‘(It’s) not just a hairstyle, it’s a lifestyle’ – HutchCC students on the mullet

By Victoria Lewis / Staff writer

It’s all business in the front and party in the back, now that the mullet – the hairstyle that was once all the rage in the 1980s – is experiencing quite an intense (and controversial) comeback.

The mullets are hiding in plain sight with many Hutchinson Community College students sporting the ‘short in the front, long in the back’ ‘do.

One such student is Nestus Burger, a freshman of Perth, Australia, who grew his luscious locks into a mullet over the span of a year, after being inspired by a friend. A key marker of millennial Australian culture, Nestus said he “just wanted to be one of the boys,” by getting a mullet.

According to Nestus, whose mullet is one of his self proclaimed ‘personality traits’ “a mullet is not just a hairstyle, it’s a lifestyle.”

You either have it or you don’t when it comes to the elusive hairstyle.

“You have to have a certain personality to have a mullet,” Nestus said. “There’s not many people that hate-hate it, but there are lots of people who love it.”

He finishes that sentence off with a wink.

Nestus only has one question for those pesky mullet haters out there – “Why? Just, why?” What’s wrong with it you know? It’s just hair.”

Cole Segraves, a freshman out of Maize, is another student who has fashioned himself a mullet, taking just four months to grow. His motive for testing out the hairstyle was that he “wanted to try something different.

“I just thought they were cool, (and) I’d never tried it,” Segraves said.

Segraves doesn’t let the mullet-hating army get to him. Even his family disapproves of the mullet.

“They would rather just have a standard haircut, just short like in the military – just the generation I think,” he said “I don’t really care, I feel like it’s just hair so I don’t know why it matters so much.”

The other side of the camp, however, seems much more passionate about the topic. When Monae Duffy, a freshman from Lafayette, La., sees a mullet, she does not like what she sees.

Duffy cannot wrap her head around people who live and die by their mullets.

“I would prefer any other men’s styles, but no mullet,” Duffy said. “I feel like it is a childish hairstyle for men.”

And if her future son came home one day wanting a mullet?

“He was just simply not getting it,” Duffy said.

In her opinion, there is one instance and one instance only where the mullet is allowed to have a comeback, saying “a female mullet is not bad … like it all depends on how the woman styles it.”

However, she doesn’t think that there should be a comeback on men’s mullets.

“Let women have a chance to rock the style and make something out of it,” Duffy said.

The mullet is a red-hot topic of debate, but one thing’s for sure – the mullet is back, and it’s here for a good time, and a long time.

Below take a look at some of the greatest mullets in history.