The Mullet: Back from the Brink

The Mullet, once considered the mainstay of American hairstyle, has been lost and forgotten never to rise again. Or has it? Once considered the cornerstone of American style, the Mullet has now fallen by the wayside. What caused this piece of fashion history to lose its prowess, its attraction, its ability to warm the hearts of millions? For many, we may never really know the truth.

What was once considered near the edge of extinction, the Mullet has made a dramatic comeback in recent years leading many experts to question if it had ever really been in danger of extinction in the first place. Where has this dramatic comeback occurred you might be asking? Simple. Construction sites across America. And many experts are now saying that it never really left, but merely retreated to these safe havens, lurking and waiting for the day of its mighty comeback. And come back it did.

Go to any construction site across America and you’ll find four core distinctions; safety equipment (brightly colored safety vests, hard hats, safety glasses, etc), heavy machinery, sweaty men (and women for that matter), and the Mullet as the preferred hairstyle of choice (again, for both men and women).

For many of us who feared (or hoped as it may be) that the Mullet had followed the way of the Dodo bird or bikes with banana seats, sadly I’m afraid, this is just not the case. The Mullet is alive and well and thriving at a construction site near you. It turns out that the Mullet and construction go hand in hand, like Mexican food and bad gas, or politicians and lying.

There’s no question that the Mullet has evolved from its original inception, which researchers hypothesize has contributed to a broad social belief that it has “gone out of style.” While some Mullet-wearers choose to keep a traditionally filthy and ratty hairdo, many have opted to comb it nicely, and others even keep theirs in nice neat braids. Perhaps most deceiving, it is not at all uncommon to spot a Mullet pulled back tidily with a hair tie or decorative clip. But despite these differences, each of these hairdos still exhibits the one classic characteristic that separates it from all other styles. “Business in the front, party in the back.”

Nobody knows what pushed the Mullet toward the brink of extinction. Some say it was tied to the introduction of punk rock, while others blame the early 90s insurgence of boy bands and their clean cut pretty-boy ‘do’s. Others insist it was a part of a far left liberal movement to socialize haircare and push the more uniform and governmentally “controlled” hairstyles of today.

Whatever it was, most would agree that as few as two years ago, the Mullet seemed lost to so society at large. There were attempts to keep the few known living Mullet-wearers in protective habitats in hopes of mating them and turning them back into the wild, but they failed miserably. The government was forced to abolish federal Mullet habitat funding after a large public outcry against the millions of dollars being spent to revive an all but dead fashion. The science just wasn’t on their side.

Even the well known Adopt-A-Mullet foundation ended up going bankrupt after it was discovered that its board of directors had been laundering money and lavishly spending it on themselves. Once word of this spread through the public and after a thorough investigation by the FBI, donations quickly dried up and left many Mullets who had once been adopted to fend for themselves, eventually being pushed out by the newest and latest styles to hit the streets.

Who would have thought after so many failed attempts to keep the Mullet around that it would rebound on its own in such a dramatic way? And yet it has, in the small confines of American construction sites, flourished beyond anyone’s belief or comprehension. It has quickly and ubiquitously become the hairstyle of choice for American construction workers, from the people holding stop signs to direct traffic, to heavy equipment operators, and even to upper management flunkies sitting in leather office chairs. The Mullet has once again rooted itself into American culture by attaching itself to the heart of America…its construction workers.

So for those of you who thought the Mullet had gone the way of the dinosaur – no longer existent, a thing of the past, something you might only find in an old photograph – I’m happy to say you are mistaken. The Mullet is thriving once again, and it would only take a small stroll to your nearest construction site to catch a glimpse of this once prominent, beautiful piece of American history. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and discover for yourself this historical fashion icon, and if you’re lucky, you just might find something else at that construction site you never thought you’d see again.