For many of us this year has led to some hairstyles we wouldn’t ordinarily wear, and yes, that includes at least a few mullets.
Now the business-in-front, party-in-back look has always had a true fans.
There’s even a new photo series that was taken at the recent Australian Mulletfest!
It’s a look that can take us back to the 70s and 80s, when everyone from Martina Navratilova to MacGyver’s Richard Dean Anderson rocked a mullet.
But this most unforgettable of hairstyles has probably been around as long as humans have been cutting and styling hair.
Statues from ancient Greece show mullet-like looks are at least 2500 years old, and there’s evidence of proto-mullets even further back, in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Why has this one hairstyle been around for so long?
In ancient times, the mullet might have been functional.
Short hair in the front stays out of your eyes, while long hair in the back projects your neck from hot sun and cold wind.
The name “mullet,” though, is relatively new.
In the 1990s The Beastie Boys wrote a song using the old timey insult, “Mullet Head,” to describe a not-too-impressive dude whose prime directive in life seemed to be about his hair: “Cut the sides, don’t touch the back.”
Sometimes that’s how history is made.
If the course of this year has left you wanting to sign up for a session at the local rage room, know that A you’re not alone, and B the urge to break things in a controlled environment goes back in time too.
On this day in 1962 the Pittsburgh Press reported on a “Frustration Room” at Chicago’s Imperial Inn, where guests were given breakables to hurl at the wall.
The hotel kept a straightjacket on hand in case someone got too frustrated.
Amazing Photos From the Australian Mulletfest 2020 (Laughing Squid)
Whence the Mullet? (Slate)
Frustration Room (Weird Universe)
