A hot new coif has cropped up on social media.
Teen boys are propagating across hair salons for perms to recreate the viral “broccoli cut.” Characterized by a bounty of bouncy curls atop the noggin, TikTok’s trending ‘do is designed to resemble that of the cruciferous veggie’s frizzy florets.
“I had always wanted curly hair,” 13-year-old Nico Afflerback, whose hairstyles were limited due to his stick-straight hair, told The Post.
So, when the West Orange, New Jersey, teen saw influencers on social media with permed hair and a friend at school even recommended it, he asked his mom, Alejandra Durand, for a perm, too. Despite her apprehension at first due to the chemicals used in the process, hearing from the salon how many teen boys requested perms convinced her to change her mind.
“He had been asking me so many times,” Durand, 38, told The Post, adding that it looked “really good” on her son.
“I noticed that it gave him a lot of confidence.”
The haircut has proliferated on social media — as seen on the likes of Gen Z “It” boys Bryce Hall, Josh Richards or Jacob Sartorius and even Kourtney Kardashian’s son Mason Disick — and will soon be on the big screen. Set photos from James Gunn’s forthcoming “Superman” flick show Clark Kent actor David Corenswet with the trendy cut, signaling a seismic shift in hair trends among young men.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen Gen-Z fashion not in an explicitly Gen-Z character, but in an iconic pop culture figure,” media studies professor Matthew Ellis, who has noticed the cut in his classrooms, told GQ. “When I saw even Superman has the haircut, I was like, ‘Alright, something has happened. We’ve crossed a threshold.’”
While it’s been likened to broccoli or desserts, moms have also compared the ‘do — which has slowly become vogue over the last few years — to a llama’s fur. But the laughable comparisons haven’t deterred Zoomer teens from demanding the style from their barbers, some saving up hundreds of dollars to splurge on a perm to achieve it.
Similarly to Afflerback, 17-year-old Brooks Eddy wanted “something different” than his usual short, straight hair, he told New York Magazine’s The Cut. So, he begged his mom to fork over $70 for a perm.
“It started getting long last year, but it was still really straight. So, I got natural curls,” he explained.” I didn’t want it to look super wiry or like that typical permed hair that’s short in the back, with the really big floof-y part in the front.”
Meanwhile, Zane Probus, 13, and his younger brother Levi, 10, were given an ultimatum by their mom: perm the long locks out of their eyes or buzz it off. They chose a perm.
“She says she wants our hair out of our eyes so she can see us,” Levi told The Cut, adding that their mom helps to style it.
For the low maintenance tweens, all they have to do in the morning “is take a shower and let it dry, and it looks good,” Zane noted.
“As someone who loves curly hair, I totally get it,” Clayton Hawkins, a celebrity hairstylists based in Los Angeles, told GQ. “I think one of the reasons guys like it so much is that if your hair is permed, you can basically just let it air dry and do its thing. There’s no need to style.”
The style’s breeziness is a relief for 12-year-old Charlie Weiss, who would often fuss with his hair for up to an hour every day to get it perfect. With a perm — which he saved up $150 to purchase himself — he just spritzes it with a salt spray and air dries.
“I was trying to replicate Dillon Latham,” Weiss explained.
Latham, an influencer who boasts 1.5 million followers on TikTok alone, can be, in part, credited for the coif craze. The Virginia-based creator first permed his hair in 2020 after losing a bet with his followers and has been getting perms ever since, despite criticism at first.
“I actually got made fun of a lot by everybody in my school. I was the perm kid. But after the video blew up, I had gone so viral that people couldn’t really say much,” Latham, who know rakes in an estimated six figures per month selling his own sea salt spray, told GQ.
“And then I saw kids around my school start popping up with it.”
Quinn Goncalves, nearly 12 years old, finally convinced his mom to shell out $40 for a perm after seeing his friends at school with the chemically curled hair.
“I guess some kids call it ice cream, because when you have curly, fluffy hair all around your head it looks like a scoop on a cone,” Goncalves, who used to do his hair with a curling iron, told The Cut.
“My friends thought it was cool.”
The NYC barbershop Hairrari, which used to get multiple requests per week for the permed style, recently stopped offering perms because of the overwhelming stench of the ammonia caused by the perm solution.
“They’re very popular, but very smelly,” an anonymous stylist told GQ. “They just stink up the whole place. It smells like eggs.”
At first, the tighter coils were all the rage among boys coming-of-age, but now, looser curls are becoming more popular after “the broccoli cut became a meme,” explained 22-year-old influencer Kris Grippo, a proponent of the cut himself who believes the shaggy style “looks good on everyone.”
“All the guys coming up on TikTok, every guy who went viral and was considered highly attractive had this fluffy hair look,” Latham said. “So it was kind of like, if you didn’t have that, you’re missing out.”
While Eddy is content with his stylish ‘do now, he also acknowledges it is likely “a product of the time,” blaming the trend cycle of social media.
“A lot of people are exposed to it on social media so they’re like, Oh yeah, that looks good,” he said. “But we’ll probably look back on this and it’ll be like soul patches of the 2000s or mullets in the ’90s.”
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