Mullet (haircut)

A mullet is a hairstyle that is short in the front, top, and sides, but long in the back, at least to the shoulder blades. As a result it is sometimes jokingly referred to as "business in the front, party in the back." The hairstyle was popular from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. Mullets have been worn by males and females. The mullet is distinct from the rattail, which consists of a long, narrow "tail" of hair growing from the back of the head.

History and cultural significance

In the early 1990s,  country singer Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky" mullet fostered both imitation and ridicule. Yet, others have also speculated that the origin of the term Mullet comes directly from the 1967 prison film Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman and George Kennedy, in which Kennedy's character refers to Southern men with long hair as mullet heads. This term is also used in Mark Twain's 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Tom Sawyer says of his aunt and uncle: They're so confiding and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all.

The Grand Royal article apparently initiated a trend of anti-mullet sentiment.] In the late 1990s, musician Wesley Willis followed this trend with his popular novelty song, Cut the Mullet.

On its 1998 album Hitler Bad, Vandals Good, southern California punk band the Vandals released "I've Got an Ape Drape". Ape Drape is a regional term for a mullet. At the end of the song, they go down a list of other names including Hockey Hair, Forbidden Hair, Achy-Breaky Hair, Norco Neck Warmer, Shom and eventually Mullet.

Ska-punk band Five Iron Frenzy released "The Phantom Mullet" on its 2000 album All the Hype That Money Can Buy, with the lyrics, "Cruisin' downtown in your Camaro, REO Speedwagon's on your stereo. It's kind of catchy, kind of a virus: cuttin' your hair like Billy Ray Cyrus."

That same year, members of the Ohio psych-garage band Tears on Sunday performed a series of sets across the Midwestern United States, as a mock-glam/emo group known as The Mullets (pronounced in the French style, with a silent final consonant), as a protest against the forthcoming trend of 80's nostalgia.

In the 2000s, a number of web sites sprung up with photographs of people with mullets, often accompanied by mocking comments based on stereotypes of mullet-wearers. Jeff Tremaine had his hair mulletted à la Billy Ray Cyrus in a black barber shop during the first season of Jackass. The mullet and its associated lifestyle were central themes in movies such as FUBAR: The Movie and Joe Dirt (2001), and television shows such as The Mullets (2003-2004). Other notables with mullets include former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell and adult movie performer Justin Dragon.

Despite its reputation, the mullet remains a moderately popular hairstyle among certain social groups in various Western countries. It is especially popular and even considered to be modern (vintage retro) in Spain and can be widely identified in the streets of cities like Barcelona and Madrid.{[fact}} The Spanish mullet is generally shorter and lighter than a classic mullet, only using the last inch or so of hair above the hairline. It rarely extends beyond the neck. Also in Spain, the mullet is associated with two different ethnic groups: young Gypsies and young separatists from the Basque Country. It is also fairly popular among the 18–34 age group in some East European countries, notably Romania, where it is most popular among high school aged males. In the U.S. and Canada, the mullet is particularly associated with blue collar men, fans of country and heavy metal music, soccer fans, and ice hockey players. Many homosexual women of the butch variety also sport this hairstyle, so much so, many see this as a social identifier. In the United Kingdom the mullet is most commonly associated with thugs, Pat Sharp or with Central and Eastern Europeans, particularly professional footballers. In Australia this haircut is associated with Bogans and Australian rules football players, particularly those from the 1980s. In recent years, the mullet has enjoyed resurgent popularity among the hip set, in particular the emo sub-culture, probably due to its association with 1980s retro kitsch. During some light-hearted research on his show Johnny Vaughan declared that Germans, Americans, Australians, these are the real mullet men.

Hip hop and poetry slam artist Sage Francis also debates the mullet as a cultural phenomenon in his 2000 EP Still Sick... Urine Trouble, as the haircut of his town in Providence, Rhode Island.

Etymology

Mullet has been the Australian slang for the hair style popular with musicians, westies, bogans and AFL football players since the 70s, possibly coming from the saying "looking like a stunned mullet". Henri Mollet, French fashion guru of the 70s, is perhaps the real source of the name however, according to debate in the Guardian. The Beastie Boys Grand Royal Magazine 1995 issue contained a piece on the mullet. The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the first published use of the term, along with the lyrics from the Beastie Boys' 1994 song Mullet Head. The OED says that the term was apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys. The name could have come from a scene from the film Cool Hand Luke in which the term was used to ridicule a prisoner for his low intellect.

External links

• RateMyMullet.com