the she-mullet

“A girl can do what she wants to do,” Joan Jett sang on “Bad Reputation” in 1980, while sporting a jet-black shag-mullet she cut and dyed herself. It definitely stood out; Vogue wrote in 1985 that she looked like a “ferocious tomboy”. Inspired by Bowie, Suzi Quatro and other musos she admired, Joan’s DIY mop reflected the attitudes of the era’s feminist trailblazers. While men of the counterculture grew out their hair into afros, shags and sideburns, women who were keen to give the old heave-ho to traditional beauty standards went for a drastic, mullet-esque chop. Think goth idol Siouxsie Sioux, punk poet Patti Smith or actress Jane Fonda, whose transition from bombshell to activist was reflected in her shaggy ’70s cut. (If you want to get technical, shags and mullets are from the same hair family; reaching mullet territory depends on how much you commit to two distinct layers.) The subversive mullets of the day also became an important part of queer culture, where non-verbal cues like hairstyle and fashion can act as winking references to your sexuality. Joan Jett’s badass ’do encouraged a generation of queer youth to play with their gender expression, while ’80s mullet fans k.d. lang and the Indigo Girls reaffirmed the style as a powerful look for butch lesbians.