For $35 or so and a couple of hours with the hairdresser you can have the Batman logo snipped, clipped and dyed into your hair. The bat-do will not rub off, it will not wash out.
It will only fade away and grow out over time. The obvious question is: Why do this to your head?"I don't know, to be different," said Ryan Green, 13, of Anderson, Calif., who has been sporting the bat look for a few weeks.
Ryan said his mother's "eyes bulged out when she saw it" and that his father calls him bat boy, but neither is bothered by the out-of-the-norm hair style. His 11-year-old brother Casey wanted one at first, but is now leaning toward a plan to have his football numbers cut into his hair.
Ryan's interest in the haircut was triggered by the release this summer of the movie "Batman."
"I like the Batman symbol," Ryan said, adding that he has seen the movie three times. "I have a couple of (Batman) shirts. I have a couple posters. I have a couple of pins."
And now he's got bat hair - a design destined to stay with him for several weeks. (Although there is always the option of removing the insignia by buzzer-clipping the remaining hair to minuscule stubs).
The bat cuts, part of this summer's batmania, showed up in the big cities after the release of the movie and has now made its way to smaller towns.
Pat Manly of Designer Headliners in Redding, Calif., got her first request to shave and snip a bat into the back of a head a few weeks ago.
"A kid showed up at the shop and had a People magazine (with a story on bat cuts)," Miss Manly said. She used the magazine photos as a guide and started clipping. Since then she's done five haircuts, including one on 10-year-old Jonathan of Central Valley, Calif.
"When I go in the stores they all think it's neat," Jonathan said. Although he noted that a few people say, "Who did that to your hair?"
A less drastic option than the bat cut is the bat spray. The logo is sprayed onto hair with temporary hair color that washes out with the first shampoo. That costs $5, Miss Manly said.
But for the full works - trimming and dying the bat into the hair -customers pay $35, Miss Manly said. They also can expect to spend two hours in the shop, she said.
"You basically shave it right down to the scalp," she said, explaining that scissors and a stencil are used to make the design of the bat. The bat is then dyed black while the surrounding area is dyed yellow. She said it takes about two months for the design to grow out.