Business in the front and a party in the back. The mullet is making a comeback as a popular hairstyle. LA Times contributor Dave Schilling wrote about the hairdo that won’t die and joined “LA Times Today” to share why.
The mullet has been around for centuries, dating back even to the Ancient Greeks. It gained mainstream popularity in the 1970s when David Bowie sported it.
“At the time, mullets were considered kind of like a blue-collar haircut. But David Bowie made it this androgynous, very sexually fluid haircut. It combined the length of a traditional cis woman’s haircut with the shortness on the top of the traditional cis man’s haircut. So, it was this moment of confusing sexuality. And the mullet represented that represented kind of art for a while,” Schilling explained.
The term “mullet” was popularized in a Beastie Boys song in 1994. Schilling explained the hairstyle is having a renaissance among today’s popular artists.
“I think it’s back because of the fact that we’re, again, in a gender fluid period of culture. People like Lil Nas X, who have made their career out of being sexually liberated, are wearing this haircut. Kamala Harris’ husband’ daughter, Ella Emhoff, wears a women’s kind of variation on the mullet,” he said.
While the mullet has enough fans to merit the USA Mullet Championships, Schilling says it isn’t as mainstream as more classic hairstyles.
“There are a lot of really well-known high fashion hairstylists who are employing [mullets] in photoshoots... I read something where there was a time when people would equate the mullet with a tough guy and the one that you should avoid, and people would cross the street to avoid people the mullet because it’s so aggressive. But I think now it feels like a very artistic process. People want to be transgressive in some way and taking something old and considered lame and making it cool now is like the ultimate transgression,” he elaborated.
Watch the full video above.
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