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Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Released Wednesday, 4th December 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Wednesday, 4th December 2024
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with Marc Jacobs. Hi.

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So a few years a few years ago, we

1:06

aired an episode about a hairstyle. The mullet.

1:08

As you're As you're about to

1:10

hear, it's actually about way more than

1:12

a hairstyle. It's It's about the mullet

1:15

as a word, word, as a symbol,

1:17

as as a mystery, as as something

1:19

we collectively misremember. in the And in the

1:21

four years since it first aired, some some things

1:23

have changed. Like mainly the mullet has

1:25

has gotten a lot cooler in the And I

1:27

think And I think this episode is a

1:29

pretty good job of explaining why. why.

1:32

Other things haven't changed changed

1:34

and the mullet is still

1:36

is still window into just

1:38

how into just how can believe we

1:40

can what we want to.

1:43

to. I I think it's one

1:45

of our best episodes, best

1:47

a truly expansive, satisfying, and

1:49

meaningful investigation into a

1:51

do that won't die. that won't die.

1:53

I I hope you enjoy. This

2:01

podcast contains explicit language. Lauren Wright

2:03

is a DJ and for the

2:06

last three years she's had a

2:08

very particular haircut. You know the

2:10

one, business in the front, party

2:13

in the back. I am the

2:15

proud owner and wearer of a

2:17

mullet. So

2:20

firstly, can you describe what your

2:22

mullet looks like to be? Like

2:24

what nature of mullet is. It's

2:27

pretty short and tight on the

2:29

sides, and I've got some solid

2:31

length in the back. So it's

2:33

kind of getting slowly. I think

2:36

it's more of the mullet that

2:38

makes more people uncomfortable. You know,

2:40

it's a little less feminine. It's

2:42

definitely curly and luscious, and I

2:45

don't know. I'm pretty proud of

2:47

it. Lauren first encountered mulets when

2:49

she was a kid back in

2:51

the 90s. So I grew up

2:54

in Texas and... I remember, I

2:56

think the first moment I ever

2:58

saw in person was in elementary

3:00

school, my PE teacher, who was

3:03

a woman, she was the head

3:05

coach, she had this like long,

3:07

epic curly mullet, and she had

3:09

a really thick country accent, and

3:12

she was always chewing gum, gold

3:14

hoops, just like strong gay woman,

3:16

which I didn't really know at

3:18

the time. at least twice a

3:21

week, she'd say, everybody line up

3:23

and we'd get on the line,

3:25

and she would throw on Billy

3:27

Ray Cyrus, achy-breaky heart, and we

3:29

would, she'd teach us different line

3:32

dances. So

3:39

it was kind of like this

3:41

double mullet experience with you know

3:43

this like strong woman with a

3:46

mullet who everyone respects is having

3:48

a sign up in dance to

3:51

this country star with another epic

3:53

mullet. These were the waning glory

3:55

days of the mullet a hairstyle

3:58

that was once the it not

4:00

only of country stars and lesbians,

4:02

but of rock stars, hockey players,

4:05

soccer players, TV characters, school-age boys

4:07

across the country, and people all

4:10

over the world. From such heights,

4:12

the mullet could only fall, and

4:14

it fell far. By the end

4:17

of the 1990s, it had become

4:19

dramatically uncool, loathed even, considered to

4:21

be uniquely unattractive, trashy, and low-class.

4:24

You can see this in the

4:26

2001 comedy Joe Dirt, in which

4:29

David Spade plays a sweet beleaguered

4:31

loser, whose most distinctive quality is

4:33

his incredible mullet. He's constantly teased

4:36

about it, as by this radio

4:38

shock doc, played by Dennis Miller.

4:40

Hey, Zander, Zander, you gotta see

4:43

this guy. God, almighty, manna from

4:45

inbred heaven. Hey, freak boy! 1976

4:48

called it wants its hairstyle back.

4:50

This sentiment that the mullet is

4:52

particularly classless outmoded and hideous is

4:55

still the dominant one, which is

4:57

exactly what the subcultures that have

4:59

sporadically embraced the mullet over the

5:02

last two decades. Electropunk kids, self-aware

5:04

rednecks, high-end fashionistas, queer people like

5:07

about it. The way it thumbs

5:09

its nose, it mainstream respectability. You

5:11

know, the mullet has been deemed

5:14

like traditionally very unattractive and ugly,

5:16

and so... you know, as someone

5:18

who doesn't necessarily fit into traditional

5:21

norms of beauty, this, I identify

5:23

very much so with this haircut.

5:26

It feels very powerful. The mullet

5:28

is this potent versatile cultural signifier

5:30

that conveys more now, almost 50

5:33

years into its existence than it

5:35

did when it was totally ubiquitous.

5:37

And you know what? That's not

5:40

even the craziest thing about it.

5:42

Were you calling them mullets, you

5:45

remember? No, I don't

5:47

think that I was. I feel

5:49

like I was too young to

5:51

kind of remember like the big

5:54

80s mullet style. What have I

5:56

told you that the word mullet

5:58

didn't exist until 1994? would be

6:01

would be surprising for sure

6:03

because I would think think in

6:05

the think leading into the

6:08

80s, but like leading you just

6:10

saying that we didn't have

6:12

a word for it? It

6:14

just is existing out here

6:16

with no label? a word for it? It

6:18

just is existing out here with no label. This is

6:21

Dakota Ring, a is Decoderang, a

6:23

show about cracking cultural mysteries. I'm

6:25

I'm Paskin. You

6:27

may think the mullet is just

6:29

an unfortunate haircut, but let

6:31

me tell you, it is you,

6:33

much more than that. that. in

6:35

this episode, we're going to prove

6:37

it, not just by following

6:39

the story of the mullet as

6:41

a of the but by following

6:43

the story of the word the story

6:45

of figure out how a name

6:47

helped transform an omnipresent do

6:49

into a national joke and altered

6:52

our cultural memory in the

6:54

process. process. So today, on de codering, what I what

6:56

I swear turns out to

6:58

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want to start at the beginning,

9:18

not of the mullet, but of

9:20

my interest in the mullet, which

9:22

was sparked by an email from

9:24

a listener, with the subject line,

9:26

The Mystery of the Mullet. My

9:28

name is Oscar Sigbertson. I'm a

9:30

software developer and I live in

9:32

Stockholm. Oscar is really interested in

9:34

language and linguistics. So I subscribe

9:36

to all these like weird linguistics

9:38

and lexicography blogs and things like

9:40

that. And one of the blogs

9:42

I was, I'm such, I am

9:44

subscribed to is the Oxford English

9:46

Dictionary's public appeals blog, where the

9:48

Oxford English Dictionary like puts out

9:50

appeals to the public for like,

9:53

oh, we researching this word and

9:55

we hit a wall. And so

9:57

in 2013, they put out this

9:59

blog post about the word mullet.

10:01

In this public appeal, the Oxford

10:03

English Dictionary. OED said they couldn't

10:05

find a documented reference to the

10:07

mullet as a hairstyle prior to

10:09

1994. Which I was very surprised

10:11

to read because 1994 like that's

10:13

so late like mullets are the

10:15

eight like the most 80s thing

10:17

you can imagine like there's nothing

10:19

more emblematic of the ages than

10:21

a mullet. But nobody used that

10:23

word in the entire decade like

10:25

nobody Like it can't

10:27

be like it's so weird. And

10:30

it is so weird. In the

10:32

popular imagination, mullahs are as 80s

10:34

as shoulder pads, dynasty, Ronald Reagan,

10:36

junk abons, and breakdancing. The two

10:38

are totally intertwined. And to explain

10:40

why, I have to go back

10:43

to the other beginning, the beginning

10:45

of the mullit itself. Despite

10:48

its connection to the

10:51

1980s, the modern mullet

10:53

was not actually birthed

10:55

in that decade. It

10:58

was first popularized in

11:00

the early 1970s by

11:02

David Bowie. In

11:05

her memoir, Backstage Passes Angie Bowie, Bowie's

11:07

wife at the time, recalls that while

11:09

David was working on his album, The

11:12

Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and

11:14

The Spiders from Mars, for which you

11:16

would inhabit the character of Ziggy Stardust,

11:18

an omnissexual glam space alien, he woke

11:21

up on morning wanting a new haircut.

11:23

It was Christmas week and the hair

11:25

stylist who regularly did Bowie's mom's hair

11:27

paid a house call. This stylist Susie

11:30

Ronson, Nay Fussy, told the story of

11:32

what happened next as a storyteller at

11:34

the moth. David and Angie were sitting

11:36

by a large bay window and they

11:39

were discussing the merits of cutting his

11:41

hair short. He had this long blonde

11:43

wavy hair at the time. They asked

11:45

me my opinion. I said, well, you

11:48

know, no one else has got short

11:50

hair. You know, nobody, you'd look really

11:52

different. Bowie showed Suzy a magazine photo

11:54

of a Kansai Yamamoto model. Kansai Yamamoto

11:57

was a Japanese designer, one of the

11:59

first to show his... in London, who

12:01

would in the next few years begin

12:03

a long creative collaboration with Bowie. Can

12:06

you do that? Well as I'm saying

12:08

yes, I'm thinking to myself, it's a

12:10

woman's hairstyle. And

12:13

how am I going to actually

12:15

do that? The answer was some

12:17

scissors, shorts, cough red, red-hot hair

12:19

dye and guard, an anti-dandruff treatment

12:21

that made Bowie's hair stand up

12:23

in the front. When Susie was

12:25

done, Bowie had the famous Ziggy

12:27

haircut, bright red, long and flipped

12:29

out at the back, and short

12:32

and bristling in the front. It

12:34

was the perfect haircut for the

12:36

extraterrestrial Ziggy who was not exactly

12:38

male or female, because the mullet

12:40

was genderless too. It's easy to

12:42

lose sight of this now, but

12:44

the mullet has become so associated

12:46

with a performative, aggressive machismo. But

12:48

it's a haircut that's long and

12:50

short, male and female, both and

12:53

neither at the same time. The

12:55

fact that it's not entirely straight,

12:57

also in the sense of not

12:59

being square, is what makes it

13:01

what makes it cool. But as

13:03

the mullet became more and more

13:05

popular, its essential androgeny faded into

13:07

the background. And that's because the

13:09

people carrying water for the mullet

13:12

in the 70s and early 80s

13:14

weren't just mullet having performers like

13:16

Joan Jet, Paul McCartney, Bono, and

13:18

Prince. They were hockey players. To

13:21

illustrate how the mullet crossed over

13:23

from rock stars to athletes and

13:25

regular people getting bigger all the

13:27

while, I want to highlight two

13:29

figures in particular. The first is

13:32

the hockey player Ron Dugay. Ron

13:34

Dugay awarded a penalty shot and

13:36

here he comes. Dugay,

13:38

a handsome Canadian who was married

13:40

to a model played in the

13:42

NHL from 1979 to 1989 and

13:45

is widely credited with having one

13:47

of the earliest mullats in the

13:49

league. You can see it in

13:51

a 1979 commercial he appeared in

13:53

with three of his teammates for

13:56

Vidal Sassoon Jeans. In this ad,

13:58

the four players around the

14:00

in jerseys and dungarees. Of

14:03

the four, Dugay is the only one

14:05

to have a mullet, but it's

14:07

relatively understated. His sandy, hair is definitely

14:09

longer in the back, but not

14:11

wildly so. It looks wind-swapped and kind of

14:13

sophisticated. It's a casually

14:15

cool haircut. I mean, even the dal sa-su

14:17

thought so. No wonder kids

14:19

cool. so. across the country. model one. As

14:27

the hairstyle caught on with the

14:29

public, so did ad names for it.

14:31

didn't call it mullets. We it hockey

14:34

hair. John

14:37

Warner a writer and market researcher who

14:39

grew up in the Chicago suburbs. He

14:42

was in high school in the mid to late 1980s and

14:44

played on the hockey team. Just

14:46

about every member of his

14:48

team, himself included, had hockey hair.

14:50

though called it something more

14:52

specific. We called it the Dougue,

14:55

after Ron Dugay because he had

14:57

such a good flow. You

14:59

called it flow? It was called the flow, like,

15:01

how's your flow? If somebody came

15:03

in and looking like long and

15:05

good, flapping behind

15:08

the helmet, you say, good flow. It was just like,

15:10

it was what you did. A A guy's

15:12

it. I mean, they got perms

15:14

of only their flow. Guys

15:16

into the locker room for practice

15:18

after the curb and you could smell it.

15:21

You didn't make fun of them. was

15:23

like, oh, cool, know, he he permed

15:25

it. As

15:29

you can tell from the perms, as

15:31

the 80s wore on, the mullet was

15:33

getting increasingly elaborate. By the

15:36

end of the decade, it

15:38

was huge. As a trend, but

15:40

also just physically huge. Please

15:42

see Yeromir Yager. I came

15:44

here and I had the longest hair in

15:46

NHL, but Don't

15:49

forget people, in in 1990, there was a a

15:52

That's Yager, the legendary Czech who would

15:54

play in the NHL for seasons,

15:56

seasons, talking to ESPN in 2016.

15:59

When he first came... into the as an

16:01

an apple-cheeked he had an he had

16:03

an Eastern mullet, this mop of

16:05

dark of hair that cascaded

16:08

down his back in a

16:10

curly a curly It's like the

16:12

mullet a prince in a Disney

16:14

movie would have movie they had

16:16

mullets, had well -conditioned, luxurious, somehow

16:18

sparkly. And Jagger's which he

16:20

kept for his first nine seasons in

16:23

the league, wasn't the only one of

16:25

its kind, though it may be best. though

16:27

it may be best came to I

16:29

.S. the US, you know, for city, I bought,

16:31

I was mostly crew, and Death Leopard and Bonjorie,

16:33

so they all had a long hair, so

16:35

to be to be a like

16:37

them. like them. It wasn't just

16:39

the the hair rocking audacious mullets.

16:41

This is the time of is

16:44

the time of Andre Agassi, Lionel Ritchie, And

16:46

one thing I want to

16:48

underscore thing that these attention -grabbing

16:50

mullets didn't just end with

16:52

the mulets didn't So many of

16:54

the canonical mullets the canonical mulets. Yaggers, Billy

16:57

Ray Cyrus's, — are not Van

16:59

mullets at all. mulets at all. mullets.

17:03

When it comes to to we're suffering

17:05

from a kind of distortion, of

17:07

one familiar from the TV show from

17:09

the TV show series begins in the

17:11

early begins in the which looks so much

17:13

more like the 1950s than what

17:15

we think of as we think of as

17:17

the 60s. The aesthetics we we to

17:19

decades often start mid -decade and then

17:21

run into the next one, the

17:23

we tend to erase tend to erase this

17:25

in favor of a simpler shorthand. shorthand.

17:29

But this simplification can actually change

17:31

how we think about the past,

17:33

and the mullet is an example

17:35

of this. The of mullet belongs as

17:37

much to the early as much to the

17:39

Lauren 90s, to Lauren Wright's class as the

17:41

late as the late even though we

17:44

don't remember it that way. way. This

17:48

brings us back to Oscar Sigvardsen. The

17:50

who had been floored to

17:52

hear the term to hear the not

17:54

exist until 1994, which is

17:56

especially late if you are under the

17:58

mistaken impression. that Mullets or

18:00

less died out in 1989. Confronted

18:03

with a claim that seemed so

18:06

chronologically off, Oscar did what a

18:08

curious language -obsessed person might do.

18:10

He tried to find out for

18:12

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Okay, so from here on out, we're

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going to dig into the lexical

20:40

weeds, but I promise the is worth

20:42

it. So the Oxford

20:44

English Dictionary asked the public for help

20:46

in finding any reference to the

20:48

mullet as a hairstyle from 1994. And

20:51

Oscar set out to find one. You

20:53

know, once or twice in the past,

20:55

I've been able to, you know, find

20:57

something earlier than the Oxford English Dictionary says

20:59

it was printed or something. So I

21:01

started doing that, right? I started just like

21:03

putting in mullet in Google Books just saying, okay, between

21:05

1980 and 1989, find me all usages

21:07

of the word. And, you know, it's

21:09

just fish, right? It's all fish, fish,

21:11

fish. The a family of fish,

21:13

is eaten all over the world. And

21:15

it was like, I I it for like hours

21:18

to find it. And, you know, once in

21:20

a while, you can find like to the

21:22

insult, like mullet head. Paul Newman is called mullet head

21:24

in Cool Hand Zoo. He

21:28

He have a mullet. Like he's called, he's

21:30

called an idiot. And There's a

21:32

clip from Cheers Sam calls Diana

21:34

a mullet head. Who just that sentence

21:37

with two prepositions. Don't

21:39

you have customers to deal with? That

21:41

ended with a preposition too. Don't

21:44

you have customers to deal with mullet

21:46

head? So

21:48

like, that's, that's it, right? You can actually find it.

21:50

At that point, it became like, oh, this is

21:52

a fun fact. I parties. less efficient to

21:54

use in Sweden though. It's not that

21:56

efficient in Sweden because in Sweden,

21:58

as in many of the... where it

22:00

it was a phenomenon, This hairstyle

22:02

is not called a mullet. The Swedish word for it is

22:05

hockey which means which means hockey hair.

22:07

Hockey is, a whole thing

22:09

in Sweden. There's even

22:11

a well -known 1993 Swedish about about

22:13

it. There was a very big hit

22:15

from the Swedish group, the lykliga kompisarna. which

22:18

translate as the happy it was huge

22:20

it was something that everyone

22:22

knew because it's like a

22:24

real knew because it's like a funny And

22:26

it has like the chorus

22:28

is just a guy has like

22:30

the chorus is just a guy singing, oh, ho, ho,

22:33

ho, ho, ho, ho, vila! Anyway,

22:39

even though it wasn't always

22:41

a smash with other Swedes, Oscar

22:43

often shared this mullet And then in

22:45

then in 2015, for no

22:47

particular reason, share he decided to

22:49

share it. on Reddit. about

22:52

mullet posted the information about Mullet

22:54

to the a kind of gathering place for kind

22:56

of gathering place for fun tidbits.

22:58

on the ready never had anything on thing blew but

23:00

that thing the up like it was on

23:02

the front for Reddit for like an

23:04

entire entire day, was was the most fun

23:07

24 hours I've ever had on the internet.

23:09

just because like everyone like whoa and then trying

23:11

to solve this problem with you? problem

23:13

with you like that was my favorite part

23:15

right because the comments right many comments

23:17

were like this is total many comments were

23:19

like this is told horseshit mud all the time

23:21

80s you is exactly what some of the

23:24

comments on his post sound like. on

23:26

his post I grew up in

23:28

Queens, New York up in the

23:30

term City way before 1994, way

23:32

before reads. reads. Another goes, I call

23:34

bullshit. When When breaky heart came out

23:36

in 1992, I knew everyone

23:38

I knew in North Dakota to his

23:40

referring to his haircut as a

23:42

mullet. those. lots of those, lots but

23:44

anyway, lots of people like doing the research

23:47

the research, and it was so much fun. with with

23:49

all these people digging around though,

23:51

no no one could turn up

23:53

an earlier reference. then But then got

23:55

got cross an to an Australian Where was

23:57

where it was framed as get a

23:59

little. this nonsense. And one of the

24:02

people reading that post, he found

24:04

something. A user named Top's Maid,

24:06

like posted a comment, yeah, that

24:08

today I learned is full of

24:10

shit, and the perfect example of

24:12

group thing. Took me under an

24:14

hour of browsing through my street

24:16

machine collection to find this reference

24:18

to a mullet as a hairstyle

24:20

from 1991. And yeah, and he

24:22

posted this image of a magazine

24:24

that he found in his garage.

24:26

The image that Topsmate posted is

24:28

of two pages from an Australian

24:30

hot rod magazine called Street Machine.

24:32

They're from a piece about a

24:34

teenager named Craig Parker, who built

24:36

his own muscle car. The story

24:38

includes a picture of him sitting

24:40

on the ground, his back against

24:42

the grill of a red sports

24:44

car, in which he has an

24:46

unmistakable mullet. And then there's an

24:48

arrow added by Top's mate pointing

24:50

to this picture and another arrow

24:52

pointing to a line in the

24:54

text of the piece that reads,

24:56

three years ago, Craig Parker was

24:58

a mullet-haired teenager who wanted to

25:00

build a car that could rival

25:02

the best. it seemed

25:05

to be a piece calling a mullet

25:07

a mullet in 1991. I remember reading

25:09

that and like my jaw drops like

25:11

that was the coolest thing I've ever

25:13

seen Oscar immediately replied to Top's mate

25:15

comment and said this is amazing you

25:17

should submit this to the OED this

25:19

is great work. Part of me was

25:21

like dismissed that my cool day I

25:23

learned had been disproven by this Australia

25:25

guy, but like part of but the

25:27

bigger part was so happy that I

25:29

could like make it like I had

25:31

had like a small part in making

25:33

the contribution to the history of this

25:35

term. Now

25:39

if you're saying to yourself, 1991,

25:42

that's still so late, that's not

25:44

even the 1980s, is this really

25:46

that big a contribution to the

25:48

history of the term? Please keep

25:50

this in mind about slang. Often

25:52

it's used in spoken language years

25:54

before it ends up in the

25:57

documentary record. So in 1991 usage,

25:59

maybe that does mean the mullet

26:01

goes back. the late 1980s. And

26:03

also, this was such a big

26:05

deal to Oscar because he was

26:07

just way down the rabbit hole.

26:09

I had totally internalized this fact,

26:12

right? Like I had done the

26:14

research and I had like lived

26:16

with this for two years and

26:18

I had like just spent hours

26:20

defending this thesis in the comments.

26:22

And then this guy comes and

26:24

like, no, yeah, I just went

26:27

out to my garage and found

26:29

the Holy Grail, which is essentially

26:31

what I think of as any

26:33

pre-94 references to mullet. Oscar wasn't

26:35

the only one who would feel

26:37

this way about the street machine

26:40

article. The Oxford English Dictionary was

26:42

about to jump back into the

26:44

picture. So the OED had been

26:46

on the mullet case way before

26:48

Oscar. The OED, the Oxford English

26:50

Dictionary, it covers the whole thousand-year

26:52

history of English. Catherine Connor Martin

26:55

is the head of product for

26:57

Oxford Languages, the Dictionary Division of

26:59

Oxford University Press, which publishes the

27:01

OED, and what she began working

27:03

in 2003 as an editor working

27:05

on the dictionary. And for every

27:07

word in the OED, we give

27:10

the first known documentary evidence for

27:12

its use, not just for the

27:14

word overall, but for every single

27:16

meaning that the word has. In

27:18

2001, the dictionary added the word

27:20

mullet, or specifically mullet noun nine.

27:22

It's mullet noun nine because there

27:25

are eight earlier words called mullet

27:27

in English, each of which has

27:29

a different etymological origin. But the

27:31

people at the OED weren't totally

27:33

satisfied with the etymological portion of

27:35

the mullet now nine entry, because

27:37

like everybody else, 1994 sounded late

27:40

to them. There seemed to be

27:42

a disconnect between the lexical history

27:44

of the mullet and the cultural

27:46

and social history of the mullet,

27:48

and furthermore we had anecdotal evidence

27:50

from people who were sure that

27:53

they had heard or used that

27:55

term in the 1980s and as

27:57

an editor I myself felt like

27:59

well obviously we knew this term

28:01

in the 1980s. in 2013, we

28:03

decided to launch what we call

28:05

an appeal to the public for

28:08

further information on this word. The

28:10

OED has been launching these appeals

28:12

since it was founded, and now

28:14

they do that on the internet,

28:16

hoping that people like Oscar will

28:18

find something they couldn't. For a

28:20

few years, though, no one found

28:23

anything. And then they got a

28:25

lead. Then in 2015, the plot

28:27

thickened. because someone posted a TIL

28:29

thing I learned thread on Reddit.

28:31

The OED people don't know Oscar,

28:33

but Catherine is talking about Oscar.

28:35

Someone on staff had come across

28:38

his post, which had been updated

28:40

with a link to the street

28:42

machine article. That was really exciting,

28:44

and when we found out about

28:46

it, we were thrilled. But the

28:48

OED's policy, because these first dates

28:50

are so important to us, we

28:53

really have to verify them. And

28:55

we typically want to verify them

28:57

in print in a library, which

28:59

is the gold standard. So the

29:01

OED reached out to a number

29:03

of Australian libraries, and the librarian

29:06

at the National Library of Australia

29:08

found a copy of Street Machine

29:10

from January 1992, which would have

29:12

come out in late 1991. Catherine

29:14

read me the email the librarian

29:16

sent to her. They said, I've

29:18

checked our copy of Street Machine

29:21

from January, February 1992. On page

29:23

31 there is some wording that

29:25

is very similar to the quote

29:27

you provided, but it doesn't mention

29:29

the word mullet. Nothing if not

29:31

persistent. The OED has several other

29:33

Australian librarians to track down this

29:36

article. None of them could find

29:38

a version of it with the

29:40

word mullet, but they also could

29:42

find a January 1992 issue of

29:44

street machine. They could only find

29:46

a January-February 1992 double issue, which

29:48

instead of making the whole thing

29:51

shadier, actually introduced some doubt. research

29:53

librarians are the greatest people. And

29:55

so one of them took it

29:57

upon themselves to contact the editors

29:59

of street machine. magazine themselves. And

30:02

they also didn't know of a

30:05

January 1992 issue, but they couldn't say

30:07

for certain that there might not

30:09

have been some kind of special early

30:11

version with limited circulation for a

30:13

special event that might have had a

30:15

slightly different text. Street ended

30:17

up posting about all of this on

30:19

their Facebook page, and none of their

30:21

readers could find this mention of

30:23

the mullet or this January 1992 issue

30:25

either. All of this sounds

30:28

pretty sketchy, and that's why

30:30

it didn't go into the OED. It

30:32

was not definitive documentary proof.

30:34

But for all that was

30:36

suspicious of it, it still

30:38

at her. She couldn't completely

30:40

dismiss it, and that's

30:42

because she knows too much

30:44

about how language works.

30:46

Australian English has a history

30:48

of kind of punching

30:50

above its weight it comes

30:52

to colloquial English. So for example,

30:54

the word selfie originated in

30:56

Australian English and then

30:59

infiltrated the rest of the world. It's

31:01

entirely plausible that this word originated

31:04

in Australian slang in the late 1980s

31:06

and early 1990s, like all of

31:08

these Australians say it did, and that

31:10

it was only popularized by the Beastie

31:12

Boys than coined by them. That

31:14

wouldn't be surprising at all. So

31:16

yeah, the first documented usage

31:18

of mullet now 9 from 1994.

31:21

It doesn't come from some random

31:23

Usenet page. It comes from the

31:26

Boys. The

31:32

The Boys, the rap rock

31:34

consisting of Adam Adrock Harvitz,

31:36

Mike Mike D Diamond, and Adam

31:38

MCA Yow, who died in

31:41

2012, released the song

31:43

Mullet Head June 1994. The

31:45

lyrics, which reference late stage mullet sporter Jean-Claude Van

31:47

Damme, Billy Ray Cyrus, Kenny G,

31:49

and Joey Buttafuco, get the idea, still

31:51

with us, of of the mullet

31:53

-haver as a particular kind of

31:55

macho sleazebag. They skewer condescend. send to

31:57

a stereotype of lower lower bridge

31:59

and tunnel tunnel guys. with with jeans

32:01

and mullets, driving into New

32:03

York into start fights and hook

32:05

up with and girls. underage The song

32:08

also includes the lines, the lines,

32:10

to know what's a mullet a

32:12

I got a little story to

32:14

tell to a hairstyle that's a

32:16

way of life. a way Have

32:18

you ever seen a mullet wife?

32:20

a mullet words are in the OED. in the OED.

32:30

The second documented reference to the to the

32:33

in the OED in the OED-2 also comes

32:35

from Beastie Boys. It arrived It arrived in

32:37

1995 in their storied, short -lived magazine, a

32:39

big enough deal at the time which was a

32:41

big enough deal at the time to

32:43

be featured on MTV has now come out with

32:45

its trio has now come out with its own

32:47

magazine of turns out to be one of the funniest

32:49

reads around. is, as Grand Royal is,

32:51

as its proprietors acknowledge, a celebration of

32:54

humor, basketball slang, blatant blatant

32:56

opinions, and half -baked notions. The

32:58

second issue issue on the on the

33:00

it contains a collection of articles

33:02

gathered under the headline, under the over

33:04

the mullet. the Its opening essay begins,

33:06

essay nothing as bad as a

33:08

bad haircut. bad And perhaps the worst

33:10

haircut of all is a cut

33:12

we call is a cut we call the

33:14

mullet. It goes on to include

33:16

a series of mini about

33:18

the the origins and cultural significance,

33:21

focusing largely on the cheesy

33:23

the cheesy mullet. Though it has

33:25

one section section called the political

33:27

correctness of the mullet, which

33:29

notes its popularity among among Hispanics,

33:31

indigenous people, and women. women.

33:33

There's also a Q &A with

33:35

a mullet head, a defense

33:38

of the mullet, and synonyms

33:40

for the hairstyle, including for the

33:42

hairstyle, including, soccer neck bi-level, neckworm, ape-flap, hack-job, the

33:44

Missouri Compromise, and the Kentucky Waterfall. Only some only

33:46

some of which were jokes. Fahey

33:48

is a novelist, but is a novelist,

33:50

but in the was freelance writing

33:52

and running a movie database in San

33:54

Diego. He'd gone to to high school with

33:56

Grand Royal's who got in touch about

33:59

the project. Or as Warren

34:01

tells it, about the mission. Everyone

34:03

from porn stars to Superman were

34:05

sporting it suddenly. And Masterstroke was

34:07

to tag it with a word

34:09

that would, you know, forever, hopefully

34:11

abolish it from the human race.

34:13

The editor asked Warren to write

34:15

an ancient history of the mullet,

34:18

a kind of anthropological satire. Warren

34:20

agreed, even though no one knew

34:22

what a mullet was. At the

34:24

time, it was utterly completely new

34:26

and nobody had heard of it

34:28

and everybody thought it was nuts

34:30

to do it. What are you

34:32

naming a hairstyle after a fish?

34:35

What? For the piece, he went

34:37

up to a Los Angeles to

34:39

get a leather-bound tome that he

34:41

says had been permanently borrowed from

34:43

the LA County Library System about

34:45

the history of hairstyles going back

34:47

to the Samarians. I drove up

34:49

to the Beastie Boy's office. They

34:52

had like a half-court basketball court

34:54

in their office. While I was

34:56

there, Mike D actually came in.

34:58

He had just gotten a wig

35:00

on Hollywood Boulevard and went to

35:02

a barber shop and got it

35:04

cut into a mullet. And

35:07

the barber was really upset about it.

35:09

But he then drove around Hollywood Boulevard

35:11

in a convertible and they did a

35:14

photo shoot for the magazine with him

35:16

wearing it. These photos would appear in

35:18

a piece called, I was a 20-something

35:21

mullethead for a day by Mike Diamond,

35:23

a chronological account of Mike D and

35:25

the director Spike Jones Day in mullet

35:27

Wigs. With this piece and all the

35:30

rest, the beasties were tapping into and

35:32

crystallizing an already popular sentiment, that this

35:34

hairdo was over. If it had once

35:37

been rebellious, it was increasingly conformist. If

35:39

it had once been a way to

35:41

signal, you were an outsider. Now it

35:44

was just a way to pose as

35:46

one. Yes, it was still common, but

35:48

it wasn't cool. Tangentially, I think this

35:51

may help explain one of the odder

35:53

coincidences of all this, which is that

35:55

in a period of two years, there

35:57

were as many songs this one

36:00

hairstyle. Please recall that

36:02

Swedish hockey song from

36:04

1993. ["Hockey Hair

36:07

Song"] In

36:09

1993 and 1994, hockey

36:12

hair was in a deeply

36:14

transitional moment where it

36:16

was popular and yet also

36:18

played out, making it curious

36:20

of note in a way it hadn't

36:23

been for years. And these songs,

36:25

they noticed. Anyway,

36:27

getting back on track, if

36:29

the Beasties didn't originate disdain for

36:31

the they mainstreamed it and its

36:33

new insulting name. But

36:36

doesn't mean they came up

36:38

with this name. As Catherine Connor

36:40

said, it's totally plausible that the

36:42

term mullet from somewhere else, likely

36:44

in the slang of some

36:46

subculture, somewhere on the English -speaking

36:48

globe. So now I want

36:50

to turn back to the only

36:52

subculture that had any promise, however piddling.

36:54

I want to turn back to

36:56

that lead we left dangling somewhere

36:58

over Australia. I want to turn

37:01

back to the elusive 1991 street machine. street

37:03

machine. As

37:09

far as we could tell, the

37:11

only stone the OED OED had left unturned

37:13

was Topsmate himself, the Reddit user who

37:15

had originally posted the street pages. So

37:17

we decided to reach out to

37:19

him. We didn't expect him to respond,

37:21

but we figured it was worth

37:23

a try. While we were waiting

37:25

for him to get back to us, Benjamin

37:27

Benjamin Frisch, the producer of decodering, started digging

37:29

around. First, he tried to

37:31

find other places online Topsmate hung out,

37:33

but his only lead were the

37:36

images that Topsmate had posted on Reddit.

37:38

Those images were all collected on

37:40

the popular image site called Imgur, or Imgur,

37:42

depending on how you want

37:44

to pronounce it, which allows you

37:46

to click through everything someone

37:48

has uploaded. Ben started clicking

37:50

through Topsmate's other Imgur posts,

37:52

looking for something that might give

37:55

him another username or an email address.

37:57

And then he that one post had been

37:59

uploaded three years after the original post. According

38:01

to According to has it has only

38:04

been viewed about 300 times, far and

38:06

as far as we can tell, it

38:08

has never been linked anywhere. Not Not

38:10

on Reddit, not not on Twitter. Oscar had

38:12

had never seen it, had had never

38:14

seen it. It had never popped

38:16

up in any of the research we

38:18

did for this piece. piece. The name The

38:20

name of the post is. an apology to

38:22

to the Oxford English Dictionary. Okay, so hi.

38:24

So yeah, so I called Catherine called tell to

38:26

tell her about it. Can I

38:28

just like read it to you? to

38:31

you? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it's from

38:33

April April 2018, and it's

38:35

called An Apology to the

38:37

Oxford English Dictionary. What?

38:39

And it is a few years ago, I saw a post

38:41

few years ago, I saw a

38:43

post the it about the origin of the

38:45

word mullet. a 1992 magazine I had

38:47

a 1992 magazine I had laying around to

38:50

make it look like it referred to

38:52

the term it was was first used in

38:54

print. I I the the cover to make

38:56

it more to trace to an issue in

38:58

the in the add more to my

39:00

edits, I also edited the

39:02

publication copyright date to 1991 to

39:04

it may have appeared as

39:07

a special early edition.

39:10

It says, why would I do this? I was

39:12

a It says, why would I

39:14

do this? I was a founding

39:16

member of an online community

39:18

called for arguments on looks for arguments on

39:20

the internet and then creates fake proofs

39:22

as evidence that the person who

39:24

is correct in the thread is actually

39:26

wrong. We pick arguments that

39:28

we have no personal stake in

39:31

stake no people we know we know. And

39:33

for create images, photos, websites and

39:35

interviews with false information supporting the

39:37

incorrect side. side. Why am I am I admitting

39:39

to this? I recently came across an entry in

39:41

the own own blog and there was a lot

39:43

of work by OED staff behind the scenes trying

39:45

to hunt down the down the special issue of the

39:47

magazine, I Photoshop. also into it

39:49

were what were stream machine and staff multiple

39:52

libraries in Australia, in I

39:54

think they should know I'm sorry for what I

39:56

have done. what I I respect the OED the OED and

39:58

I should not have publish the edits that I did. did.

40:01

Well, I have very

40:03

mixed emotions to hearing

40:06

this. I mean, first

40:08

of all, there's like

40:11

validation that this always felt sort

40:13

of hinky and the likelihood of

40:16

it being real seemed vanishingly small.

40:18

And I have to respect the

40:20

game here because those things that

40:23

he mentions like changing the copyright.

40:25

So it would be hard. Those

40:27

were exactly the right things to

40:29

do to keep that tiny shred

40:32

of possibility alive that this was

40:34

real. And it worked. But then

40:36

also it's kind of sad when

40:39

a mystery ends. Catherine also pointed

40:41

out another thing, that the whole

40:43

thing is pretty dark. There's an

40:45

additional paragraph in the apology in

40:48

which Top's Mate says he's become

40:50

disillusioned with a NOi club because

40:52

it's, quote, full of people whose

40:55

only purpose in life is trolling

40:57

vaccination supporters and US political discussions.

40:59

He goes on to say he

41:01

almost died in the 80s from

41:04

an infection, for which there's now

41:06

a vaccine, and he thinks that

41:08

the political work is just empowering

41:11

those who would prefer a confused

41:13

populace. I want no part of

41:15

the community anymore. Between

41:17

2015, when he posted the Photoshop

41:20

image and 2018 when he apologized,

41:22

Top's mate, like so many people,

41:24

seems to have been confronted with

41:26

what it means to live in

41:28

a post-truth world, one he was

41:31

actively contributing to, only to find

41:33

out he didn't like it that

41:35

much. Still, he only saw fit

41:37

to apologize in a hard-defined image

41:39

gallery that the people he was

41:42

apologizing to might never have found.

41:44

Is it really an apology if

41:46

you don't deliver it? Still, Catherine's

41:48

happy to have the whole thing

41:51

resolved. So we put to this

41:53

appeal, we wondered about this question,

41:55

does the word mullet go back

41:57

as far as our brain? it

41:59

does or only as far as

42:02

the documented evidence shows. And I

42:04

guess from our perspective that that's

42:06

still not answered but we're always

42:08

open for new for new data.

42:10

At this one I'm just like

42:13

you are open to new data

42:15

but like I just feel like

42:17

you guys got it. We never

42:19

say never in in this business

42:22

there are always there are always

42:24

new things that come up but

42:26

yes I don't think this is

42:28

active anymore. I want to gently

42:30

suggest that there was something going

42:33

on to keep it active for

42:35

so long, something besides lexographical plausibility.

42:37

Call it a bit of mullit

42:39

confirmation bias. Because it feels so

42:41

much like the term ought to

42:44

have existed before 1994, the OED

42:46

put out this appeal. And then

42:48

when evidence of it existing before

42:50

1994 popped up, it was taken

42:52

seriously, really seriously, and then ultimately,

42:55

perhaps more seriously than it deserved.

42:57

like multiple librarians more seriously than

42:59

it deserved. And so many people

43:01

in this tale behaved this way.

43:04

Read it readers, librarians, street machine

43:06

editors, and readers. Definitely me. We

43:08

all kept digging because we couldn't

43:10

quite believe that what we thought

43:12

we knew was true. wasn't true.

43:15

One thing I noticed is that

43:17

many of the people most devoted

43:19

to the idea that the term

43:21

mullet existed in the 1980s. Catherine,

43:23

Oscar, read it commenters, me again,

43:26

weren't even fully sentient in the

43:28

1980s. It wasn't personal experience or

43:30

individual memory that was driving our

43:32

certainty. It was just a cliched

43:35

sense of the era, which was

43:37

all we had to go on.

43:39

In this regard, the mullah is

43:41

a fun, low-stakes iteration of something

43:43

that is often not fun or

43:46

low-stakes at all. People's warped but

43:48

strongly held perceptions of the imagined

43:50

past and the length they will

43:52

go to hold on to them.

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45:41

we've almost fully excavated the mullet,

45:43

but there's a little more to

45:45

this mystery. If the term mullet

45:47

wasn't coined in Australian car culture,

45:49

who actually coined it? Did the

45:51

Beastie Boys pluck it out of

45:53

thin air? Or did they get

45:56

it from somewhere else? Honestly, it

45:58

seems like they plucked it. It

46:00

was definitely coined by my... the

46:02

Beastie Boys. Warren Fahey, the writer

46:04

who contributed to the Grand Royal

46:06

Mullet Package again. Who had noticed

46:08

that this hairstyle was impinging on

46:10

civilization to a monstrous degree at

46:12

that point in time. And he

46:14

came up with the word mullet

46:17

and said, this is what we're

46:19

going to do. We're going to

46:21

devote an issue to making that

46:23

word stick. So it was all

46:25

quite intentional and completely planned. by

46:27

super genius Mike D. No, obviously,

46:29

I would have liked to ask

46:31

Mike D about this. Still would,

46:33

if anyone has an in, please

46:35

consider this my public appeal. But

46:38

he declined to speak with us.

46:40

But Warren is adamant Mike D

46:42

coined the term, and the Grand

46:44

Royal Peace itself suggests everyone working

46:46

on it at the time thought

46:48

so too. The article says, we're

46:50

not sure where the term mullet

46:52

came from, but as usual, Mike

46:54

D was the first to use

46:56

it around here. If that implies

46:59

he might have gotten it from

47:01

somewhere else, the possibilities listed for

47:03

where he might have gotten it.

47:05

Maybe he was thinking of a

47:07

muskrat, for example. Don't suggest he

47:09

was borrowing slang from a buddy.

47:12

Still, Mike was the beastie most involved

47:14

with the magazine. Maybe the staff just

47:16

hadn't talked mullets with the other members.

47:18

When I ran the theory that Mike

47:20

D had coined the term by the

47:22

Beastie Boys Publicist, a man named Steve

47:25

Martin, who has known them forever, and

47:27

did the real-life interview with a mullet

47:29

head for the grand royal mullet package,

47:31

he'd never heard that it came specifically

47:33

for Mike D. Steve said he first

47:35

heard the term from Adam Yauk, likely

47:37

in the early planning stages for this

47:40

piece. He asked him if it had

47:42

anything to do with a fish. And

47:44

Adam said, no. Whatever beastie came up

47:46

with it, the timeline supports the theory

47:48

that one of them birthed it outright.

47:50

I explained this all to Catherine. This

47:52

is just fully like too much detail,

47:54

but one of the things that is

47:57

also interesting is that song mullet head.

48:04

Like it was a deep B-side, like

48:06

it was originally released in 1994 in

48:08

June at like an additional track on

48:11

the single for the third single off

48:13

ill communication, which is to say it's

48:15

not an album track, but it actually

48:18

also makes more sense of the Grand

48:20

Royal piece because it's like, this song

48:22

came out in mid-94, but it would

48:24

have like only been for B-C- Boy

48:27

Heads or people who'd bought that single.

48:29

That's such an important part of slang

48:31

too. So like the appeal of slang

48:34

when it comes out is that it's

48:36

an indicator of in-group identification. So, like,

48:38

the exclusivity is what makes it tantalizing?

48:41

The other thing that is sort of

48:43

interesting about, just date-wise, is that Grand

48:45

Royal, so the issue that has this

48:47

article about the moment, which is so

48:50

much more detailed than the song, is

48:52

a yearly. So it came out in

48:54

1995, but it's, like, famously a yearly.

48:57

Oh, like the publication process was way

48:59

longer than it was supposed to be.

49:01

Yes. And so that actually means it

49:04

probably had been originally conceived in time

49:06

to come out with the album, which

49:08

came out in mid-94. But then, like,

49:11

you're tying this up to that to

49:13

make it so, like, it's seeming, like,

49:15

very straightforward. Well done. You solved the

49:17

moment mystery. Well, you had already solved

49:20

it. That's the joke. It was already

49:22

solved. Please bear with me while I

49:24

suggest there is a real mystery left.

49:27

That's answer also has to do with

49:29

the Beastie Boys. And it's why do

49:31

we think the mullet is so hideous?

49:34

Because why do we think the mullet

49:36

is so hideous? Because we do. I

49:38

want to go back to something that

49:40

Lauren Wright, the woman with the mullet,

49:43

who I spoke with at the top

49:45

of the show, said. You know, the

49:47

mullet has been deemed like traditionally very

49:50

unattractive and For decades,

49:52

we have seen, the

49:54

mullet was not

49:57

thought to be unattractive

49:59

and ugly at

50:01

all. and happened? all. What

50:04

I think I of

50:06

the answer is of the

50:08

term term itself. When

50:12

the beasties were clowning on it, the

50:15

mullet was reaching the end of its

50:17

natural end of its So everywhere, so

50:19

mass, that mass, that hip the

50:21

beasties were sneering at it.

50:23

But that's not unique. that's This

50:25

fate awaits most trends. trends. Most

50:27

seem seem unstailish falling out of style.

50:29

of But that's not when

50:31

most of them get their

50:33

names. their We don't call don't call

50:36

pants. But this is exactly what

50:38

happened to the happened to the Is

50:40

it crazy to think that

50:42

matters? If If the beastie boys

50:44

hadn't named the mullet, doesn't it

50:46

seem entirely possible that we

50:48

wouldn't remember it so clearly? Some

50:50

random hairdo with no agreed

50:52

upon name. no if the name

50:54

changed And if the see it, and

50:56

when we see it, we see it?

50:58

it it changed how we see

51:01

it? Maybe one

51:03

of the ways this term

51:05

retrofitted the past is to make

51:07

us primarily associate this hairstyle

51:09

with the objects of the beasties'

51:11

of the beastie's ire. guys still rocking

51:13

it in 1994. in And not

51:15

think of it as what it

51:18

had been for years. been surprisingly

51:20

pan -gender, pan-gender, global haircut that

51:22

had a really good run, good

51:24

whose time was just was just up. The

51:27

mullet, the term blotted out the

51:29

mullet, the hairstyle, which despite everything meant

51:31

continues to mean many different

51:33

things to different groups of people.

51:36

of What I'm saying is, maybe

51:38

the solution to this last

51:40

mystery, last is the mullet so

51:42

ugly, is that it isn't really

51:44

at all. at all. the people

51:46

that really get in and appreciate

51:48

it, it's a powerful thing

51:50

to have. to have. This

52:02

is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. If

52:04

you have any cultural mysteries

52:07

you want us to decode,

52:09

please email us at decoderring at

52:11

Slate.com. This episode was

52:13

written by me. It It

52:15

was edited and produced by

52:17

Benjamin Frisch. Decoder Ring is produced

52:20

by me, Evan Chung, Max Friedman,

52:22

and Katie Shepherd. Derek is executive

52:24

producer. Merit Jacob is senior

52:26

director. Thanks to

52:28

Barney Hoskins, Jerry Slater, Daniel L. Schachter,

52:30

Alicia Montgomery, June Thomas, Forrest Wickman, and

52:32

everyone else who gave us help

52:35

and feedback along the way.

52:37

If you aren't already a Slate

52:39

Plus member, I want

52:41

to strongly encourage you to become

52:43

one. You can subscribe now on

52:45

Apple Podcasts by clicking try free

52:48

at top of the Decoder Ring

52:50

show page, or can

52:52

visit slate.com/decoder to get access

52:54

wherever you listen. We're

52:57

going to be releasing bonus episodes

52:59

regularly, including answers to mailbag questions,

53:01

so please sign up now. Slate

53:03

Plus members also get to listen

53:05

to our show and every other

53:07

Slate podcast without any ads, and

53:09

you'll get unlimited access to Slate's

53:11

website. Again, you can

53:14

subscribe on Apple Podcasts by

53:16

clicking try free visit Slate.com/decoder plus

53:18

sign up. We'll see you

53:20

in two weeks. Hi,

53:42

I'm Josh Levine. My

53:44

podcast, The Queen, tells the story

53:46

of Linda Taylor. She

53:48

was a con artist, a see kidnapper, and

53:50

maybe even a murderer. She

53:53

was also given the title The Welfare

53:55

Queen, and her story was used

53:57

by Ronald Reagan to justify slashing aid to

53:59

the the poor.

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