An Obituary for Harry Styles’s Hair

Last night, TMZ united girls across the world by sending them into a collective spiral. The outlet published photos of Harry Styles with girlfriend Taylor Russell at one of U2's recent shows at the Las Vegas Sphere. All in all, the pictures painted a pretty average scene, save for the fact that Styles's hair—his iconic mop of thick tousled curls that, with one flick, could make teenagers faint in jam-packed stadiums—had been reduced to a scalp of shadowy hair stubble.

Really, there shouldn't be much to say about some British guy getting a buzzcut, but here we are. Upon seeing the photos, I immediately delivered the news to my best friend by texting her a Twitter meme, in which a fan imagines her future child asking her, “Mom, what was Harry Styles like with hair?”

“We're never seeing a full head of hair on him again,” I lamented. She replied, “You had to be there.”

You did have to be there. OG One Direction fans developed a somewhat parasocial relationship with the singer's curls, as devoted witnesses to his long and winding hair journey (recall his Tarzan era in the mid-2010s). And, given men's susceptibility to balding, we all probably knew this was a long time in the making. Losing hair is just another signifier of the passage of time, and fans are likely not mourning his locks as much as they actually are the nostalgia of youth. Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened!

Besides, given Styles's various other hair transformations over the years, this probably won't be his last one. There are loads of reason to shave one's head besides the advent of balding! Maybe he's about to release new music and, in true pop star fashion, cropped his hair to mark the incoming era. Maybe Taylor Swift's new song really did inspire him to get a new 'do. Maybe he just felt like it.

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