Ah, the mullet, that famous object of derision. Subject of many a joke and a special issue of Grand Royal (#2 if you must know). Long despised haircut of footballers. Known as the VORKUHILA in Germany. Quintessentially a late 70's style that has refused, despite the ridicule, to die.Or is it? It turns out that the mullet has a long pedigree. In ancient Rome senators wore purple-bordered togas, married women wore a stola, and catamites wore mullets. Or at least that is the conclusion drawn by J. Pollini, in his article ‘Slave boys for sexual and religious service: images of pleasure and devotion’, in Boyle, A. J. and Dominik, W. J. (2003) (eds) Flavian Rome. Culture, Image, Text. Leiden, Boston. Pollini analysed the distinctive 'business in front, pleasure in back' style and concluded that it invariably appears in the context of 1) homosexual scenes between freeborn and slave men/youths
2) the ancient equivalent of altar boys (who may also have been pressed into service in category 1).
So the next time you see someone wearing a mullet you might want to point this out. Or you may want to keep your internal organs in a non-leaky condition, in which case it's probably better to just walk on by.
