The Four Pins Guide To Man Buns

Something is in the air, my friends. And that something is the vestigial hair of dudes everywhere, tied up and in bun form. In the past few months, man buns have gone from something that only irrelevant hippies wore to hot yoga to a trend that was certified by the fact that the The New York Times wrote about them being a trend, The Awl posted a photo essay about them and New York Magazine linked to The Awl's photo essay about them. In The Business™, this is what we call the Triple Salchow of Fuccboidom.

Now that man buns are ubiquitous (in fashion, "ubiquitous" means "relatively common in Los Angeles and New York"), they are both simultaneous so over and only just begun. While actually fashionable dudes will probably abandon the man bun pretty soon and grow man-pigtails or man-shave their man-heads, normal human males are coming to realize that the man bun is the easiest hairstyle to have that still counts as "fashion." There is no gelling, combing or, if you wanna get real freaky with it, washing required to maintain a man bun. Instead, there are just two simple steps:

1. Grow a large amount of hair.

2. Put said hair in bun.

BOOM. FASHION. MOTHERFUCKER.

Are you ready for a man bun? Of course you are! I grew a man bun and decided to monetize my hairstyle by writing this guide to man bun grooming.

When you get a man bun, you have to decide whether or not you're going to be ambitious and grow a shit ton of hair, or if you want to grow a medium amount of hair and then get the sides of your head shaved so you can put the rest in a mini-bun on top. I opted for the second option, because I am wildly impatient.

Once you get your man bun, it's time to start wearing it in the wild. Your friends will probably make fun of you at first, but those people are either jealous, bald, not your real friends or jealous bald people who are not your real friends. This is fine. The man bun has a bad rep in society because the celebrity most associated with it is Jared Leto, whose brand is both "bad actor" and "bad mainstream rock." But the man bun is glorious and it is your job, Four Pins reader, to take back the man bun.

Man buns are great. They make you smarter, render you impervious to pain, strengthen your lovemaking ability, allow you to speak several languages fluently, protect you from smelling farts on the subway, give you a place to hold a pencil in your hair and are divisive enough to make someone love or hate you immediately. The ultimate form of the Shmoney Dance involves growing a man bun, then cutting it off and throwing it in the air. You know all of this is true because you read it on the Internet.

There are countless varieties of man buns out there and you need to know which type of man bun is right for you. With that in mind, I Googled a bunch of pictures of man buns and decided to name all of their different phenotypes. Please click through the slideshow above to enjoy the remainder of this man bun-related #content.

Drew Millard wrote this while wearing a Baewear T-shirt with his own face on it. You can read more of his work on Noisey and follow him on Twitter here.