How the Bowl Cut Became a White Supremacist Symbol
As recently as a few years ago, the bowl cut was primarily known as an unfashionable hairstyle popular among toddlers whose parents cut their hair, and 1990s child stars. Over the past few years, however, the bowl cut has gone from shorthand for male uncoolness to a chilling symbol of racism and extremist violence, according to a recent report from the Anti-Defamation League.
On Thursday morning, the ADL released its additions to its hate symbols database, a library of more than 200 symbols used by hate groups. In addition to entries such as the Happy Merchant, a meme of an anti-Semitic caricature gleefully rubbing his hands together; and the “OK” hand emoji, which actually originated as a 4chan and an 8chan hoax before being adopted by the white supremacist movement as an actual hate symbol, the database now contains the bowl cut, a reference to the hairstyle sported by Dylann Roof, the white supremacist behind the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed nine people. (Roof pleaded guilty to state murder charges in 2017 and is currently serving nine consecutive life sentences without parole.)
On white supremacist chat forums on platforms like Gab and Discord, the bowl cut takes a few different forms. Images of Roof’s hair are often photoshopped on other people in various white supremacist memes (one popular meme features Roof’s bowl cut superimposed on an SS military shield); some white supremacists will also Photoshop a halo or a glowing effect around Roof’s head for emphasis. The bowl cut is also used as verbal shorthand within fringe groups, with white supremacists referring to themselves as “the bowl gang” or inserting “bowl” into other words, such as swapping out “brother” for “bowlther.” There is even a white supremacist called the BowlCast, named after Roof’s distinctive cut.
The rise of the bowl cut has nothing to do with the hairstyle itself, or the view that it’s somehow a cool or attractive hairstyle to be emulated. In fact, in a lot of ways, it’s precisely the fact that it looks silly that it gained traction as a white supremacist symbol. Mark Pitcavage, the senior research fellow with ADL’s Center on Extremism, compares Roof’s bowl cut to Hitler’s mustache: an objectively ridiculous-looking, yet distinctive enough feature that it can be easily subject to memeification. Yet its rise is inextricably tied to part of a larger effort to canonize Roof within the white supremacist movement.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bowl-cut-white-supremacist-symbol-890888/
= new reply since forum marked as read
(circa 1972) Mom would give me $5 to go around the corner for a haircut. But, I'd beeline it upstairs and trim the edges and pocket the 5-spot. Bought an awful lot of Matchbox cars that way! 
