The Surprisingly Long History of the Mullet

Lance Geiger of The History Guy, in his distinctively forthright manner, offered a hair-raising explanation regarding the long, even ancient history of the mullet and warns of the sad inevitability of historic mistakes repeating themselves.

A July, 2022 edition of the newspaper The Mirror notes: “Mullet ‘Back in Fashion’ as 80s Haircut Soars in Popularity Among Men and Women.” That grim news has understandably left many of us recoiling in shock and wonder just how the human race could have forgotten the failures of its past, only to repeat them in the present.

Geiger recounted how this particular style of “business in the front, party in the back” has been with us for a very long time. However, the most recent popularity of this coif lives somewhere within the late 20th century and has a lot of nicknames.

While some seem to think that the cut is quintessentially American, the trend is actually much broader in Canada where the cut is often called hockey hair.  Australia called it the lion’s mane before the Beastie Boys popularized the name mullet. …Nicknames include the North Carolina neck warmer, the SNL Crisis, the Tennessee Top Hat, the Kentucky waterfall, the Missouri Compromise, the back job, the lobster, the Achy Breaky big mistakey, ….the mud flap, the ape drape, the Camaro crash helmet, the schlong (a portmanteau of short and long), and the Beaver paddle.