If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably…Brad Pitt.
The Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood star and genetic experiment in perfection has done the remarkable. He’s taken a hairstyle associated with 60-year-old male radio show hosts and college freshman who don’t yet know how to make their own barber appointments and made it red carpet-worthy.
The ducktail hairstyle, also known as the duck’s ass, peaked in popularity in the late 1950s with the rise of the bad-boy Greaser look (Think: Elvis Presley and Sodapop from The Outsiders.) It’s styled by slicking back shaggy hair on both sides of your head to create a ridge at the back, allowing the bottom edges to subtly flip out at the ends. It’s almost moving into mullet territory, with a bit of Donald Trump at the edges. Joe Dirt would find the style aspirational.
Beautiful Brad wasn’t alone in his efforts at the Golden Globes Sunday night. Famous men like Ansel Elgort, Adam Driver, and Joaquin Phoenix added to the hairsanity. We’re a mere week into 2020, and several Hollywood dudes have started sporting the style, with a slight update: the new version includes less duck and more tail, creating a neck curtain of sorts. These are men of flair, drama, and panache: the curtain rises and falls even on their distinguished necks.
This is the kind of hair that makes you believe if you went home with these grown men, you might wake up on a futon. It’s a style for men who think basketball shorts are formal wear, who eat from the communal nuts at a bar, rub their noses, then grabs another handful. It is, in short, the hair of men who used to fart and claim “Safety” immediately after. It is not at all the ‘do of a movie star, which is perhaps exactly its point: We dare you to still find us attractive, Pitt and his A-list cohorts seem to be saying. Unfortunately, in spite of their best efforts, we do.