It’s been two years since Gen Z rose up in condemnatory harmony to inform its elders that side parts are uncool, and they have yet to recant. And as much as I like to think IDGAF about the arbitrary opinions of people who aren’t old enough to remember when U2 put an unremovable album on everyone’s iPhones, I have found myself sticking to a middle part like my social life depends on it. (It’s slightly off-center because of a cowlick — please don’t rebuke me, young hip people.) But thanks to one of the most influential 40-somethings on the planet, Kim Kardashian, I may finally feel a little more confident and unapologetic about flipping my hair to one side.
Kardashian posted a couple of photos to her Instagram grid on Thursday night in which the Xennial (that’s someone who straddles the Gen X and Millennial generations by having the audacity to be born in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s) is seen with long, voluminously styled hair that is very distinctly side-heavy. The glossy, casual-glam style is so deeply flipped that you can see only one of the entrepreneur’s gigantic diamond stud earrings.
Kardashian, much more often than not, wears her hair middle-parted. Scrolling through her Instagram, it’s almost impossible to find her wearing her hair down without serving a sliver of center scalp. So while these new photos may seem to some like just a couple of gratuitous elevator glamour shots, to me, it’s a call to action, a permission slip, an act of rebellion.
