As Short as it Gets- the Shaved Landing Strip

Just yesterday, when I was getting my FT tightened up for the week, I told my RB (regular barber) when he started to cut the top, "Cut it as short as you can up through here," pointing with my finger to the "landing strip area" at very top of my head. Rubbing those hairs, I said, "Get it bald right there."

My RB complied as best he could with his clippers, and at the end of the cut, he asked me if it was short enough. The cut did look great, and I left it at that. My RB is happy to whip out the lather and razor for a back-and-sides shave, but I've never seen him go for shaving the "strip" - perhaps someday I'll ask him and see if he would try it.

I've gotten a lot of flattops over the years from a lot of barbers all over the country. I've had only two who would actually use a razor and lather to shave the landing strip. One was at the Beachcomber Barbershop in Oceanside, CA, (that barber no longer works at that shop - I wish I knew where he went, I think his name was Frank) and the other was at U.S. Cavalry near Fort Campbell, on the TN/KY border.

Both of these barbers shaved my landing strip without me asking specifically for that - it was part of their service interpretation when I asked for a "flattop as short as you can cut it." Man, that was my favorite part of the cut - feeling the barber lather up the entire back and sides of my head with warm cream, plus the very center of the top. It's truly as close as you can get to a shaved bald head with some real barber cutting artistry left on the noggin. When I walked out of those shops, I was 100% convinced that those barbers had truly given me the shortest possible FT that any barber could possibly cut.

Let me step back a second for anyone who may be confused about the use of the term "landing strip" here. Commonly, the term refers to a shaved style of women's pubic hair. However, it also has a different meaning with men's flattop haircuts. To me, other than the horizontal flat plane of the haircut, there is nothing that more distinguishes a flattop cut than the landing strip. When I'm walking around in public and see a guy who I think might have a FT - but I'm not sure if it might actually be a high-and-tight, butch cut, crewcut, etc. - I look for the dude to tip his head so I can see his landing strip. If it's the shortest at the very top, I know he's got a flat.

This is really what we call a "horseshoe flattop" (my personal favorite type of FT) - meaning that, if you were to look at the haircut from above (or on a tilted down head), you'd see nothing more than a horseshoe-shaped ring of hair on the man's head with the rest being either shaved bald or a few days growth of stubble.

When I'm wearing a flattop, it's almost always a horseshoe, and I'll write about that in another post. But amazingly, the U.S. Marine Corps has explcitly banned a shaved landing strip. Sadly, this has been misinterpreted as a ban on all short flattops (more on that later).