Help, my kid wants a mullet: Mom's post sets off debate on return of retro haircut
The misery of the mullet is here and parents are faced with a hairy problem
This parenting column is by Amanda Marcotte, a CBC journalist and mom from Regina.
A friend's cry for help on social media moved me to mull the mullet.
It all started with a post from Chantel LaHaye.
"Help!! My 10-year-old is insisting that he wants to cut his hair into a mullet!!! I can't let it happen, can I?!" she wrote, punctuating it with a smiley face, a crying face and an embarrassed face.
I had already noted the return of the mullet scourge during a recent trip to Costco. A nine-year-old kid in black leisure pants with a white stripe down the side was running around not just obnoxious, but with swagger, sporting an epic mullet.
A pandemic, an insurrection in the heart of democracy and collapsing glaciers have never given me the thought I had looking at this kid in Costco: that these are the end times, indeed.
"Oh wait, maybe they are just Americans on holiday from Wyoming," I thought as I plucked my pre-cooked chicken from the shelf.
Alas, the misery of the mullet is here and parents are faced with a hairy problem.
Do we let our kids make the same mullet mistakes we did? Or correct course?
Is it evidence we are trapped in a cosmic loop, doomed to repeat the worst parts of our past at the hands of a jerk energy cloud that mocks us?
Maybe.
It's just hair… it'll grow… it can be cut again…. I say let him do it!- Amy Drackett
Why is hair such an itchy topic? Parents of hippies hated the long hair, my parents think my brothers cut their hair too short, and people my age thought we had seen the end of the mullet.
My kid wants a tattoo? Sure, no prob. Party with friends? Be safe. Go skydiving? At least they're getting fresh air.
But those four words, "I want a mullet," rock us back to a terrible and hilarious past, where the hair was tacky and the jeans cut off circulation.
A waterfall of responses
Chantel LaHaye's mullet post started a frenzy.
"It was a hard NO for my boys. I just can't," wrote Jennifer Morin.
"It's just hair… it'll grow… it can be cut again…. I say let him do it! " Amy Drackett responded.
Some parents are pro-mullet, but only so they can ridicule the child later in life.
"I say do it so you have something good to mock him for when you look back when he's grown up!" Shannon Kotylak chimed in.
Others aren't afraid to love the business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back hairstyle.
"Bring back the mullet!!!" wrote Sarah Glennie.
Some took it one step further, invoking the advice of parenting experts.
"As Barbara Coloroso would say, if is isn't life threatening, immoral or illegal, let's them flex their wings. Hair grows back/is easily cut," Heather McIntyre wrote. "Now, I say teasing him about his haircut is totally fair — and he like all of us will look back on his younger self and wonder what the heck he was thinking."
So would you let your kid get a mullet? Or would you rather bury the style in our achy breaky past and search out new hair horizons?
I guess the kids will lead the way and make mistakes, no matter what we do.
As Christina Darrigan Skinner posted, "It could be worse. Two words. Rat tail."
Chantel Lahaye ended up letting her son to get the haircut. She was even happy with the result.
She posted: "Update: It has happened! You know you have an amazing stylist when she can make even a mullet look epic! He LOVES it!"
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