Partial to It

Gen Zers have deemed side parts hopelessly outdated, but new defenders see the appeal.

- Thessaly la force

I recently had to renew my passport, and when I paged through it, there, staring back at me, was a picture of myself a decade younger—with a side part. What a shock! For the past several years I had been studiously parting my hair down the middle, shamed by TikTokers into believing the style was universally more flattering. Search the internet and you’ll find thousands of #MiddlePartChallenge videos testing its supposedly superior aesthetics. Suddenly, we millennials were dating ourselves, and I didn’t want to look old—who does? So down the middle I went, growing out my layers until I could wear two thick bunches of hair on either side of my face like Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things or a Kardashian in a confessional video.