1950s: A new breed of movie star -- Marlon Brando, above, with Vivien Leigh from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and James Dean -- play characters who wear rumpled T-shirts, sport messy hair and look as if they might not have showered that day. (Warner Brothers / Getty Images)
1990s: Kurt Cobain, the straggly-haired lead singer of Nirvana and torchbearer for the Seattle Sound, manages to reset the bar for celebrity grooming standards absurdly low. (Frank Micelotta / Getty Images)
2002: Moisturized, highlighted, sarong-sporting, nail-polish-wearing British footballer (uh, soccer player, on this side of the Pond) David Beckham becomes a poster child for -- and inadvertently popularizes -- the 8-year-old term “metrosexual,” which immediately sets advances in men’s grooming back a century. (Chad Rachman / Associated Press)
Nov. 2, 2010: A tonsorially diverse twosome -- member of the clean-pate club Jerry Brown, left, and the lusciously locked Gavin Newsom -- are elected California’s next governor and lieutenant governor respectively (neither one by a hair). (Gabriel Bouys / Getty Images)
