I think the confusion comes from the distinction between culture and counterculture. The irony (or lack thereof) lies with the observers expectations.

If someone's expectation is that a green Mohawk means someone is throwing off the cultural legacy and expectations handed down to them, then yeah, a toddler with a Mohawk is pretty ironic. If someone just thinks is a haircut that looks cool, obviously not.

If someone thinks or remembers when Mohawk had that meaning, they might read into the fact of it being changing to a simple mainstream aesthetic cosmetic option.

Thing is that's overly simple thinking IMO, throwing off the cultural legacy literally means replacing it with something else. Culture has a legacy, what comes before, and it's literally impossible to not have one. So that Mohawk is replacing a "normal" haircut, replacing a "normal" culture. There is nothing ironic about showing your child that it's ok to choose something outside the mainstream normal culture, especially if you have done so. It's the whole point. The Mohawk said and meant "I reject your culture and choose my own", it would be ironic to have chosen that and then teach your kid to be in the mainstream culture.

Depends why you were/are punk and what it means to you. Is it a fashion statement, a music genre, a lifestyle, a political faction, etc..

No one agrees, of course. In any case, for me, it's not something I'd force on my kid. Sort of goes against the spirit.

You are going to let him choose his own hairstyle.

Toddlers don't have that level of agency.

I would say that Toddlers are mostly not given agency.

Toddlers want things and they don't want other things. Their parents don't permit much agency, because.

I'm probably agreeing with you but I wasn't sure of your implication.

Toddlers are 1-3 years old. Huge difference in agency between a 1 year old and a 3 year old. 1 year old can't dress themselves let alone make choices about dress.

I guess what I'm saying is that a 3 year old can sometimes pick out their clothes (sometimes they will hate the consequences). They can't really commit to long term decisions about what hairstyle they will want to live with for months, or manage the upkeep of the style they pick.

Yes. I will ask my 2 year old what hair styles he likes.

You could show them pictures.

Well, how did you as a teen decide to do tall green hair?

I actually agree with your point, but there's a really solid devil's advocate side to take against it, too.

If you were punk you wouldn't give a fuck what I think and wouldn't have wasted your breath on me getting defensive.

Just sayin'.

> If you were punk you wouldn't give a fuck what I think

sure, and anarchy means total chaos and no organization at all. who says that punks can't discuss or give a fuck, lol.

GP didn't say he was a punk, he said he had long hair. I think you're reading defensiveness into it, all I saw was a reasonably interesting point.

Let's look at the reply:

"It's not just commodification. If you were a punk in the 80s with a green mohawk, you might find it cute to put one on your kid in the 2000s. I have long hair, my son has long hair. This isn't a commodification of a culture, it's me, like every parent ever, using my culture to inform how I raise my kids. What am I going to do? Not dress and present my kid how I want to and how I identify?"

He is literally defending his decisions to "dress and present" his kid against my comment about commodification, as if I'm attacking his decisions. He didn't even understand my point: in the 1970's you would have been ostracized (or arrested) for having a green mohawk. In the 2010's, kindergarten teachers ooh-and-ahh over it.

That's the DIRECT result of the commodification: it became mainstream because people spend decades diffusing it into normality. He totally missed the point, and then got defensive.

Actually, in the context of today's internet discourse, the reply is defensively invoking both the "appropriation" and "not-all-men" tone in the same reply. Impressive.