I hate my my son's mullet, but I respect his right to have one
By Merryn Porter |
When I was in high school many, many years ago, the Catholic college I attended in regional NSW had a pretty strict uniform policy. Fast forward to today and many Independent schools have similar rules.
For boys, this usually means hair to be worn no longer than the eyebrows at the front or the collar at the back, meaning the mullet กช the hairstyle of choice for a growing number of boy, teens and even men กช is essentially vetoed.
Such policies made the news again last week when yet another high school placed an outright ban on mullets and said students who sported the hairstyle would essentially be suspended until their hair was cut.
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In the late 1980s when I was wrapping up my school years, no such hairstyle policy surrounded the girls at my school, so I decided to take full advantage of this oversight.
With shorter hairstyles in fashion at the time, I was soon sporting a very short sides and back, complete with a step, while my hair was longer and shaggier at the front, often tumbling into my eyes.
This hairstyle was already drawing attention at school when my friend กช a burgeoning hairdresser who loved to practice her skills on me in our garage, decided to add a little something extra at my next trim and left some wispy pieces of hair that resembled little daggers hanging over the now razor-sharp step and my eyes.
A day or two later I felt someone watching me at assembly. The deputy principal had spotted me from several metres away and was now circling me, shaking his head and 'tut-tutting' before ordering me to see him in my office.
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I was ordered to cut off the offending wisps before returning to school the next day "or he would do it for me". I did not. So the next day I was again ordered to his office and, to make matters worse, my mother was called in.
Now let me just start by saying my mother was not a fan of my hairstyle. Nor was she a fan of how I dressed at the time. Her favourite saying as I exited the house was: "You're not going out dressed like that are you?".
My mother was then, and remains today, rather terrifying. She does not suffer fools. Sitting in the office that day I soon found there was one thing my mother hated more than my haircut - and that was being told by a teacher how her daughter should style her hair.
A bad haircut doesn't make a bad kid
She was barely tolerating the lecture we were receiving when the deputy principal leapt from his chair on the opposite side of the desk from us and exclaimed: "Anarchy! Your daughter's hairstyle is promoting anarchy and I will not have it!"
"Well I suppose she is suspended then!" said my mother, as she got up and walked out of the room, with me trailing behind.
And so began a Mexican stand-off between myself and the school, with my mother acting as my unlikely supporter, until the days began to roll by and she finally suggested I have my friend perform a little touch up so I could return to the classroom, although she was quick to point out we hadn't really backed down as my friend was coming to trim my dad's hair anyway.
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So I guess I had it coming over the years as my son adopted not one, but a number of questionable hairstyles including fades, weird shaved patterns - one of which ended up looking like a health fund logo and caused teasing at school. Then finally a succession of various mullet styles (yes there are more than one).
While I may not like it, or even get it, I certainly respect his right to make terrible hair choices, and I wish schools กช even those with strict hair policies กช would do the same.
Because after all, a bad haircut doesn't make a bad kid. But a school's bad hair policy could certainly mean a disengaged kid, and after what our children have been through these past couple of years with remote learning, sport cancellations and lack of social lives, don't we at least owe them a bad hairstyle or three?
