ST. LOUIS — If you're 5 years old and have been growing out your mullet since age 3, does the mullet become you, or do you become the mullet?
"I don't want to cut it," says kindergartner Xane Coultrip, who sports a lusciously wavy mullet that flows halfway down his back, "because my friends won't know who I am."
The mullet (also as the Kentucky Waterfall, the Missouri Compromise, the Camaro Crash Helmet, the Ape Drape, the Canadian Passport — we can go on, and we will) is back.
It's not sweeping heads nationwide, so to speak. But people are asking for the cuts, which are short in the front, long in the back, and hairstylists are just short of consulting circa-1986 Tiger Beat magazines and giving them, or at least more modern, shaggier versions of the cut.
Um. Why?
For sure, people shied away from hair salons during the pandemic, leading to some inadvertent mullets. And maybe people were influenced by the truly exotic mullet topping the head of Joe Exotic, aka the Tiger King, during early pandemic Netflix binging.
Mullets flowed back along with the resurgence of '80s and '90s trends such as high-rise mom jeans and half mesh shirts. They're styles that younger generations — some not born until this century — didn't experience themselves the first time around, therefore ripe for rediscovery.
"I've always wanted one," says Sarah Hall, 30, who is growing out a bleached pixie cut into a mullet. She's an instructor at Paul Mitchell cosmetology school in the Central West End, and she said their students "beg" to learn the cut.
"But I'm also the person who when I walk into a room, I want someone to turn around and say, 'What's up with that chick's head?' or 'That's really cool.' I want my hair to be as alternative as my personality."
Xane's mom, April Nickles, 45, says she wasn't sure what to do with her son's hair as it grew long, but when they decided to get the mullet, it turned plainer heads. "Everyone was like, dude, Xane's hair is amazing. And I started seeing mullets popping up everywhere. It was like, everybody wants to look like him."
"Remember that guy at the carnival?" Xane piped in.
"Oh yeah, we went to the Jefferson County Fair, and we saw a few there," said Nickles, who wore a mullet herself as a kid in the '80s.
According to the experts at the USA Mullet Championships, the name mullet didn't gain traction until 1994, when the Beastie Boys came out with the song "Mullet Head."
People have worn their hair in the business in the front, party in the back style for centuries. Ancient Greeks wore it that way because the hair protected the neck while allowing visibility in the front. In "The Iliad," Homer describes a group of spearmen who wore "their forelocks cropped, hair grown long at the backs."
Some argue mullets have never truly gone out of style.
Kevin Begola is the founder-president of the USA Mullet Championships, a contest he started in 2020. That year he had 130 male competitors come to his Fenton, Michigan, men's store, Bridge Street Exchange, flaunting their mudflaps. Then, the pandemic shut the world down, and he had more than 100 men enter a virtual contest. They had to cap the children's entries at 500. He hopes to run regional contests in 2022. They sell a "Mullet Life" calendar of winners, and proceeds go to Stop Soldier Suicide.
"A lot of these guys, they're really great people," said Begola, who is 41 and bald but wore a rat tail in his younger days. "Some of them have been rocking it for a long time. It's their identity. I think there was a lot of stigma back in the '80s with it, like after the fact. At the time it wasn't a big deal. Just look at other cultures, they wear their hair all kinds of different ways. It's a lifestyle."
St. Louis brothers Randy and Jeff Vines have always thought the shape of Missouri looked like the profile of a man with a mullet. The Kansas City area looks like the nose, the southeast bootheel the mullet mudflap.
They came up with a T-shirt with a mullet/Missouri design several years ago for their store, Stl-Style. The shirt's caption used to say "where the mullet meets the river," but for a broader, statewide appeal, they changed it to "show me the mullet."
Randy Vines sees his share of hipster mullets on younger people hanging around Cherokee Street. When he sees an authentic, non-ironic mullet in the wild, he sometimes scrambles to snap a picture to post to Instagram.
It's also a convenient and funny Halloween costume, he notes, and on more than one occasion he's thrown a mullet wig from Johnnie Brock's costume store on his head.
"Something about St. Louis we really love is there's no pretense," he said. "It's a come-as-you-are type of city, like if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think there's a lot of people walking around with them, and they're comfortable with it. "
Dale Rouggly, 62, the co-owner of Bouffant Daddy salon in Maplewood, wore his hair in a permed mullet for years in the '80s and '90s. In fact, in his earlier life as a dancer, he appeared on the television show "Dance Fever" in 1985, his curly mullet bouncing along to his imperial swing dance to "Lovin' Is Really My Game" by the funk band Brainstorm.
He keeps a picture from his "Dance Fever" appearance by his stylist's chair. "They say, 'Oh, God, that's you? and I say, 'Don't make fun of me.' Everybody had leg warmers, or guys had big hair."
He gives a mullet cut about once a month, and while he has an older gentleman client who has kept his for years, the younger clients who seek them like to play around with colors and styles.
"I would never talk them out of it. I'm all for it, if that's what makes you happy, and that's what you want. I'm not afraid to do a mullet."
Helen Petty, 40, who owns Chop Shop in the Grove neighborhood of St. Louis, said she's seen a mullet-like style emerge more recently on TikTok as a "wolf cut." It's more of an extreme shag, with hair shorter on the face and sides and longer in the back.
As for her own thoughts on the mullet, she's diplomatic.
"My personal opinion is if something makes you feel good, I like it. That's my viewpoint on all my haircuts. If you want my advice I'll give you some, like what will go with your face shape or something. But if something makes you feel good and edgy, then go for it."
With that said, she recently gave a mullet/wolf cut to one of her teenage daughter's classmates, "and she looked rad."
Sports have undoubtedly influenced the craze, with some teams growing mullets in solidarity. The "hockey flow" of hair from under helmets has never truly gone out of style on the ice.
Xane Coultrip's neighbor, Alex Rugg, 11, has grown his mullet out since the summer, after seeing his friend and teammate Lucas DesRoche show up to baseball with one. "I think it's hysterical that all of these things are coming back," said Alex's mom, Beth Rugg, who just had an '80s-themed party for her 40th birthday. "I think it's fun that these kids, especially at their age and so young, are starting a trend."
"I can rock it," says Alex Rugg. "It makes me feel pretty good. Kids tell me to shake it."
As for his friend Lucas, he recently got a perm for his already-wavy mullet, a cut that's now the rage on his Meramec Sharks youth hockey team. During one recent tournament in Nashville, a mom set up shop in a hotel room and cut mullets on the heads of several teammates.
"Honestly, I think it's just perfect," said Lucas. "I am normally like a big historian. I like anything vintage."
Lucas' mom, Lesley DesRoche, is happy he's happy. Her younger son, Liam, once sported a mullet that is now cut into more of a mohawk. "I told Lucas, you know what, it's your hair, and if you want to look silly, you'll look silly. But every time, he legit pulls it off.
"Never in my life," she said, laughing, "did I think mullets would be in my household."
