This was my turn-of-the-century hairstyle. A little strange, I admit - perhaps you are wondering what motivated it. First, my exuberant press release, then some additional explanation.
Our culture often has symbols, but rarely is there one that invokes such a cloud of images, one that is short and easily made into a hairstyle, and, most important, one that is tied to a brief, specific time period. It is the combination of these three things that makes it so perfect. There are many other recognizable symbols, but few are subject to the frenzied period of attention that surrounds the event that is Y2K. The idea was to use my body as art & social commentary. An image this powerful deserves, needs, begs, demands to be shaved onto the back of someones head. I heard the call, and was delighted to accept. It is a statement about the power of buzzwords, sound bites, and the effectiveness with which memes reproduce in this communication-intensive age.
Reactions have been mixed. Some people ask "Why did you do that?", and seem baffled that someone would ever think of or submit to such indignity. One might guess they operate under a different set of prejudices and assumptions than I do, that, unlike myself, they do not consider hair to be a short-lived medium, or the body well-suited as an artistic canvas. I think them at least as odd as they must think me, and unfortunately these reactions mean that my vision did not manage to transcend their prejudices, which I consider an artistic failure, although perhaps an unavoidable one. Others hail me with phrases like "Hey, why-too-kay man, wassup?!", and congratulate me, indicating the power of invoking this symbol. A few even say things like "That is the coolest haircut I have ever seen". The reactions I most treasure are those that lie between these extremes, the people who think it is neat, but also sense the ironic commentary inherent in wearing such an unusual hairstyle in a state of sobriety. Those who laugh, not at the absurdity of shaving something into one's head, nor at any invocation of the hackneyed character trilogy, but at the ironic appropriateness of it all. Those who, having seen it, realize that they should have expected it all along.
Some people may doubt that doing something silly like shaving letters into your head can be art, meaningful art, not just an exercise in narcissism and "freaking the mundanes", so I will explain further. Let us tentatively say that, whatever else art may be, making something that causes viewers to think about an interesting question is undoubtedly succesful art. What question? Well, the question of why those three letters became such a powerful symbol. The answer to that question (which I do not claim to know precisely) surely involves some aspects of the influence of media, of technology, of ideas which can be reduced to soundbites, and various other interesting ideas and criticisms of our culture. Getting people to ask it is, in my opinion, a worthwhile endeavour. How does my hairdo accomplish that? Well, put yourself inside the head of someone who sees it. If they are surprised, they may well wonder why I did it. If they are *not* surprised, surely many of them will pause to wonder why having someone shave and bleach letters onto their head is not surprising. Either way, they will think "Just what is special about those 3 letters? What is with this whole Y2K thing, anyway? Boy, it really is everywhere!". Seeing it as part of billboards and advertising campaigns and on the front pages of newspapers may not provoke these thoughts, because those are places where we are used to seeing sound bites and catchphrases. But seeing the symbol on someones head kinda makes you wonder, and wondering is the whole point of this kind of art. I believe, in all seriousness, that a reasonable percentage of people who saw the back of my head did at least a little thinking about this topic, and for some of them it may have been thinking they would not have done otherwise. That is my definition of success.
Last Modified: The Closing Days of the Millenium
Patri Friedman / patri@izzy.com