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The wild and wooly constructions in figures 7 and 8 required unsurpassed fussing and maintenance, virtually forcing the French to invent the guillotine. Other European aristocracies copied the French, but eventually the common man revolted against these bully Mullets, and short hair, at long last, came back in vogue with the Age of Enlightenment. Today, only the traditional English judge's wig and das dude from the Scorpions (figures 9 and 10) survive as reminders of the Golden Age of French Mullets.
In America, meanwhile, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (figures 11 and 12) wore austere ponytails, mostly out of politeness to the Mullet-mad European powers they disdained. And with the emergence of close-cropped hotheads like Thomas Paine, America declared its independence and the Mullet was left for dead.
Alas, long live the Mullet. Like a hair plucked from the head its dormant root resprouted in the New World, where the frontier spread men wide and civilization thin. By the early 1800s, this lawlessness of the Wild West and the Native American inclination toward the Mullet led to the extremely modem bi-level won by Buffalo Bill, as well as other eccentricities like the coonskin caps. As the twentieth century approached, moppy hairstyles like those of Andrew Jackson and Mark Twain became common along with bushy beards, muttonchop whiskers and the cookie duster mustaches later worn by Teddy Roosevelt.
Finally, in the mid 1800s, the American hotelier Hiran Ricker busted out what appears to be the first true Mullet (figure 13). The feathered tresses framing his face, however, wen simply an enormous accumulation of whiskers, an effect late popularized by Union officer Ambrose Burnside and sci-fi author Isaac Asimov (figure 14).
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