Ok, I was walking around town yesterday, I decided to play hooky and take a mental health day, I wanted to go to a couple used book stores that I usually don’t have time to go to.
I was astonished to see how many people in this town have a mullet. For those who don’t know what a mullet is–its basically a feathered hairstyle where most of the head is groomed and short and of course feathered, yet the back is kept long. Long enough to reach past ones neck…
OK, when I was 16 in 1986 going to Guns and Roses concerts or going to see Twisted Sister for that matter, a Mullet was actually in style and kinda cool. I had long hair but it was not feathered. So why am I ranting about Mullets? I am not really ranting I just think it is kind of funny that some people still have mullets!!
Do other people see this across the country, and in other lands as well?
Are the Mullets making a return? Should we be scared?
I had a mullet in high school for all of, let’s say, three months. This was enough time for the damn thing to find it’s way into one of my school photos. There I am, goofy grin, peach-fuzz on my lip, yellow Hobie T-shirt, and Mullet Pride USA. Flash forward 15 years - the picture is framed and proudly displayed in my mother’s hallway. She knows I hate the repulsive thing, but she refuses to take it down. I’ve hid it on numerous occasions. It’s now a very famous photo among the few friends that have been lucky enough to accompany me over to Mom’s house. I think my mom gets some sort of sadistic pleasure from the sounds of ridicule and laughter it elicits.
When I was getting my hair cut last month, the girl in the chair next to me asked her stylist if she ever had trouble fulfilling a client’s request. The stylist confessed she has a hard time agreeing to do mullets. Even though I’d been hiding the fact that I was eavesdropping, I couldn’t help myself and I snickered, then started really laughing. So my stylist and her stylist starting talking about the whole mullet thing, and how they’ve tried to talk people out of them. But yeah, they are still being requested in salons across the USA.
But how else am I supposed to tell the world that I’m ready to rock out with my cock out? What other hairstyle says, “Hey, baby, let’s me and you get it on in my Trans Am”? What else am I supposed to do with all these cans of Aqua-Net?
I have personally witnessed mullet maintenance within the past year. I was waiting for my turn in a Hair Cuttery in Baltimore when a gentleman with a fine blond neckwarmer was called, took a seat within both view and hearing, and politely responded to the stylist?s inquiry that he wanted her to ?keep the top and sides short and let the back alone.? I felt like I was experiencing a little bit of Americana.
There?s a bar in rural Pennsylvania featuring cheap pitchers, pool tables, a kickass selection of metal and country on the jukebox, and really good wings?.well, actually I guess that describes most bars in rural and urban Pennsylvania, but there?s one in particular I frequent. Before we go in, we place bets on how many mullet sightings we will have.
I’ve had a similar close encounter as sugaree. Last month, when I was walking into the place where I get my hair cut, I bumped into a large man with a mullet at the doorway. He was exiting the shop. I was aghast. The man I’ve trusted to cut my hair these past 5 years had just performed a mullet on another man. He was still sweeping up hair, or mullet remnants as I immediately thought.
I didn’t know what to say. I sat in silence for most of my cut. It was like a betrayal of some kind. I didn’t even know that kind of cruel cut was in him, my once-trusted hair guy.
In the town I am from, there is a hair salon that will give you a T-shirt that says “Mullets are cool” if you pay them to cut your hair into a mullet. The next day, they promise, you can come back and get a free, haircut of your choice. Really.
There’s a predominantly white, Southern culturally oriented community not too far from me, where the majority of the population work in construction or the skilled trades. The sight of mullets on the men and women in that 'burg is quite common. My thinking is that they just aren’t attuned with how popular culture derides the mullet; they’re part of a subculture where mullets are still considered cool, and their exposure to the “outside world” is very limited.
One day, around lunchtime, I was near that town, so I decided to hunt down a barber shop; I was overdue for a haircut. I found a barbershop downtown, walked in, and saw … a barber with a mullet, kutting a kid’s hair into a mullet. I said “uhhh, I gotta’ go,” and eventually found a good old man’s barber.
My son has been growing a rat-tail over the past few months. It’s not a style I would have chosen, but I’ve always considered hair style to be an acceptable way for children to express themselves. It always grows back, I tell them. Do what you want. But the first time he came back after deciding to do this, his stylist had apparently not understood, and left a fringe across the entire back of his head.
I was horrified and asked my husband what had gotten into him, letting them leave our son in the process of growing a mullet? I don’t mind when my oldest dyes hers purple or the little girls go out in public with the strange, barette-filled hairstyles they give each other. But I draw the line at mullets. Apparently, I’m not as open-minded as I thought!
