1 post tagged “mullet”
From Wikipedia:
The mullet's origins are from Joseph George Newman. Urban legends have it dating back to 19th Century fishermen, who wore their hair long in the back to keep warm — hence the term mullet. The Notes section of the Viking edition of Lydia Davis's translation of Swann's Way by Proust states "Jean Baptiste Prosper Bressant was a well-known actor who introduced a new hairstyle, which consisted of wearing the hair in a crew cut in front and longer in the back."
The mullet became popular in the 1970s, due in part to the influence of English glam rock artist David Bowie, who wore the haircut during his Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs phases. Women also wore the style--Florence Henderson, a star of the sitcom The Brady Bunch, has a mullet in the opening sequence from the show's 1973-1974 season. The hairstyle achieved further popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s among entertainers with receding hairlines such as Anthony Geary of "Luke and Laura" fame from the soap opera General Hospital and the singer Michael Bolton.
In the 1980s, the mullet became big and bouffant, and bemulleted men often indulged in other 1980s hair crazes such as spiked hair and blonde highlights. In the early 1990s, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky" mullet fostered both imitation and ridicule.
The Beastie Boys 1994 song "Mullet Head" made fun of the hairstyle, and a year later band member Mike D discussed the mullet at length in issue 2 of the band's Grand Royal magazine:
There's nothing quite as bad as a bad haircut. And perhaps the worst of all is the cut we call The Mullet.
It goes on to lampoon the hairstyle over several pages, including many photographs of celebrities sporting mullets. Soon after the article was published, it became popular for fans of the band, and for youth culture in general, to mock the hairstyle.
The Oxford English Dictionary included "Mullet" into its lexicon in 2001 and cited that 1995 article as the first published use of the term; the entry also included the lyrics to "Mullet Head". The OED says that the term was "apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip hop group the Beastie Boys."[1] [2]
The Grand Royal article apparently initiated a trend of anti-mullet sentiment. In the late 1990's, Musician Wesley Willis followed this trend with his popular novelty song, "Cut the Mullet". In the song, Willis exhorts mullet wearers to:
Take your ass to the Barber Shop ... Tell the Barber you're sick of looking like an asshole.
On their 1998 album Hitler Bad, Vandals Good, southern California punk band the Vandals released one of their most popular songs, "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.
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. 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).Despite its reputation, the mullet remains a moderately popular hairstyle among certain social groups in various Western countries. It is also fairly popular among the 18-34 age group in some East European countries, notably the Czech Republic. In the U.S. and Canada, the mullet is particularly associated with blue collar men, fans of country and heavy metal music, American football 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, or with Central and Eastern Europeans, particularly professional footballers. In Australia the 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 slam poetry 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
Many people consider the Pittsburgh region as the "mullet capital of America", both by those who live in the region and by those who live outside it. This has been considered both a sense a pride and as a stereotype for the city, as Pittsburgh's love for the mullet is unknown. An example as to how much the city loves the haircut was in 1999, when then-Penguins superstar Jaromir Jagr had his mullet cut--and it was actually reported as its own story on the local news. Popular radio station WDVE, which coincidently is a classic rock station from the height of the mullet's popularity, has also contributed to the mullet's popularity in the city as a form of self-deprecation.
The mullet is typically associated with the "Red States" of America, as illustrated by the satirical report "Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values" (posted 12 November 2004) at http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2004/11/blue_state_blue.html:
In August 2006, the mullet became the focus of a charged political debate when George Allen, Republican Senator from Virginia and Presidential hopeful, referred to an arguably mulleted worker from his opponent's campaign as "macaca," a type of monkey and potentially offensive slur.It was one day last spring," says Ellen McCormack. "My life partner Carol and I were in the garage, working on a giant Donald Rumsfeld papier mache head for the Bay Area March Against the War, when Rain walked by. I thought he looked kind of strange, so I stopped him and looked closely into his eyes. Then I realized the truth – he was wearing a mullet. I was shocked, but he swore to me that it was only ironic. After a few months, it was clear Rain had lied to us – that hideous Kentucky Waterfall was completely earnest," she adds, choking back sobs...
I was told I could not celebrate halloween at work today. I did. In my own little way.
