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Mulling Over The Mullet - An Essay on Tonsorial Taste by the Editors of Grand Royal
There's nothing quite as bad as a bad haircut. And perhaps the worst haircut of all is the cut we call "The Mullet. " You know the one we're talking about, the catastrophic coiffure Creem magazine once called the "Bram Tchaikovsky `79 Cut, " but you probably know it by another name. Indeed, "Hockey Player Haircut, "Soccer Rocker, " "Guido, " "Bi-level, " "Shag, " "Neckwarmer, " "Ape Drape, " "Sphinx, " "Hack Job, " "Lobster, " "Mud Flap, " "B&T" (Bridge and Tunnel), "River Cut" (as in Colorado River), "Safety Cut" (as in safe from parental/institutional disapproval), "Boz" (from "Brian Bosworth'), "Schlong" (Short on the sides, Long in back), "S&L Crisis" and "Long Island Iced Tease" are only a smattering of the synonyms for the Mullet that we came across in our extensive research for this article. Some, like the Floridian slang "Butt Cut, " were strictly regional and sometimes inaccurate (Butt Cut, for example, used to refer to parting your hair in the middle). In any event, there are undoubtedly several other monikers for the Mullet that we're unaware of, so feel free to send us any additional aliases you may have and we'll print them in the next issue. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy our following presentation on the history, mystery and meaning of... The Mullet.
THE ETYMOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE TERM "MULLET"
We're not sure where the term "Mullet" came from, but as usual Mike D was the first to use it around here. The New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines mullet as "any of various fishes of the family mugilidae," so it's possible that Mike was mistaken and actually thinking of a "muskrat," which of course is the same "large, aquatic, North American rodent. Ondatrazibethica, having a musky odor," immortalized in Captain and Tennile's 1976 hit "Muskrat Love." After all, the muskrat, in Webster s words, "has a thick, light brown fur used especially for women's coats," and certainly such a pelt conjures up an image of the lower-echelon mammalian nape-tuft indigenous to modern Mullets. Resident Grand Royal anthro-etymolygist Dr. C. Warren Fahy notes in Mike's defense, however, that "the mullet fish basically has no neck, and a fish rots from the neck down, so that may be where the slang derives from, especially since most human Mullet Heads achieve this same effect via excessive hair and musculature. Then again, Mr. D. may have been thinking of the more obscure definitions from Webster's New International Dictionary, second edition, 1932, which states that on the one hand, `mullet' . was originally a verb meaning 'to curl or dress the hair,' and a noun referring to 'the small pincers used to curl hair."' (For a more in depth look at its origin, see Dr. Fahy's following ancient history of the Mullet.)
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