<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/teenage-mullets-are-freaking-me-out-but-im-all-for-them>
"A week ago, at the train station, four boys aged about 15, in matching
uniforms, buffeted past me. Childless, I have minimal contact with rambunctious
teens; small and easily knocked over, I’ve learned to cower in their presence
when I do. Not this time! “Oh my god!” I blurted, staring in shock at their
bobbing heads as they departed: “They’ve all got mullets!”
Yes, I know that modern history’s most infamous hairstyle has made its
comeback; hair historians believe the hairdresserlessness of pandemic lockdowns
liberated many a household barber from both scrutiny and shame. Last year its
post-pandemic popularity was reported in the media as an amusing fad. Twelve
more months have passed and it’s still here … and it’s completely freaking me
out.
My reaction dates me with precision. I was a child during the mullet’s most
aggressive previous popularity, back in the 1980s. Hair cut short at the front
and sides but kept long at the neck was avant-garde in the 70s when David Bowie
and Rod Stewart did it, but by the 80s “business at the front, party at the
back” was the style de rigueur, adopted by teen heartthrobs from a
pre-sex-tape-scandal Rob Lowe to a pre-Jesus Kirk Cameron … and then by just
about everyone. Hulk Hogan and Andre Agassi had them. Australian pop-singer
Brian Mannix and pop-footballer Warwick Capper were defined by the haircut as
if obliged hosts of a demonic bargain. Mel Gibson’s performance in the
Lethal
Weapon movie franchise was 90% his hair.
So generationally definitive was the ’do was that by the time I’d grown into an
actual teenager in the 1990s, the mullet was not merely out of fashion, it was
an invitation to social ostracism on your scalp, the barnet of Cain. You’d
rather cut off your head than cut your hair into it. In 1997 – the memory burns
so deep – a committed contrarian peer replaced his newly shorn dreadlocks with
an “ironic” mullet; his friends hesitated to appear with him in public, his
girlfriend refused to root him. It was gone again in four days."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
