Now That’s Devotion: Mac Hairstyles and Tattoos

August 4th, 2002 at 3:00 PM - News by Raena Armitage

A trio of Wired News articles detail the stories of Apple fans who wear the logo with pride in their hair and on their skin.

If youire a regular MACWORLD Expo attendee, you might have seen Peter Cohenis colorful head buzz-cut into the shape of the Apple logo. Mac Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow tells us about Peteris hairdo and how he started styling it that way.

"Itis what Iim known for," Cohen said from his home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. "I just show my loyalty to Apple in a different way than most people do. Itis fun being a celebrity for a little while, as freakish as it may be."

Cohen usually shaves his head, but for the conferences he grows his hair and has it styled into a large, eye-catching ad for Apple.

"I start growing my hair out four-to-six weeks before the show to give the artist a palette to work with," he said.

As well as the Apple logo, heis also had large, colorful "X" haircuts, celebrating Appleis Mac OS X operating system.

In Tatis The Way Mac Heads Like It, the Mac fans go one step further: these guys have Apple logos and designs inked onto their skin.

"So many tattoos are about love, loyalty and bravado," said Amy Krakow, author of The Total Tattoo Book. "Donit Mac users fall into all those categories?"

Krakow, a Mac fan, said no other brand inspires as much loyalty, love and devotion as Apple. And in the face of Appleis single-digit market share, Mac fans have to have "an awful lot of bravado. We are loud, vocal, vociferous. And we want the world to know where our loyalties are."

Professor Christof Koch, a leading neuroscientist, got his arm tattooed with the rainbow Apple when he and his eighteen year old son visited Israel.

Koch was surprised to learn he is not the only person with an Apple tattoo and that there are dozens of others. "Itis pretty crazy," he said. "Thereis a whole community of us.

"I bet you thereis no person with a Microsoft logo," he added.

Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing fame chose his Apple-related tattoo for a different reason: after painstakingly recovering piles of data from his fried SE/30, he had the Sad Mac icon etched into his right arm.

"I hardly bathed or ate, and smoked hundreds, if not thousands, of cigarettes. When I emerged, triumphant and exhausted, I felt reborn.... I was a new man, and needed to commemorate the event."

You can read all three of the articles and view photos at Wired News.