The Mullet Hair Style - A Dangerous Sign of Personal Freedom?

Here in the America we often take for granted our freedoms. For example our freedom to sport terrible hair cuts. You'd think that wearing ones hair anyway they like would be a basic personal freedom. A basic human source of dignity. After all will all of the other rules and regulations that govern ones life even here in the west, you'd think that hair style is one place where one could let their freak flag fly.

But that's not always the case. Take the United States and Europe in the 60s. Young people shook off the clean cut, crew cuts of the 50s and all of the social conformity and sexual repression that went with it and let their locks down. Boys competed with girls for the longest hair and straight laced suburbanites went ballistic and locked themselves indoors. The hippies just by growing their hair long and perhaps adding a few flowers seemed to threaten the very fabric of society. Who were these strange people who had weird ideas like peace was better than war? How dare the boys look like girls with their long hair?

After the invasion of rock and roll, Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis and even Hair the Musical in the seventies it seems quaint to talk about hair styles as a sort of contention in modern society. Especially with all of the piercings, tattoos and Lady Gagas that walk the earth today. But it seems that in some parts of the world hair still is a sign of rebellion and civil unrest that has to be controlled. Which brings us to one of the most dangerous hair cuts the world has ever seen - THE MULLET.

In an effort to keep their populous under control and thus guaranteed never to leave the 4th century, Iran recently banned a series of western style hair cuts including the infamous mullet.

Now I can see the desire for a mullet ban, but does one hair style really lead to the overthrow of a repressive government? Sure some hair styles these days make one stop and think but is green hair on a young person any worse than a terrible comb over on a balding man?

• The Kentucky Waterfall
• Business in the front, party in the back
• The Tennessee Tophat
• The Canadian Passport
• The Sho-lo
• The Mississippi Mudflap
• The Ape Drape
• Trouty
• Camaro Hair
• Hockey Hair
• Rat's Nest
• Soccer Hair
• The "10-90"
• The Achy Breaky Big Mistakey
• The Batty Boy Bishop
• The Beaver Paddle
• The Camaro Crash Helmet
• The El Camino Headrest
• The Missouri Compromise
• The Fridge
• The Janie Varner
• The Alabama Shag
• The Shlong (a portmanteau of short and long)
• The Short-Long
• The Shorty Long-back
• The North Carolina Neck Warmer
• The Napoleon Haircut
• The Droopy Curtains
• The Megan McCain
• The Coos Cut (For Coos Bay, Oregon)
• The Nashville Bi-level
• The Hamilton
• The Flavio (San Diego)
• The German (Long Beach)
• A Seven

What ever you call it just don't wear it next time you go hiking in Iran.

Business in the front, party in the back! The Beatie Boys were the first ones to opening discuss the mullet hair cut problem in print. As they stated in their fan magazine:

"THE ETYMOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE TERM "MULLET"

We're not sure where the term "Mullet" came from, but as usual Mike D was the first to use it around here. The New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines mullet as "any of various fishes of the family mugilidae," so it's possible that Mike was mistaken and actually thinking of a "muskrat," which of course is the same "large, aquatic, North American rodent. Ondatrazibethica, having a musky odor," immortalized in Captain and Tennile's 1976 hit "Muskrat Love." After all, the muskrat, in Webster s words, "has a thick, light brown fur used especially for women's coats," and certainly such a pelt conjures up an image of the lower-echelon mammalian nape-tuft indigenous to modern Mullets."

Since the mullet has been identified and documented many celebrities have been spotted over the years sporting a mullet as well as just the general clueless. There was even a TV show dedicated to the mullet called McGyver in which each week the star would solve hopeless situations using the power of his mullet covered brain.

• Tom Jones
• David Bowie
• Florence Henderson
• David Cassidy
• Billy Ray Cyrus
• Michael Bolton
• Phil Collins
• Joe Dirt

copyright Edward M. Fielding