Guyliner Pictures

Ah, men in eyeliner. Love it or hate it, the trend is back in fashion, driven mainly by the awesomeness of its look on Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and its popularity among a number of punk and emo bands.

Even most people who hate guyliner LOVE Johnny Depp in guyliner as Captain Jack Sparrow. In their "guyliner exposé," the good fellows of DoubleViking.com wrote: "Fact: Jack Sparrow is the only man who can effectively pull of guyliner today. This is because the decided unmanliness of guyliner is completely counteracted by the undeniable, permanent badassity of being a fucking pirate."

I bet nobody called Ramses the Great "decidedly unmanly" for slathering on the kohl. Or maybe all those big fuck-off monuments scattered all over Egypt were just his way of overcompensating.

...For a guy who ruled Egypt, lived to the age of 92, and outlived most of his eight wives, innumerable concubines, and more than 90 children... I kind of doubt it, though.

Guyliner's big resurgence in popularity began in the 60's when David Bowie started having some fun with it. Bowie, in fact, went even further and added eyeshadow and other types of color as well as the plain black look of the Egyptian pharoahs.

In the 70's, it was taken over by Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and similar artists, mostly as a shock tactic. DoubleViking.com again:

"These guys knew that guyliner didn’t make you look more attractive, and they didn’t put it on in wimpy measures simply so they could appear more feminine. No, Alice and Ozzy slathered the stuff on, to the point where they looked like goddamned demons.

"They knew that guyliner should be used -- if used at all -- to terrify, not to attract: conservative housewives across the country reeled in shock of the things Alice and Ozzy did. Part of this shock may be attributed to the whole “biting the heads off bats” thing, but another part of it was almost assuredly the guyliner."

However, it was equally popular with the glam rock bands who often experimented, like Bowie, with eyeshadow and even glitter as well as guyliner:

Guyliner also features prominently in movies about the era, a phenomeneon of which I can only approve, especially when it gets me Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in guyliner...

Not that it takes a movie role to get McGregor and Rhys-Meyers in guyliner...

More recently, guyliner has been taken over by the punk and emo scenes, most famously by Billie Joe Armstrong and Tre Cool of Green Day and Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy. Wentz, in fact, is so famous for his guyliner that he's claimed his fans have protested when he doesn't wear it, and he's even made a guyliner tutorial video for People magazine. In addition to his work with Fall Out Boy, Wentz owns Decaydance Records, a music label whose artists include a number of other bands with propensities for guyliner, including Panic at the Disco. The members of My Chemical Romance, another band that loves the guyliner, are also friends and associates of Wentz. With the launch of his clothing line, he is increasingly recognized as a style icon even in mainstream publications.