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The eighties was a great decade to have grown up in, there’s no doubt about that, but as with most decades us children of the 1980’s still have the possibility of a few old photographs in the family album that we look at and cringe in horror at what we looked like.
Luckily for me I escaped the fashion mistake that is today’s post, but I’ll wager if If you have a photo of yourself sporting the hairstyle that came to be known as the “Mullet”, it’ll be one of the photos you cringe at. For your own sake, I hope that picture was taken before the early nineties…
When people think of hair styles from the eighties the term “big hair” is often used, and the Mullet falls nicely into this group. From the front and sides, the typical Mullet looked fairly smart, with a nice centre parting or perhaps back combed or slightly spiked. Yes, for the most part (there are exceptions) the front looked OK.
It was the back that let the Mullet down. The hair was allowed to grow long, normally to around shoulder length, which on a bloke (for the Mullet was first and foremost a male hair cut) that always looked a bit wrong. It gave the effect that you had gone to the barber and only had enough money for half a hair cut, so the barber didn’t bother doing anything at the back.
Why did the Mullet catch on? Well, for some reason footballers and other sportsmen took a liking to the style, so of course impressionable young boys wanted to look like their sporting heroes. Pop stars also liked the look (I’m looking at you a-ha, but there were many more) so they were another big influence.
Oh, and there was DJ and Fun House presenter Pat Sharp, who sported a particularly large Mullet for far too long, although I don’t suppose there were many boys who went into the barbers and said, “make me look like Pat Sharp“.
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Funnily enough, the mullet is still very much alive down here in Oz, where it seems to be particularly popular among bogans (the Australian equivalent of chavs). Actually, although I’ve never sported one myself, I’ve never had much of a problem with this particular hairstyle. Sure, when I first saw one, I initially found the contrast between the hair at the front and that at the back a bit odd, but that only ended up giving the hairstyle a peculiar sort of appeal for me (hmm, I wonder why I never did end up getting one). Far, far, FAR more hideous, I think, is a variation of the mullet called the skullet, which is what you get when a guy who’s going bald evidently decides that if he lets the hair he has left grow really, really long, it’ll somehow make people overlook the hair he’s lost. Wrong!
Hey! Just wanted to say that you have a great website. As someone who also has an 80s nostalgia blog, I was just wondering if you would want to trade web links. I would love to put you in my list of Totally Tubular 80s wesbites. Just let me know – Thanks!
In either case, I will return to your fun blog!
Tha mullet is also still alive and flourishing in Georgia USA. Is that banjos I hear playing?
Lands that time forgot it would seem, at least for some people anyway…
And yes, the skullet is way worse than the mullet, I agree.
And it still seems to very popular in Scottish football!!!
Mullets from the 1980s! http://www.80sfootball.com/home/the-mullet.html
What a tasteful array of manly hairdos. Thanks 80sfootball! Brian Bosworth’s shaved sides are particular fetching. Not!