Just as I couldn’t spin as quickly on the ice as Dorothy Hamill, or raise my legs as high, I didn’t have the perfection of her wedge cut. While Dorothy’s bangs went straight across her forehead, the cowlick split mine into two sections. My hair was as coarse as Jackson’s is now - the hemp to Dorothy’s silk - and my cowlick had its own ideas about how bangs should look. About 20 minutes later, I had my very own Hamill, but it looked about as much like the real Dorothy’s as my figure skating did. So, when I was nearly nine, after years of long hair and home trims, I went to a salon with my mother and asked for a Dorothy Hamill.

We’d admired her Hamill Camels and held our breath through her triple jumps. So did my friends and most of the rest of the country. Unlike Jackson, who wants nothing to do with his haircut’s namesake, I adored Dorothy Hamill. But it was cute - as fluffy and pert as Dorothy herself seemed. In April 1978, the short celebrity haircut that everyone seemed to want - especially girls like me, girls who took figure skating lessons - was the Dorothy Hamill. It’s an awesome sight - fabulous, singular, and so not Bieberesque. When he showers at night, then hits the pillow with semi-wet locks, he wakes up looking like a cross between Don King and the guy from Eraserhead. Jackson’s hair is straight and relatively cowlick-free, but it’s also thick and coarse - more hemp than silk. The flowiest hair is straight and silky, without interference from cowlicks or curls. If you slack off, your bangs will just hang straight down, like the tassels on some ancient relative’s lampshade, and who’d want that?īut good flow is also genetic. To keep your fringe slanting sideways, you have to jerk your head to one side about every 10 minutes - more often if you’re particularly cool and girls are around. Jackson’s classmates - many of whom sport a Bieber variant but would rather soak a paper cut in vinegar than admit even a remote likeness to the Bieb - call this sideswept quality flow. The Bieber (which Bieber himself has since abandoned) is most easily identified by long, sideswept bangs - the eye-grazing fringe that set a billion tween hearts aflutter. In celebrity terms, you might say it’s a modified Bieber. He got what he’s been getting for a while now - a longish cut, a variation on the shag.

The other day, I took my 12-year-old son, Jackson, for a haircut at a Hampden salon he’d never been to before.

Baltimore writer Elisabeth Dahl combs the files of hairstyles past to discover, among other sweeping truths, that “good flow” is genetic.

The wedge haircut dorothy hamill