‘It’s super fucking cool!’
The return of
the mullet
Evan Meighan
‘It adds a new spice to life’
The mullet is ‘just a super fucking cool hairstyle’, explains psychology student Evan Meighan. During the pandemic, his hair was all over the place. One lockdown night, after a few drinks with friends, it was decided that he should get the chop.
There’s no way around it: his mullet is a ‘talking point’. ‘I found myself in some weird situations, where I was getting compared to actor Patrick Swayze several times in one night, or people just started messing around with my mullet in the nightclub.’
He sees the reason for the mullet comeback in the pandemic – closed barbershops – but also in the new romanticisation of students with the culture and fashion of the 70s and 80s, manifesting itself in Groningen in the rise of second-hand and vintage items. And so, he asked himself: ‘Why not bring back the hair?’
Of course, some people dislike his haircut, but Evan believes ‘it’s just a way to do something different, and anyway, it’s my haircut and I am not really going to change it for other people’. He would encourage other mullet curiosity seekers: ‘Go for it. It adds a new spice to life.’
Luisa Timmermeister
‘I’m more myself now’
Arts, culture, and media student Luisa Timmermeister is happy with her haircut now, but when she stepped out of the hairdressing salon after first getting a mullet cut, she felt rather insecure and self-conscious. ‘I could tell by the look on his face that the guy I was dating at the time, didn’t like it.’
In her German hometown, she also felt others weren’t very into her new hairstyle. She was worried that she would be pigeonholed. ‘The mullet is stigmatised, and associated with feminism, veganism, and vintage clothes’, she says. But now, two months later, the UG student jokes about it with her friends. ‘I’m all of these things anyway, so I might as well just embrace it.’
Living in Groningen has supported her in this identity process: ‘I can be more expressive and freer here, and I feel less judged’. Getting a mullet matched her rejection of fast fashion. ‘I work for a vintage store in the city centre, and I feel more comfortable there now as the mullet kind of fits in there’.
She also gets a lot of positive feedback from other people now, partly because, as she says, ‘they have become more accustomed to my mullet’, and partly because, ‘other people saw that it was a bit more me’.
Jos Kisjes
‘It’s a big “fuck you”, really’
Getting a mullet can also be a New Year’s resolution, as Jos Kisjes, a Dutch student at the University College, demonstrates. For 2021, he set himself the goal to grow his hair out until his birthday in August and to then get a mullet.
‘It’s a joke that went on a bit too long’, the Dutch student says now. He has been tempted to get rid of it, but then always thinks that it can be so much more. ‘And it became more’, Jos concludes, grinning. ‘The longer you keep the mullet, the more committed you become. There is a point of no return with the mullet.’ He also deems that ‘it’s just a sexy haircut’. He even got some special hair products.
His mom and his sisters are a bit critical, though. ‘They asked me why I would do that to such beautiful hair.’ But other people’s opinions don’t matter, he says. ‘I think it’s a big “fuck you”, really, that’s what the whole mullet is about’, Jos clarifies. That expressiveness has a downside, though. He has been verbally attacked in a pub because people thought he was acting too politically and brashly with his mullet.
‘Grow what you want, it’s your life,’ he advocates. But how long he will keep his beloved haircut, is uncertain: ‘Unfortunately, my girlfriend requested for her birthday that I get rid of the mullet’.
David Schulze-Seeger
‘It’s a bit more edgy and controversial’
Spatial planning and design student David Schulze-Seeger got his haircut a year ago. He believes a mullet becomes part of who you are. In that way, ‘a more aggressive, edgy mullet isn’t my type’, he thinks. He can identify more with his current, rather subtle version.
A mullet is really a personal thing, he believes, and thus it seems interesting to him that while people with a mullet hairstyle technically have the same cut, it can nevertheless look so different on each individual. ‘A mullet adds a bit more character to everyone, and thus, it is kind of a statement: it is a bit more edgy and controversial.’
The German is convinced that, right now, ‘our generation is kind of picking the best things from the last forty years, and the mullet might have been one of the last things still out there.’ That could also explain why the mullet has become especially popular in Groningen, a student city. ‘Some people found it just funny, others declared it as a bold move or thought that I was “rockin’ the movement”.’
Unlike other haircuts, he sees his mullet almost as a conversation starter, as he often gets to share something about it. ‘It is such a funny topic, and a lot of people have an opinion about it.’
David Grenham
‘You need to be proud of it’
‘Can you please get a proper haircut?’ David Grenham’s mother begged him, after the Christmas break, before he left his home country of Ireland to return to Groningen, where he studies chemical engineering. ‘My mullet doesn’t look too nice,’ he believes, ‘but I am kind of attached to it’.
Initially, he got his mullet cut when he was bored during a Covid-19 lockdown in March 2021. The haircut was also making a comeback in his home country Ireland, since a lot of people were shaving their own haircuts due to the closure of the barbers. ‘A lot of my Irish friends got mullets as well’.
‘As Groningen is a very fashionable and trendy city, and since people seem to have a fondness for vintage and 80s and 90s fashion,’ the haircut could gain in popularity here as well, he believes. Though not among people of working-age, because job searching can be more difficult with such an ‘unprofessional haircut’, he knows. ‘One of my friends experienced something similar and had to shave off his mullet for the new job he got.’
‘The mullet is definitely a statement’, since, in his opinion, ‘it’s a haircut that you need the confidence to wear’. So, for him it is important that ‘you need to be proud of having it’.