HARRISBURG \u2014\u00a0A packed crowd celebrated the much-maligned but enduring mullet hairstyle Monday in a contest at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg.<\/p>\n
The short-in-the-front, long-in-the-back coiffure, once the province of Canadian hockey players and hair metal bands, attracted about 150 competitors and more than a thousand spectators for the day\u2019s \u201cmane\u201d attraction.<\/p>\n
The top award, in the form of the rear bumper of a Corvette, went to 10-year-old Drew Fleschut of Dallas, Pennsylvania \u2014 who wore a red-and-black shirt in an homage to movie character Joe Dirt and carried Joe\u2019s trademark mop.<\/p>\n
Contestants were evaluated for the style of their cut, any props or accessories, their presentation and their overall sense of commitment, said judge Brittany Goldberg.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is for fun,\u201d said Goldberg, owner of Heavy Metal Hair Salon in Philadelphia. \u201cIt\u2019s about the camaraderie and everyone having a laugh and a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were magic tricks, customized T-shirts and even a \u201cskullet\u201d \u2014 a mullet sported by a balding man. One kid didn\u2019t want to leave the stage. Another took the occasion to pick his nose. Some danced the worm, some dabbed and a few ripped off their shirts, pro-wrestling style.<\/p>\n
Brittni Williamson of Harvey\u2019s Lake brought along her 3-year-old son Mason, who ended up with a mullet when the hair on the back of his head grew more quickly than the rest of his hair when he was a baby.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just clean it up in the front and keep the party going,\u201d Williamson said. Mason didn\u2019t win, but he did get to accomplish his New Year\u2019s resolution by feeding a cow.<\/p>\n
Ben Barley, 7, of Red Lion arrived at the event wearing a T-shirt featuring his name and the words \u201cMULLET LIFE 6-7,\u201d a nod to both his hairstyle and the bafflingly popular\u00a0youth catchphrase.\u00a0He said he\u2019d been working on his mullet for two years.<\/p>\n
Kyle Wertman said he was inspired to go with a mullet while watching old professional wrestling footage of Hacksaw Jim Duggan. He gets a lot of comments about it in his hometown of Murrysville.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey like to fluff the curls in the back, \u2018Look at this thing, it\u2019s got a mind of its own,\u2019\u201d said Wertman, 43, who works in sales and service of industrial air compressors.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s taken Lancaster resident Brayden Shaner, 14, about four years to grow his mullet, which was good enough for third-place in the teenager category.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like it because it\u2019s different,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t see, walking through the grocery store, people with a mullet. I think the girls like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though mullets likely have been around longer than there have been barbers, the Oxford English Dictionary cites hip-hop legends the Beastie Boys for helping popularize the term mullet with the song \u201cMullet Head\u201d on their 1994 recording, \u201cIll Communication.\u201d As the venerable dictionary notes, it\u2019s a term that is slang, humorous \u201cand frequently derogatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contest, in its third year, is one of the few at the Pennsylvania Farm Show open to people who live outside the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HARRISBURG \u2014\u00a0A packed crowd celebrated the much-maligned but enduring mullet hairstyle Monday in a contest at the Pennsylvania…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[139,28,30,29,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-85108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","11":"tag-pennsylvania-news","12":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}