History of the Mullet
Wikipedia describes mullets as follows:
According to urban legend, the mullet dates back to the 19th century, when fishermen 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 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 pop performers Michael Bolton and Phil Collins.
More Mullet Menagerie
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. A wide range of mullets
can be seen in the 1984 video of “Do They Know It’s Christmas”,
featuring many of the biggest British pop stars of the time. An exemplary
popular mullet-man was Richard Dean Anderson in the ‘80s TV series MacGyver. 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.
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. It seems unlikely that he’s referring
to the hairstyle; rather, it sounds like it is intended to connote stupidity,
and is likely a reference to the fish of the same name.
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Click here to log in.What a great guide! Send this over to Kid Rock!
OH LAUGH! this is a great guide!
I’m afraid of that family. Please, they’re hurting me.
My advice for the sister-in-law is get her very drunk then cut it off when she’s passed out. Bald has to be better… WTF!
Haha this is great!
I love this guide. My sister-in-law still has a mullet (and she thinks she looks good). Goatgirl…please give me advice on how to tell her it needs to go.