Turns Out We’ve Only Called This Hairstyle a ‘Mullet’ Since 1994 and The Beastie Boys Started It

by Howie Decker @HowardTheDeck on February 27, 2015

in The 80s

How long has the “mullet” hairstyle been a part of American pop culture?

Forever, right? Or at least it seems like forever, but we’ve definitely been worshiping the ironic beauty of the distinctive hairstyle since AT LEAST the early 80s. I mean, Paul McCartney had one in the 70s!

Right?

Nope. Get a load of this mindf*ck: There is no known use of the term ‘mullet’ (in reference to a hairstyle) that predates 1994.

Nineteen NINETY FOUR.

But wait, that can’t be true! There’s Stamos and MacGyver! And Andre Agassi! And Brian Bosworth! And 90s Superman!

Yes, all of those men sported the hairstyle that would COME TO BE KNOWN as the “mullet”, but no one was calling it a mullet in the 70s or 80s. Literally NO ONE.

Reddit user XenophonOfAthens points out that according to the Oxford Dictionary’s etymology of the word, use of the term mullet to describe the hairstyle was “apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys”, who used “mullet” and “mullet head” as epithets in their 1994 song “Mullet Head”.

The WORD mullet existed in reference to this boring fish that looks nothing like Billy Ray Cyrus, but apparently the hairstyle existed namelessly for nearly 30 years.

Oxford even launched an appeal to the public, asking if anyone could find evidence of earlier use, because it seemed impossible that no one called a mullet a “mullet” until 1994.

NO DAMN WAY. There’s no way we weren’t calling it a mullet until the year I graduated high school. And apparently despite heaping praise on The Beastie Boys for all these years, we’ve still be shortchanging them as far as their cultural and global impact on pop culture. Yes, the mullet was made to be respected and revered. But the mullet was MADE by The Beastie Boys.

Everything is different now. This is insane. Next you’ll tell me we didn’t start calling them ‘mustaches’ until 2oo2. What other memories are a lie??

Donaldson June 20, 2016 at 11:29 am

We called it a mullet when I went to high school and I graduated in 1990.

Surappee July 3, 2018 at 10:52 am

Bulls**t

Surappee July 3, 2018 at 11:11 am

Anyone who lived through the 80s could have told you that. I went to high school in the Midwest and graduated in 1989, when many, many jocks and metalheads had that hairstyle, and literally no one, and I mean no one, called it a “mullet.” Even people among my crowd (punks/alternative/artsy) who tended to look disparagingly at those who sported that style never used the word “mullet” to describe it. The first I heard that term was in descriptions of Billy Ray Cyrus’s hair in the early-mid 90s, probably right around the same time as the Beastie Boys’ song song “Mullet Head.” I also knew a lot of lesbians who had that style in the very early 90s and they all called it a “bi-level” haircut.

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