Theducktail is a men'shaircut style popular during the 1950s. It is also called theduck's tail,duck's ass,duck's arse, or simplyD.A. and is also described asslicked back hair.[1][2] The hair ispomaded (greased), combed back around the sides, and parted centrally down the back of the head.
Joe Cirello, a barber from Philadelphia, said he had invented the duck's ass in 1940, and he called the swung hair sides and their termination 'The Swing', after the musical style of the day. He'd practiced on a lonely blind boy for about eighteen months.[3] The duck's tail became an emblematic coiffure of disaffected young males across the English-speaking world during the 1950s. In Britain, it formed part of the visual identity ofteddy boys androckers, along with thequiff and the elephant's trunk.
The style required that thehair be combed back around the sides of the head.[4][5][6] The teeth edge of acomb was then used to define a central parting running from the crown to the nape at the back of the head, resembling, to many, the rear end of aduck. The hair on the top front of the head was either deliberately disarrayed so that untidy strands hung down over the forehead, or combed up and then curled down into an 'elephant's trunk' which would hang down as far as the top of the nose. The sides were styled to resemble the folded wings of the duck.
A variant of the style, theDetroit, consisted of the long back and sides combined with aflattop. There is also a version involving a much shorter flat-top with long back and sides known as theFlat-Top Boogie orFlat-Top with Fenders. In California, the top hair was allowed to grow longer and combed into a wavelike pompadour shape known as a "breaker".
The ducktail hair style contributed to the termgreasers: to accomplish this look, muchpomade (hair grease) was required to hold the hair in place. This was still the era of hair creams, so it only required an increase in the amount to make hair remain in the desired style. Brands of grease used include Black & White, Sweet Georgia Brown, Royal Crown, andMurrays. On the West Coast of the US, pomades such as Dixie Peach orBrylcreem, and tonics such asWildroot Cream-Oil were popular.
To ensure that the hair was just so, the wearer often touched up the D.A. many times during the day by running his greased comb through it. This led to a stylized means of handling the comb by drawing it out of the back pocket of a pair of jeans using the extended index and middle finger, and, holding it thus, running the comb through the two side "wings" of the style to adjust their shape.
The D.A. quickly became a stereotypical feature of rebels,mobsters, and nonconformists, and gained popularity especially after the rise of rock 'n roll legendElvis Presley, who sported the same look. Although the ducktail was adopted byHollywood to represent the wild youth of the 1950s, only a minority of males actually sported a D.A., even amongst the BritishRockers andTeddy Boys of the same era. The style became popular in India after film starShammi Kapoor sported it. It is also associated with men ofMediterranean,Eastern European and/orLatin American descent, though in slightly different styles.
The dictionary definition ofducktail at Wiktionary