Ode to the Mullet

I returned to the land of the living today, and I'm feeling pretty good. My advisor, after skimming over my draft, said it looked "promising" -- but we'll see how I'm feeling on Wednesday after she's looked over it with a finer toothed comb.

I went to the gym after Arabic class this morning and then stopped by the Modern Languages Building courtyard, where all of my nerdy astrophysicist friends (and the Mexican history buff) hang out for lunch.

In case you were unaware of it... it's "Mustache Week" here on the UA campus (or at least among my friends). Some of them are actually touting it as "International Mustache Week," but after a thorough Google search I could find no evidence of a worldwide mustache growing frenzy. Unless you're in the Middle East, of course, where it's Mustache Week every week.

In any case, my mathematically inclined male friends have all grown 'staches, and a couple have even chopped their locks into mullets as well, to complete the look. See here if you're so inclined.

I believe this is who they seek to emulate...

Tom Selleck, the Ultimate Mustache Icon.

What has surprised me the most is not that the vast majority of them appear to have magically transformed into Magnum P.I., or General Sherman of the Union Cavalry, or my dad in 1983...
it's that the mullets don't actually look that bad to me.

And that got me really thinking about the mullet, and how social norms dictate that I should be horrified by it... and yet I am not.

I determined that there are three types of mullets worn by three different types of people.

The first two types are dastardly and horrifying and have given mullets a bad name...

First -- the redneck mullet (which reminds me of the many losers I went to high school and junior high with in rural northern Maryland AKA Fredneck)


Second -- the femullet, which immediately says dyke.

Now that's bad.

But then... switch gears here... there's the "hottie" mullet of the 80's. This was the mullet made popular by many attractive soccer jocks in the 1980's and subsequently by many other cute high school boys.

And I suppose I must say I have a soft spot for it in my heart because pretty much all of my first crushes at one point sported mullets (including the 6'3" Norwegian exchange student aptly named Christian, who I lusted over from afar my entire freshman year of high school in 1988-9). And so I guess I associate it with unrequited love.

This is a Swedish soccer player...

... who looks almost exactly like my long lost Norwegian love (or at least he could have been my long lost love... if only he'd gotten to know me!)

And here's a tasty little Spanish soccer player...

... who has nicely spiced up the back with some highlights.

Anyhow, I've come up with a collection of some of my most fantasized about 80's heartthrobs (exception being, of course, Jake Ryan, who was far too highbrow to succumb to trendy hairstyles), all of whom at one point in time coiffed their hair into a mullet...

Duran Duran's John Taylor...

Yum.

Jack Wagner! (sigh...)

Even with a wife beater, the man has style.

Dolph Lundgren...

I loved him so, that Germanic beast.

My main man, MacGyver...

Good looking and smart.

Nick Rhodes (also of Duran Duran, but not as hot as John Taylor)...

... I heart frosted hair & skinny ties!

Karate Hottie Ralph Macchio...

... who actually looks a lot like a woman here.

And finally, Uncle Jesse...

... who had the misfortune of acting in that wretched "Full House" show, but he wasn't so bad on the eyes.

Even today, the mullet is staging a hot comeback.

Please check out Italian Formula One racer Vitantonio Liuzzi...

... who pulls it off pretty well, me thinks. Although, does he have a Marty Feldman eye going on?

So -- ladies (and men, if you don't fear gayness), if I have forgotten anyone of great import and/or you agree that the mullet can in fact bring back fond memories of your high school days, please let me know so I can do a "Hot Mullets Part II" with your inclusions.

Also feel free to share your mullet-crush stories. Misery does love company...