Mullet

Mullet (pronounced muhl-it)

(1) Any of various teleost food marine or freshwater, usually gray fishes of the family Mugilidae (grey mullet (order Mugiliformes)) or Nullidae (red mullet (order Syngnathiformes)), having a nearly cylindrical body; a goatfish; a sucker, especially of the genus Moxostoma (the redhorses).

(2) A hairstyle in which the hair is short in the front and at the sides of the head, and longer in the back; called also the “hockey player haircut" and the "soccer rocker"; the most extreme form is called the skullet, replacing the earlier hockey hair.

(3) In heraldry, a star-like charge having five or six points unless a greater number is specified, used especially as the cadency mark of a third son; known also as American star & Scottish star.  The alternative spelling is molet.

(4) In slang (apparently always in the plural), a reference to one’s children (two or more).

(5) In slang, a person who mindlessly follows a fad, trend or leader; a generally dim-witted person.

(6) In dress design, a design based on the hairstyle, built around the concept of things being longer at the back, tapering progressively shorter towards the sides and the front.  The name is modern, variations of the style go back centuries.

1350-1400: The use in heraldry is from the Middle English molet(te), from the Old French molete (rowel of a spur), the construct being mole (millstone (the French meule) + -ette (the diminutive suffix).  The reference to the fish species dates from 1400–50, from the late Middle English molet, mulet & melet, from the Old French mulet (red mullet), from the Medieval Latin muletus, from the Latin muletus & moletus from mullus (red mullet) from the Ancient Greek μύλλος (múllos & mýllos) (a Pontic of fish), which may be related to melos (black) but the link is speculative.

The use to describe the hair-style dates from 1994, thought to be a shortening of the slang mullethead (blockhead, fool, idiot (mull meaning “to stupefy”)), popularized and possibly coined by US pop-music group the Beastie Boys in their song “Mullet Head”.  Mullet-head also was a name of a large, flat-headed North American freshwater fish (1866) which gained a reputation for stupidity (ie, was easily caught).  As a surname, Mullet is attested in both France and England from the late thirteenth century, the French form thought related to the Old French mul (mule), the English from the Middle English molet, melet & mulet (mullet) a metonymic occupational name for a fisherman or seller of these fish although some sources do suggest a link to a nickname derived from mule.

The noun plural is mullet if applied collectively to two or more species of the fish and mullets for other purposes (such as two or more fish of the same species or the curious use as a (class-associated) slang term parents use to refer to their children if there are two or more although use in the singular isn’t recorded; apparently they can have two (or more) mullets but not one mullet.

The mullet hairstyle goes back a long way.  The Great Sphinx of Giza is thought to be some four and a half thousand years old but evidence men and women hair with hair cut short at the front and sides, long at the back, exists from thousands of year earlier.  It’s assumed by historians that the cut would variously have been adopted for functional reasons (warmth for the neck and freedom for obstruction of the eyes & face) and as a preferred style.  There are many findings in the archaeological record and, over many centuries, references to the hair style being a feature of many cultures.  In the West, the acceptability of longer cuts for men was one of the social changes of the 1960s and the mullet was one style to again arise; from there it’s never gone away although, as the mullet came to be treated as a class-identifier, use did become more nuanced, some claiming to wear one ironically.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).

Opinion remains mixed but there are mullet competitions with prizes although, it must take an expert to work out the difference between the “best” mullet and the “worst”.  The competitions seem popular and are widely publicized, although the imagery can be disturbing for those with delicate sensibilities not often exposed to certain sub-cultures.  Such folk are perhaps more familiar with the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge but there was a time when he wore a mullet although the portraits which survive suggest his might not have been sufficiently ambitious to win any modern contests.

An emo with variegated tellum in black, purple & copper.

Associated initially with that most reliable of trend-setters, the emo, the tellum (mullet spelled backwards), more helpfully described as the “reverse mullet” is, exactly as suspected, long in front and short at the back.  Definitely a thing exclusively of style because it discards the functionally which presumably was the original rationale for the mullet, emos often combine the look with one or more lurid colors, the more patient sometimes adopting a spiky look which can be enlivened with a different color for each spike.  That’s said to be quite high-maintenance.

Martina Navratilova (b 1956).

On a tennis court, a mullet is functional.  No more monolithic than any others, it’s probably absurd to think of any of the component part of the LGBTQQIAAOP as being an identifiable culture but there appears to have been a small lesbian sub-set in the 1980s which adopted the mullet although motives were apparently mixed, varying from (1) chauvinistic assertiveness of the lesbionic, (2) blatant advertising for a mate to (3) just another haircut.

It also featured in a recent, celebrated case of gender-fluidity, Bruce Jenner (b 1949) sporting a mullet shortly before beginning his transition to Caitlyn Jenner.  However, the mullet may be unrelated to the change, the record indicating his long-time devotion to the cut and, since becoming Caitlyn, it seems to have been retired for styles more overtly feminine.

Charles II (1630–1685; King of Scotland 1649-1651, King of Scotland, England and Ireland 1660-1685) in his coronation robes (circa 1661), oil on canvas by John Michael Wright (1617–1694).

Charles II an early adopter of the mullet dress, chose the style for his seventeenth century coronation robes.

Lindsay Lohan, also with much admired legs, followed the Stuart example.

The mullet dress.  Miranda Kerr in pink demonstrates.

Red Mullet.

Grey Mullet.