Somehow the Mullet Has Returned. We Do Not Have To Accept This

This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.

I walk around SoHo in Manhattan every day, and I see all kinds of freaks. People who have clearly relocated from Minneapolis and Oklahoma City to endure awful weather and breathtakingly expensive rent in exchange for the freedom to express themselves by wearing the clothes they feel most comfortable in. That is the energy and attitude that New York City is built on. It’s a place for people to come and be the best version of themselves, unbound by small-town rules and conventions. I love these people. Today, we are not talking about them.

New York City hasn’t just become a place for people to eat consultant bowls at their desks and wait in line at the Museum of Ice Cream. It has also become a haven for men who have chosen an unfortunate hairstyle; it has infected all ages, and I see no signs of it letting up. I am, of course, talking about the “modern mullet or “mini mullet,” a cursed hairstyle that has never looked good on anyone (sorry to my kings Harry Styles, Jacob Elordi, and Paul Mescal, although they did get the closest to making it work).

You see the “flow” peeking out from underneath the high-crown camo snapback on a guy holding his iced oat milk matcha latte, waiting in line for Leon’s Bagels, while his girlfriend, with her enhanced lips, mindlessly scrolls on her iPhone. In Canada, they call it “hockey hair.” I have seen hot, cool gay guys doing it. Benson Boone is backflipping with his, and Austin Butler, a bona fide leading man, has even let his hair get a little longer in the back. It seems like every guy I see wants to look like a minor-league baseball player with a new Tacoma and a Zyn habit.

This mini mullet is often paired with a mustache of varying degrees, too-wide jeans, chunky boots, a small shirt, and wraparound sunglasses. A look that can only be described as TikToker. I am old enough to have lived through this trend once, and I don’t mean in the ’80s. I mean in the early aughts, when many prominent electroclash rockers let themselves go. The pants were much tighter, the flatiron stayed hot, but the hair was basically the same. When I look back at that moment, which has been oddly romanticized lately, most people look like shit, me included. I had some very questionable haircuts and outfits; my constitution was weak when it came to the popular deep V-neck T-shirt from American Apparel. (I blame cocaine.) But I managed to resist the mullet. My point is that many trends simply don’t age well. Do you want to look back at pictures in a decade and see the mullet? You shouldn’t.

Some people might think this trend, and the clothes that accompany it, is a “Trump’s America” problem. We can blame Donald Trump for a lot of things, but this feels like something that was birthed from an even darker place—the internet. Trends don’t exist anywhere except in our algorithms. It is proven over and over again that we aren’t safe from any trend, no matter how unsavory, returning. I am just praying that the faux-hawk doesn’t reappear.