Steve Harvey’s "Man Weave,’ Explained By An Expert

After only eight days in existence, Katt Williams’ interview on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast - with 43 million views and counting – will go down in history as a case study in contemporary interviewing, the power of (alleged) truth-telling and just plain fantastic timing.

One of the many fun nuggets that has us talking about it a week later is Williams’ “revelation” that not-so-fellow comedian Steve Harvey used to wear a “man-unit,” otherwise known as a man weave hair unit…or just simply a toupee.

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Based on social media reaction from Club Shay Shay, many of Harvey’s current or former fans must’ve simply missed the years-old revelation that his flat-top wasn’t the real deal. But hair care professionals likely always knew that Harvey’s ‘do was suspect.

“[Hairstylists] had been talking about it because it’s something that we know…we do that,” said Ms. Cassie of Chicago’s Locs By Ms. Cassie about Harvey’s hair. “His hair was just so perfect all the time you would often hear people say he has a toupee on.”

To my knowledge, Harvey himself has never admitted openly that the pristine flattop was inauthentic. But he (or one of his people) tweeted clips of Harvey on “The Steve Harvey Show” in 2022 with the caption “I still can’t believe y’all can’t believe I had hair.” The tweet hits a bit differently than it did two weeks ago.

In 2018, Harvey shared the story of his former barber during a motivational speech, stating that he paid his barber $6,000 to cut his hair four times a week when he was on tour, setting him up to start his own multi-million-dollar business.

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Sound like lies given the man-unit information…? Not necessarily, said Ms. Cassie, who has been installing wigs professionally for more than 30 years.

“I can see him having someone on his staff to keep it up because it was a wig and more than likely glued on his scalp,” she said. “It could’ve been a partial hairpiece which I’m thinking is more than likely it was because he was likely going bald at the top. They would put on a unit and taper it to fit the rest of the hair.”

Indeed, clips from Harvey’s early career show him with the flat top with the big whale hole in the middle…likely well before he could afford $1,500 haircuts.

The conversation of Harvey’s mane comes at an interesting time in social media when we’re seeing lots of divisive before-and-after videos of Black men who are balding or have Anthony Hamilton-level patchy beards get luscious “lace fronts” on their heads and faces courtesy of a stylist.

Many decry these “touch-ups” as “feminine” and suggest that weaves and the like should be left to the women. But Ms. Cassie said you can expect to see more fake hair on brothas as they catch on.

“Man-units are big right now,” she said. “It’s nothing new, but it’s newer to our culture. People more in the limelight were using them before, now but now it’s more popular with the regular person, like the mailman.”

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