Inside the Search for the Best Mullet in America
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At a qualifying event in Texas for the finals of this year’s USA Mullet Championships, 14 hopefuls competed to be the face of what many say is not just a hairstyle, but a lifestyle.
By Maggie Lange
Oct. 6, 2022
LEWISVILLE, Texas — On the steps of a city hall just north of Dallas, “Pony” by Ginuwine oozed from speakers as 14 men tossed and bucked their mullets before a panel of judges — and a crowd peppered with even more mullets — in hopes of making the final round of this year’s USA Mullet Championships.
Up for consideration were tightly coiled mullets and beach-wave mullets, weedy mullets and mullets cascading down past shoulder blades. Some were uncombed, while others were glistening with product and perspiration. One mullet was graying, and two featured the shape of Texas shaved into one side and the American flag into the other.
Of the 14 mullets, which were chosen from an initial pool of 30 applicants, one would go on to join a group of 25 that comprises some of the lushest, wackiest and most extravagant mullets in the country. Some in the top 25 advanced from other live competitions in places including Pueblo, Colo.; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Indianapolis. Others won online votes, or were selected as finalists by special guest judges including the retired N.F.L. defensive end Jared Allen and the comedian Theo Von, a former contestant on MTV’s “Road Rules.”
A champion mullet will be crowned in an online vote that ends on Tuesday. The winning hairstyle will represent the best of some 600 total mullets in this year’s competition, which was free to enter; hopefuls just had to supply head shots. In addition to bragging rights, the victor will receive prizes that include $2,500 and a pair of sunglasses from Pit Viper, a competition sponsor.
But according to competitors in the Lewisville qualifying event on Sept. 23, there are spoils beyond cash and swag.
Among them: sticking it to your boss. Daniel Beecher, 37, who lives in League City, Texas, works at Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille, an upscale restaurant where he is forbidden to wear his hair down. Before competing in the event, Mr. Beecher told his boss, “If I take home nationals, I’m not going to hide the flow anymore,” he recalled, adding, “They’re on board.”
For Roger Robinson, 56, a semiretired farmer from Joaquin, Texas, winning would prove he was right all along when he decided to start growing his mullet, the oldest in the Lewisville competition. “I’ve had this majestic beauty for 15 years plus,” he announced to the cheering crowd. “I’ve got pride in my mullet,” added Mr. Robinson, who would answer questions from a reporter only when addressed as Roger the Great.
And after some contestants trash talked so-called baby mullets, or newer iterations of the hairstyle, a win for Josh Lindsey would suggest it’s never too late to cultivate one: At three years old, his overflowing curly reddish mullet is more like a toddler. “It takes a while, and it takes some courage to grow it,” said Mr. Lindsey, 34, a repairman at a credit union who lives in Springtown, Texas.
A Gimmick That Grew
The USA Mullet Championships began the way that some mullets do: as a gimmick. But like many a mullet, once the event took root, it grew.
Kevin Begola, 42, who lives in Linden, Mich., started the championships in 2020 as a statewide competition to promote his men’s wear store, Bridge Street Exchange, in Fenton, Mich. The first contest, held at a brewery that July, cost him “a couple thousand bucks” to put on, he said.
“It was a marketing thing for my business,” Mr. Begola said in a phone interview, during which he made a point to clarify: “I’m bald.”
To his surprise, a production company asked to cover the 2020 contest, which was later shown on ESPN2.
In 2021, Mr. Begola restaged the competition as a nationwide online contest with categories for women, teenagers and children. For that year’s championships, he also secured sponsorship deals with Pit Viper and Manscaped, a grooming company.
As the event grew, so did demands to see mullets in person. This year, Mr. Begola teamed up with Major League Eating, an organization that hosts competitive-eating contests across the country, to stage events like the one in Lewisville as part of the competition. He and Major League Eating covered the cost for the live events, and shared in any profits from deals made with their sponsors.
The hairstyle — generally understood to be shorter on the sides and top, and longer in the back — “goes back to time immemorial,” said Janet Stephens, a hairstylist in Baltimore who runs a YouTube channel about historical hairdos and has written about ancient Roman hairdressing in The Journal of Roman Archaeology. A passage from “The Secret History,” written in the sixth century by the Byzantine historian Procopius, describes young people with hair “cut off in front back to the temples, leaving the part behind to hang down to a very great length in a senseless fashion.” But Ms. Stephens said that it was only after the Beastie Boys released the song “Mullet Head,” in 1994, that the term came to define the hairstyle.
Contemporary mullets, Ms. Stephens said, are descendants of the unisex shag haircut of the 1960s. In the decades that followed, versions of the hairstyle were sported by such culture-shaping figures as David Bowie, Joan Jett, Prince, Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze and Billy Ray Cyrus. More recently, mullets have been worn by Rihanna and Lil Nas X. Many have adopted the hairstyle to achieve a sense of edginess, according to Barney Hoskyns, a music critic and co-author of “The Mullet: Hairstyle of the Gods.” “It just signifies the same miscalculated effort to be dangerous,” he said.
The mullet championships cater to a group of people who see mullets as not just a hairstyle, but a lifestyle, a sentiment mentioned by several competitors in Lewisville. (The two words they used most often to describe that lifestyle: “America” and “beer.”) The reigning USA Mullet champion, Clint Duncan, a 37-year-old pipe fitter from Knoxville, Tenn., put it this way: “Once you get that mullet, it’s just a symbol you’re carefree. You don’t care what people think.”
“You never see somebody with a mullet that’s grumpy,” he added.
In a parking lot abutting Lewisville City Hall, where many competitors had convened in the hours leading up to the qualifying event, that lifestyle was on full display. To truncate the famous mullet tag line, the gathering was simply a party, and the contest that followed was essentially a competition to determine the biggest life of that party.
About half of the 14 contestants wore Americana garb: a shirt with a toile-esque pattern of bald eagles, red-white-and-blue camouflage, shortalls that looked like an American flag. Almost all wore wraparound sunglasses.
Many sipped tallboy cans of beer as they shared tales of barbers, including one dramatic anecdote about a hairstylist being unreachable that morning when one contestant needed a touch up. Conditioners were compared — Tresemmé proved divisive — and tips were shared, including a hunch about how sunshine can add a gloss to hair.
“You see another fellow with a glorious mane, you give a little nod of acknowledgment,” said Bradley Easter, 35, a competitor from Dripping Springs, Texas, whose straight, lanky mullet stood out among the other contestants’ curls and waves. “You’re thinking, you know, he’s probably a good dude,” added Mr. Easter, who owns a landscape and excavation business.
Several people said that patience was crucial to having a mullet, because they take time to grow. But timeliness was never identified as a virtue of the mullet lifestyle. Mr. Begola, the contest’s founder, said “the mullets” — a term that he used to refer to its contestants — are known to “do what they want.” Competitors in Lewisville were given a call time an hour and a half earlier than the event’s 7 p.m. start time.
Looking for a ‘Rock Star’
Even though many contestants had been hanging out for hours in the hot shadow of City Hall, when they were called to the stage by the host of the qualifying event, Sam Barclay, a handful were nowhere to be found, including the first mullet scheduled to appear, which belonged to Danny Earl Perkins.
Mr. Perkins, 31, from Marion, Texas, calls his fluffy mullet the D.E.W., which stands for the Danny Earl Way. He sauntered up to the stage two minutes after the competition was set to begin, and wanted to walk on while smoking a cigarette. But Mr. Barclay stopped him before he stepped onstage.
Smoking wasn’t the only thing prohibited during the competition. Political statements were also discouraged — Dusty Walden, a 37-year-old diesel mechanic from Everman, Texas, was asked to to stash a flag with the right-wing catchphrase “Let’s Go Brandon” in his child’s stroller before taking the stage — and organizers warned competitors against gesturing at their crotches and other lewd behavior.
“They gave us pretty good instructions,” said Mr. Lindsey, the contestant with the overflowing three-year-old mullet, who on one ankle has a tattoo that reads “Don’t Tread on Me.” “I probably failed all of them,” he added, flashing a smile.
As each competitor took the stage, they gave a short speech about what their mullet means to them. “My mullet has gotten me about as close to the life of a hot chick as I could possibly get,” Chris Kisling of Poway, Calif., told the crowd. Mr. Poway, 44, a superintendent for a general contractor, also bragged that his mullet — a heap of thick, long kinks that fell past his shoulders — had gotten him backstage at a concert by the country musician Joe Nichols.
After the contestants had finished their speeches, the group flung and twirled their hair to “Pony” as a way to demonstrate their mullets’ flow for the judges and the audience of a few hundred people, which included some actual baby mullets, or young children with the hairstyle. The final portion of the competition was a group mullet shake.
The three judges assessing it all were Mayor TJ Gilmore of Lewisville; Carolyn Booker, the director of library services at the Lewisville Public Library; and Fred Whitfield, the business relationships director at Huffines, a local auto dealer.
The mayor described his position on the panel as a coveted gig. “I’ve had to handle many, many people reaching out of the woodwork saying, ‘If you don’t want to do this, I will do it for you,’” Mr. Gilmore said, noting that his ideal version of a mullet was worn by David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. In the contestants’ mullets, he was looking for a “rock star” quality, he added.
Competitors were scored in various categories, including mullet spirit and mullet shake. All three judges gave out a lot of 10s, but that was by design: Each had only one placard, with the number 10 on it, to wave as a sign of approval.
Less than an hour after the competition began, the judges were ready to announce their decision. By then, the sun had started to set and Mr. Robinson, or Roger the Great, was throwing glow sticks into the crowd.
Despite his attempt at political showboating, Mr. Walden took third place.
Second place went to Mr. Robinson and his 15-year-old mullet.
And in first place: Mr. Lindsey, who had not expected his younger mullet to outperform its more seasoned competitors. Arriving at the event, he said he had thought, “Well, I definitely don’t stand a chance because all those guys had pretty glowing mullets.” To beat them, he added, “I had to kind of go more crazy onstage.”
But as his win sank in, Mr. Lindsey began to recognize the majesty that the judges saw in his mullet. “I’ve got that ginger hair going on,” he said, “and I guess maybe I take care of mine a little bit better.”
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