Today, I am writing in view of a class of elementary school students, and, while these two dozen kids constitute a relatively small sample, there are four of them wearing mullet haircuts.
There are eighty species of mullet (the fish) and almost as many names for the hairstyle: the coat rack, 10-90, Camaro crash helmet, hockey hair, beaver paddle, Tennessee top hat, Mississippi mud flap, and achy breaky big mistakey. While the term “mullet” is generally credited to Mike D of the Beastie Boys in his 1994 song, “Mullet Head,” there is evidence of the haircut depicted on artifacts as ancient as first-century Great Britain. One scholarly theory is that the cut was useful for keeping the hair out of the eyes and the neck warm. Perhaps this is the appeal to modern third-graders. I notice that, unlike their classmates, these mullet heads do not wear caps or hoods.
Or maybe they want to show off their style. Business in the front, and party in the back!
Some of the mullet’s greatest hits
These children may be copying the preferences of their older siblings, cousins, and neighbors. According to the website Beauty Launchpad, Gen-Z is “the most obsessed with this shaggy style.” There are Instagram pages to prove this claim.
I, a late Gen-Xer, keep my hair short all the way around, in part for convenience and also for social acceptability. At this stage in my life, I’m not looking to make waves with a so-called Kentucky waterfall.
Yet, I do admire these children running free, as unrestrained as their long hair flying behind them.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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