ALAMEDA — Keeping up with social trends among teens and young adults can sometimes be difficult. But this one is hard to miss – it’s a haircut that has become extremely popular in the Bay Area in recent years. It’s called “the Edgar” cut.
Gilberto Mozqueda is a hairdresser in the East Bay. He goes by Cutz by Gil. He says he had the Edgar cut before he was even considered an Edgar.
“You could do it with a fade, which is a haircut down the sides. It doesn’t really matter what kind of fade it is — low fade, medium fade, high fade. But what an Edgar really is is a front lineup, which is what he’s really known for. You could also get it with a taper,” Mozqueda said.
He said about 15 people can come a week asking for this kind of haircut.
One of his customers who visits him at The XIII, a barber shop in Alameda, is Armán OrtÃz. He says he goes in about every 2½ weeks to get his hair cut.
“I just stuck with this because I felt like it was the right cut for me,” said OrtÃz.
If you type “Edgar haircut” many videos of young men with this haircut come up. Mozqueda said he mostly gets Latino men asking for the cut.
“TikTok works wonders when it comes to blowing things up. It really gets everything noticed,” said Mozqueda. “At first everyone was joking about it, and they just said, ‘You look like an Edgar!’ But suddenly everyone started to get it. Even the people who were joking about it. It’s everywhere now.”
It’s not an easy cut. KPIX 5 spent about 45 minutes to an hour while Mozqueda cut OrtÃz’s hair.
“I remember when I was a little bit younger I always got it. My mom said, ‘I could have done this at home,'” Mozqueda said. “But it’s not that simple. They think it’s effortless, but it really is.”
It’s a mystery where the name Edgar came from for this cut, but the one thing that’s certain is that the popularity surrounding it shows no signs of slowing down.
However, there is a problem related to the hairstyle. KPIX 5 spoke with Alexandro José Gradilla, Associate Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at CSU Fullerton. He said that negative traits begin to be associated with someone who is circumcised.
But he thinks that after the pandemic, it’s about young Latino men trying to find their identity.
“Psychologically and socially, you have to reconcile the fact, ‘Okay, I’m not a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American.’ So when we talk about Americans, I feel like I don’t fit in. And I speak so much English, and all my references are kind of American. I’m not really Mexican, especially if I was born in the US,” he said.
But Gradilla adds that the cut is an unashamed, strong statement in terms of being proud to say, “I am who I am.”
“Some people act with their haircut, if that makes sense. So say someone has an Edgar haircut and they walk a certain way, or talk a certain way or something. But to me it all depends. Someone could have an Edgar haircut and they could act completely different,” OrtÃz said.
And there is variation in style.
“Now a lot of people get it with the long hair in the back, the mullet and stuff, there’s a lot of different styles with it,” Mozqueda said.
OrtÃz said that when his cut is done, he feels more confident.
“Getting the haircut makes me feel fresh, it makes me feel new, it feels good,” he said.
And for Mozqueda, that’s what he wants. He wants them to be happy with the result.
“Make me feel like I did a good job,” he said.
Jocelyn Moran
