MovieChat Forums > Real Genius (1985) Discussion > Was the no sideburns look big in the 80s...

Was the no sideburns look big in the 80s?


Because Val Kilmer just looks strange without sideburns.

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Yes. Any hint of sideburns would result in merciless teasing. The same if you wore bell bottomed jeans.

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the hatred of bell bottoms went so far as to lead to the now dead art of "tight rolling" your jeans. (look it up, kids!)

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Or pinch rolling as we called it *Shudder*. The side burn look didn't come back en vogue until the world's oldest teenagers on 'Beverly Hills 90210 [also the combined age of the main cast]' hit the air in the early 90's.

’Cause there’s thunder in your heart... Every move is like lightning!

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[deleted]

Don't forget corduroys lol.. Not sure if it was already mentioned..a lot of fads and or a phase are slowly coming back. I love the 70's way of dress and for me it was jeans and a tee shirt. Even when the Bell bottoms were in full swing I'd always was wearing my regular jeans (no Bell bottoms). Jesus Christ nowadays they have at least a dozen different kinds of jeans..so stupid and so not needed. Of course we rolled into the 80's and to me it was such a great time to be alive and to experience it. And I continued wearing jeans, T shirt, workboots. Although I did experiment with parachute pants.

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Yeah, i owned a few pairs of Brittania 'elephant leg' jeans back in the day. The 80's really went crazy over the name-brands of jeans: Jordache, Levis 501's, Calvin Klein...




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.

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I remember doing the rolling of the jeans. we also would safety pin the cuffs together.

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I don't know about that, plenty of side-burn styles existed in the 80s from rock bands like Martin Chambers (The Pretenders) Lemmy (Motorhead), and Joe Strummer and the Clash members, Jake from "Sixteen Candles", Sean Penn when he was married to Madonna, etc..

I definitely remember the Anti-bell bottoms though.



(¯`i´¯)´·¸.)‹^›

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They got a little off topic Santo. To answer your original question...long sideburns were very out of style in the 80's. But I think what you're asking about is Kilmer cutting his hair to the point of their being NO hair in front of the ears, not even 1/3 or half way down. This look was very popular but only for a couple of years...about '85-'86. It went out of style quickly.

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for a while, it definitely was an EXTREME anti-sideburn look. Haircutters used to take a razor and just slice your hair off right across that spot in a perfect, exaggerated line so the side of your head leading to your temple looked completely bald!

--Daniel W. Kelly, author, "Closet Monsters: Zombied Out and Tales of Gothrotica"

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The 'no sideburns' look was popular around the mid-1980s primarily because of Oklahoma University inside linebacker Brian Bosworth, the most popular, yet controversial, college football player at the time. The no-sideburns cut along with "the porcupine" became a haircut called "The Boz." Around 1987, Boz was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks and unfortunately became one of the biggest flops in NFL history. But went on to have a decent B-movie career. Fun while it lasted; and I admit, I had "The Boz" haircut back in the day.

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So, the Tim Tebow of today?

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Tim Tebow was an action star in movies?



Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

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Probably because they were popular in the oh so *beep* decade known as the 70's.

We tried to get everything about the 70's as far out of our minds (and bodies), as possible.


"You people voted for Hubert Humphrey! And you killed Jesus!" - Raoul Duke

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is that why Kent was considered a dork? Because he had sideburns?

I guess I understand that successive decades always try to be different than their predecessors.

But you have to admit, the style of the 70's was AWESOME.


Would you classify that as a launch problem or a design problem?-Real Genius

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The 70's were only awesome fashionwise if you NEVER had to wear any of it. Honestly, plaid bellbottoms, tough-skins with knee patches, turtlenecks and crocheted vests are the stuff of nightmares for those of us who had to wear them.

And by the 80's only "old men" would have worn sideburns at all!

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Couldn't have said it better myself. I know people like to bag out 80s style and fashion, but at least it was interesting. The 70s were just god-awful. I don't care popular they are - anything even vaguely resembling bell ottomh (bell bottoms, flares, boot cut and some so-called 'straight' legged pants or jeans will never ever ever never crossed the threshold of MY house. In fact.....I'd tight roll before wearing that trashy crap.

Also despise: platform shoes of any kind, and any height lag form; polyester; hot pants or short shorts; the colours maize, avocado, and rust (especially when combined...c'mon it looks like puke no matter how you use them together); afro's on white people; long side burns or mutton chops; "silk" shirts, especially on men.........seriously, I could go on for a decade.

The only thing from the 70s worth preserving is some of the music.

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"But you have to admit, the style of the 70's was AWESOME."

I was alive in the 70's. The fashions were AWFUL! Leisure suits, shirts with massive collars, ghastly earth tones like brown, orange, light blues, and green.

Watching an episode Match Game is tatamount to torture, nowadays.

"You people voted for Hubert Humphrey! And you killed Jesus!" - Raoul Duke

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[deleted]

>is that why Kent was considered a dork? Because he had sideburns?

More the suck-up attitude, the braces (in college?), the car, the glasses, and general demeanor. Schoolboy frames were somewhat popular at the time, but usually darker frames than he had. No, Kent was a dork for far more than his sideburns...

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There were many things that were big in the 80s, and the no sideburns look was nothing compared to what women did to their hair back then. Thanks to the 80s, I absolutely hate hairspray.

When life gives you the Jonas Brothers, throw them back and demand THE BEATLES!

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"There were many things that were big in the 80s, and the no sideburns look was nothing compared to what women did to their hair back then. Thanks to the 80s, I absolutely hate hairspray."

Amen to that... The smell of Aquanet or that apple smell of salon selectives made me wanna puke.

When I was in high school, we were afraid to light our cigarettes in the bathrooms, fearing we'd blow up the school, because the girls bathrooms were a few feet away, and the you could smell the hairspray up and down the hallway.

But at least it covered up the smell of our smoke! :)

"You people voted for Hubert Humphrey! And you killed Jesus!" - Raoul Duke

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[deleted]

Where exactly was the "no sideburns" look banned or frowned upon? There were many musicians, artists, actors, and media personalities donning Side-burns from the big choppers to the sleek whiskers from the early 80s all the way into the 90s.





(¯`i´¯)´·¸.)‹^›

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[deleted]

what about a neck beard? yay or nay?



A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

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Yes. Sideburns were "out" during the 80s. Of course there were people that still wore them, but they were the exception that confirms the rule.

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Sideburns were verboten in the 80s due to excessive use in the 60s and 70s that caused a massive backlash.

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Yup! Sideburns would have brought you much teasing in the 80s. I can distinctly remember making fun of guys with any resemblance of having side burns,

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oh yeah no sideburns to the point of, what we called "whitewalls" which was, as a few people have mentioned, shaving the hair above the ear to create a line of bare skin... that could be anywhere from about 1/2 inch to maybe 2 inches to create "the Boz" look...

I'm a girl and I had short hair with whitewalls about 1983 or so.. .very cool at the time :)

and yeah, sideburns would have labelled you as a hippie or rockabilly, depending on the rest of your clothing choices :)

I was 19 in 1980, so I was a total fashion victim, followed just about every trend there was at some point.. the clothes and styles were so much fun, so much color and so many choices, and if you weren't married to one style, you could switch up how you dressed... miss those days, except for the epic shoulder pads, it was good to lose those!

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Haha.....I was 12 in 1980, so I spent my entire teenage years in the 80's. Great time to be alive. I clearly rocked the big hair, the mullet and ended up with the Tom Cruise, Top Gun style at the end. Lots of fun.

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