Hair Makes the Man

Get a haircut, kid! Parents have forever been hollering those immortal words at their sons since time immemorial. Why? Why do parents want their male children to have carefully-cropped locks?

Take a good look at these two pictures and you'll see why. The first one, on the left, is the original. This is our Zzzptm Roving Correspondent Jose Acero as a young man, all duded up for his Junior Prom. Isn't he a nice boy? Doesn't he look like a perfect gentleman? Regardless of what he really was like, this is what he appears to be: a nice kid whose favorite movie was "Footloose" and really got down with Duran Duran.

On the right, we see what Zzzptm Roving Correspondent Jose Acero would have looked like if his hair were longer, and he were allowed to grow facial hair. This is a devil's child, for sure. That sly AC/DC grin, those wicked Def Leppard eyes, and that mind racing at 100 miles per minute, primed by visions from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", "Heavy Metal", and (gasp!) "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" are all framed by the biggest danger sign this side of the galactic center: long hair.

Now, keep in mind that long hair doesn't guarantee the guy with it is some kind of cheap hood that thrills the ladies with low self-esteem. It just makes him look like one, especially if he gets one of them itty bitty moustaches and drives a minitruck. Most parents concerned with their kids' hair length, though, are very concerned with appearances and would prefer that if their sons are cheap hoods, at least they shouldn't look as such.

Of course, many is the young fellow who desires just such an appearance for one of two reasons, if not both: 1. It would really tick off his parents, which lots of young fellows enjoy doing; 2. It would thrill the ladies with low self-esteem, a prime souce of potential dates if the ladies with normal or above-average self-esteem wouldn't be caught dead with them. Even reconstructing the past to include evidences such as the picture on the right instead of the one on the left lends such a strong air of having once been "The Bad Boy" that such an aura carries over to the bearer of the evidences of a modified past, allowing him to wow the babes that really go for guys that wear Ratt t-shirts, black shorts, and tube socks such as guys with a hair style like the one in the picture on the right are wont to wear when not dressed up for a prom.

So what was Zzzptm Roving Correspondent Jose Acero really like in high school? Was he the clean-cut kid that never went astray, or the demon's spawn who drove a tiny truck and listened to devil-worshipping rock and roll like Motley Crue, Poison, David Lee Roth, and Bon Jovi, or something in between? Probably something in between, but where exactly we ain't telling. Suffice to say at least his parents didn't die of embarassment from him looking like the latter, regardless of what he really did back then on those crazy, hazy nights in Moscow, Texas...