LIVING

This joke from one of the many mullet websites summarises the attitude of most visitors to Barcelona who are not familiar with this distinctive hairstyle. While many see the ‘handle-bar hair’ or ‘Kentucky waterfall’ as part of redneck culture or the Eighties rock scene, here it can mean many different things.

According to the website www.brownie-locks.com, a mullet is: “A haircut short in front, long in back, typically covering the neck and not the ears.” While there is no Spanish word for mullet, Renato Seliado, a hairdresser from Brazil, says that hairdressers label the style Mohicano in reference to a mullet-wearing antagonist in the American film, Last of the Mohicans. Another label is la capa.

Alberto Cona, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student from Barcelona, has a stubby head of hair except for a short and curly growth in the back, which he styles with gel. “I don’t know what this style is called. I wear it to be a little against society. Kind of like the punkies did in the early Eighties. Normal people grow their hair longer on the top and front. My hairstyle is the opposite.”

Juan Zache, a 23-year-old construction worker, whose family comes from a small Moroccan village, wears a shaved head with a long ponytail. “In my village, there’s a tradition that when a boy hits puberty around 13 or 14, he grows his ponytail out until he gets married. And, it is cut at the ceremony. Before, I used to try and hide it but here in Barcelona I find it easier to be true to my tradition.”

As far as stereotypes go, the typical Barcelona mullet-wearer is a young okupa (squatter) who parades around with dogs, lives in a squat, goes wild when “You give love a bad name” by Bon Jovi comes on, and is a bit of an overall miscreant. While the mullet-wearers may be rebellious at heart, the truth of the matter is that men and women, from toddlers to grandmas, ‘rock the mullet’, as the saying goes.

Many argue that David Bowie began the modern mullet movement when he sported one in the movie Ziggy Stardust. But it is easy to find the mullet much farther back in human history. Sketches of Neanderthal humans at the Smithsonian museum in Washington D.C. depict Homo sapiens’ ancestors with the almighty mullet. Egyptian wigs were fashioned in the mullet style. Persians wore their mullets in tousled curls with the bottoms fanning out across the shoulders. Celtic mullets were a little messier with the sides drooping to the neck, and influenced the modern style of bikers, wrestlers, and heavy metal drummers. Recent celebrity mullets include Billy Ray Cyrus (sporting the ‘achy breaky’ mullet), Mel Gibson (the ‘braveheart’) and Spanish pop singer Bebe, who burst onto the mainstream Spanish music scene a few years ago with a traditional Celtic style mullet.