Vinay Menon: Brad Pitt’s hair gets a Golden Globe in media fawning and it’s time for regular men to rebel

One of the biggest Hollywood stars is still Brad Pitt’s hair.

Long, short, greasy, buzzed, ponytailed, feathered, spiky, it doesn’t matter. Brad Pitt’s hair, however it manifests, gets more attention than any other celebrity body part.

The Rock’s delts and quads have got nothing on Brad Pitt’s hair.

Brad Pitt’s hair gets more media coverage than climate change. Behold the headlines following Tuesday’s Golden Globes: “Brad Pitt sends pulses racing with his charming appearance at the 2023 Golden Globes.” “Brad Pitt delights fans with new haircut.” “Brad Pitt debuts a new heartthrob haircut at the Golden Globes.”

That last one, published in Vogue, offered several esthetic observations, including the revelation Brad Pitt’s hair is “jaunty.” After a year of “rocking slightly overgrown blonde lengths,” it seems Brad Pitt’s hair now qualifies as a “shift in style” that has “served him well,” vis-à-vis the strategic “lightening of just a few inches lifting his iconic complexion to noticeable effect.

“The cut made Pitt look, dare we say, like a heartthrob.”

You need not dare, Vogue. I’m don’t know what an “iconic complexion” is, but the guy has been a heartthrob since “Thelma & Louise.” I just don’t get why Brad Pitt’s hair is newsworthy this week when it looks like Brad Pitt’s hair, on and off, since the late ’80s.

In one Getty photo from Tuesday’s Golden Globes, a tuxedoed Pitt is standing next to director Quentin Tarantino who, tragically, has never earned a single headline for his retreating follicles. Yes, Brad Pitt’s hair looks healthy and coiffed and sun-kissed just so. But it’s indistinguishable from the hair of a Bay Street broker, a yoga instructor, a bush pilot in the tropics, a captain of industry who must boost EBITDA by slashing costs. I have friends who have Brad Pitt’s hair and GQ isn’t calling them.

I don’t want my blinding jealousy to get me into a lather (and rinse) right now.

But the attention given to Brad Pitt’s hair this week is grossly unfair to other men.

Do our loved ones notice after we get a trim or part on the other side? Do our colleagues ooh and aah the day after we make a frugal trek to Topcuts? No, for every man not named Brad Pitt, the reality is nobody gives a dirty comb about our hair.

A barber on the Danforth mercifully cut off my pandemic locks last month, mostly because I was tired of looking like a bespectacled photo-negative of Winona Ryder, circa 1997. After he dusted off my shoulders and removed the torso apron, I put on my glasses and was gobsmacked. Wow! I looked at least three months younger!

But that evening, after my daughters were home from school and my wife was patrolling the main floor before dinner, nobody noticed. My bangs had been long enough to tickle my chin. Now they were these manicured sprouts standing on end.

I looked as good as I possibly could, which admittedly is still far from good.

But my family was oblivious. These three ingrates were too busy yammering on about their days as I desperately struck Sears-model poses in silent search of a compliment.

That is why Brad Pitt’s hair is making me sick to my stomach.

Hey, media! It’s not Brad Pitt’s hair that “stole the show” at the Golden Globes. It’s not Brad Pitt’s hair that “made hearts swoon.” It’s Brad Pitt, as a Rorschach inkblot, that keeps generating perennial lust. That handsome bastard could shave his head and stroll a red carpet in a propeller beanie and Hitler ’stache and Cosmopolitan would stop the presses to devote a 500-word meditation on this exhilarating thirst trap.

How big a star is Brad Pitt’s hair? In 2020, Esquire published, “Brad Pitt’s Hair Through the Years: A Glorious Journey.” The subhead: “Even on his off days, Brad Pitt’s hair evolution is one to be admired, emulated, and revered.”

Scroll through the gallery that starts in 1988. Make note of the epochal labels Esquire applies to Brad Pitt’s hair: “The Boy,” “A Hand Runs Through It,” “The Experiment,” “Long Locks,” “The Pain of Cobain,” “Short Spikes,” “Property of Gwyneth,” “Wet and Wild,” “Soft Waves,” “The Buzz,” “Old Hollywood,” “The Croque Monsieur,” “The Aviator,” “The Soccer Cut,” “Daddy’s Looking For An Oscar.”

Brad Pitt’s hair is celebrated more than Nikola Tesla’s brain.

I’m not having it. We, the regular blokes of this planet, demand that our hair, or lack thereof, get equal attention. Brad Pitt’s hair went through a phase I would describe as Peroxide Jesus. Brad Pitt’s hair has been cropped to the scalp as if he had lice and has flowed in the wind as it had been violently possessed by Jason Momoa’s hair.

If we must discuss Tuesday’s Golden Globes, returning after a 2022 hiatus, let’s focus on Jerrod Carmichael’s pull-no-punches monologue. Or Michelle Yeoh’s spirited acceptance speech. Or Jenna Ortega’s fashion dominance. Or Eddie Murphy’s joke for the ages about that unhinged chump named Will Smith.

Or Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s video message: “There are still battles and tears ahead. But now I can tell you who was the best in the previous year — you in the free world, who united around support of free Ukrainian people.”

It is time to ignore Brad Pitt’s hair.

It is time to realize it has nothing to offer and will never love us back.

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