to be "less than", and to draw on both presumed masculine and feminine physical traits (e.g. a bun and a beard) is confusing. It inspires fear in other people, because we are still afraid of difference.

I don't want to wear my hair in a bun every day, but all this hatred has encouraged me to keep it up as a political statement. If you hate the top knot, I need you to think about why. And perhaps address your personal biases. Vocalising your opinions on the way others look isn't OK anymore, and neither is hating on guys who screw with your dated ideals of masculinity.