Our grooming editor pays tribute to Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson's lustrous, beguiling haircut, which was massacred last week
I'll never forget when it came into my life. It was one of those glass-half-empty days when you have a pounding headache and the spins and you're beginning to believe that myth about your body slowly coasting downward after 21 may be true. I was eating cold pizza. My DVR was broken, and, so, I was also not fast-forwarding through the commercials when it started—a Volvo ad. What kind of Volvo? I couldn't tell you. You see, it wasn't the pretty car my eyes were fixed on. It was Robert Pattinson—specifically his hair region. I bit my knuckles. I can't remember if I said "shit" audibly or just to myself, but that moment signified a new beginning.
There are dudes out there, girl-liking ones mind you, who dig looking at pictures of other dudes, say, oiled up on Venice Beach throwing 450 pounds of iron over their bare chests while grunting. Motivation. This was the same. Except my guy was clothed, fully and decently, and had a mane that could put any other juiced-up coif to shame. I was sure of it.
It's foolish the things we do out of desperation, but, me being a dreamer, I tried to grow some of my own. One summer, I gave up cutting my hair only to discover that mine grows out rather than down and is littered with cowlicks. Still, I pushed on through fro-dom against my better judgment, reminding myself regularly of the goal. After reading Pattinson forwent shampooing, I went days, weeks, hell, even a month (true story) without washing so I could build up a nice, malleable coat. I'm certain I smelled—miserably. I saw an interview wherein Kristen Stewart revealed he pulled and twisted his righteously-splayed locks in the mirror and so, I, too attempted to become the master of my do, twirling and knotting with reckless abandon until someone asked me what that nest on my head was and I died a little inside and later gave in to my barber.
From then on, I was put in my place—still I watched Pattinson's mane grow and evolve over the course of its few short years with us. At times it was a pompadour of restrained heights. At others, it was a finger-messed mop of prophetically tousled matter. In its last days it was quieter and more subdued, short and textured with an oily sheen of immortal glory. Of course, its days were numbered.
It's funny—looking at a wild head like that you always had the feeling it might live fast and die young. Things that great never stick around. But that didn't make its departure any less tragic or absurd. It's been almost a week, but I can't stop thinking of that image. Mangled and dismembered. Half-shaven like Rosie. Paraded around at fucking Comic-Con like a prize! No.
Still, we'll always have that moment, crystallized in time, accessible through YouTube— that Twilight bastard exiting some four-door, hair styled as if by accident, every strand quivering in the wind, godlike, forever young.
