Of all the oversized, regrettable hairstyles of the 1980s, one bad choice sits above the rest:
the mullet. You know what I’m talking about. The squirrel pelt.
The Arkansas waterfall. The ape drape. The practice of cutting your hair short in the front
and sides and keeping it long in the back. It’s a look that says you know how to party and still
show up for work more or less sober the next day. It’s a look George Clooney rocked on The Facts of
Life—that Patrick Swayze worked in Road House. And a look that absolutely no one actually called
a mullet in the ‘80s. It wasn’t until 1994, when the Beastie Boys released a song called “Mullet
Head,” that the unfortunate hairstyle was given its equally unfortunate name.
“Mullet head,” as an insult for a stupid person, dates back to 1855, according to
the Oxford English Dictionary. Mark Twain used it in 1884’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
People were definitely rocking mullets before the Beastie Boys’ song, but they weren’t
calling them mullets. According to a couple of reader submissions printed in the Guardian,
the ‘do was sometimes called a “bi-level' in the 1980s. Incredible.
People rocking a mullet who actually knew they had a mullet
is but one of many misconceptions about the ‘80s I’ll be addressing today,
from the concept of “stranger danger” to the idea that the ‘80s represented the epitome
of American greed. Let’s get started.
Hi, I’m Justin Dodd, welcome to Misconceptions. Whether you lived through the ‘80s or merely absorbed some details via
Stranger Things, we’re taking a look at the myths surrounding the me decade. But before we do that,
we need to confirm—yes, ALF really was a top ten rated show. That is NOT a misconception.
Prestige television was a long ways off.
If you could fit inside of a car trunk in the ‘80s, there was no doubt you were constantly
warned about the perils of interacting with strangers. Newscasts and newspapers were
rife with stories about missing kids and cautionary tales about child abductions.
It was a public crisis. It was even given a catchy name—stranger
danger. Everywhere you went, it seemed like taking your eyes off a child for one second
would result in a lifetime of regret. If you were a child, you were taught that a maniac
was lurking around every corner. But was there really an epidemic of kidnappings?
There was not. There *were* some unfortunate circumstances that led the public to be afraid
of one, though. In the early 1980s, a number of missing children—including two paperboys
in Iowa named Johnny Gosch and Eugene Wade Martin—received a great deal of media attention.
Anxious parents and public officials were often in front of cameras and microphones, and they
were understandably upset. The disappearance of Adam Walsh in 1981 only added to the concern. More
than 38 million viewers tuned into a 1983 TV movie about his abduction. Cartoons had warnings about
talking to strange adults. One survey estimated kids in grades under six were about as afraid of
being kidnapped as they were of nuclear war. The widespread coverage of these incidents made
it seem like the danger was omnipresent. At one point, the media was reporting up to
50,000 children were being abducted annually, and the sight of missing kids on milk cartons meant
anyone having breakfast was being confronted with the possibility of a child—maybe
their child—going missing. At the time, abductions seemed like
they were happening everywhere. And who can blame parents for being protective of their children?
But even back in 1985, the LA Times was reporting data that cast some serious doubt on the supposed
spate of child abductions. The FBI had reports of 67 stranger kidnappings that year, and the
National Center for Missing and Exploited children said they had “firm records” of 142 cases.
Obviously every one of those cases is one too many, but the media focus on strangers risks
misleading the public about the actual risks to children. In 2018, for example, the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported helping law enforcement with 25,000 missing
children cases. Of those, 23,500 were runaways and 1000 had been abducted by family members,
some of which may have been related to parental custody issues. In other words,
there wasn’t, statistically speaking, that much danger from strangers—just a relative
handful of high-profile cases that captured the public’s imagination and a much larger number
of unfortunate, but less sensationalistic, stories not involving strangers at all.
In 2017, the Center even called for an end to the phrase stranger danger, citing statistics
that most juvenile crimes involved people the child knew and that at times it might actually
be beneficial for a kid to reach out to a stranger if they need help. And in extreme circumstances,
it’s even OK to approach someone with a mullet. My dad rocked one in the 80s, and he is a very lovely
man who definitely would have offered to help.
Everyone who remembers the 1980s remembers a decade of excess. Tons of cocaine. Tons of money.
A questionable number of leg warmers. But did people in the ‘80s really have
an unquenchable thirst for wealth? Well, maybe. But probably no more so
than in any other decade. One way to define greed is by the amount of charitable giving being done,
or lack thereof. By that metric, the ‘80s saw unprecedented generosity. In 1980, Americans
gave roughly $65 billion to charity, adjusted to “1990 dollars.” By the end of the decade,
that number had grown to over $100 billion. As a percentage of national income, that’s far higher
than it was in the 25 years *prior* to 1980. Was all that generosity a result of greater
wealth? Could be. But the growth in charitable giving outpaced what people in the ‘80s were
spending on material goods. Giving grew 68 percent that decade over decades prior,
while total consumer spending grew 48 percent. It’s easy to see why people stereotype the ‘80s
as the “me decade.” In the United States, income tax rates were slashed on the highest earners—but
for much of the decade they were still higher than today’s top rates.
In the 1980s, the number of millionaires in the country went from 2.8 million to 3.2 million.
But twice as many new millionaires were minted in the 1990s.
Yes, many brokers liked flashy watches and suits. Madonna had a hit with “Material Girl.”
But does flashy equal greedy? Greed typically means hoarding as much as you can. Record
charitable giving doesn’t support that idea.
Before the proliferation of the cell phone, making a call while outside of your home typically meant
using a pay phone—those virtually indestructible public phones in booths or installed on streets
that seemed to scream out, “Please use me to conduct illegal activity.” Many people
thought that no one could trace a public phone, allowing drug dealers to cover their tracks.
Some communities even lobbied to have pay phones removed, citing concerns over criminal activity.
But public pay phones actually worked a lot like regular landline phones. Inserting a coin
and dialing a number created the same record of the date, time, and recipient of the phone call,
making for a handy reference for law enforcement. Now, it is true that some company’s pay-phones
didn’t keep such records, but others did. And since most criminals didn’t bother making the
distinction, anyone relying on a payphone to conduct illegal business was taking a chance
that their illicit activity would be discovered. The caller might be able to remain anonymous,
but most everything else, like the time and length of the call, and the number on the other end,
was fair game. Some cities even removed the ability for a pay phone to receive an inbound call
in order to make it more difficult for dealers to treat the phone booth like a remote office.
The phones simply weren’t a foolproof method of concealing a person’s identity.
Because of the stigma, though, a lot of pay phones were removed from places where they were
of actual use to law-abiding citizens. Removing them likely did far more to keep innocent people
from making innocuous calls than it did to help criminals keep themselves anonymous.
Interesting sidenote about pay phones. While they’re fairly useless in today’s tech world,
they were essential in the early 20th century. In 1946, only half of U.S. homes had a home
phone. In some neighborhoods, one pay phone might service multiple homes.
And yes, criminals were up to payphone mischief back then, too. Wise guys sometimes tied strings
to coins to try and pull them back out of the machine after making calls. These
would-be freeloaders were often thwarted, though, by string cutters inside the phones,
a low-tech security measure that started to appear around the 1930s. And even though research
proved otherwise, I still like to picture a tiny little dude sitting inside the phone,
waiting eagerly with a big pair of scissors.
Mullets were not the only questionable
follicular choice of the ‘80s. Many men and women teased, preened, and shaped their hair into wavy
cascades using voluminous amounts of hairspray. In 1985, this vanity seemed to have brought the
world to the brink of destruction. That’s when scientist Joseph Farman and others disclosed
that the atmospheric ozone over Antarctica had been reduced by approximately 40 percent. Ozone,
or trioxygen, is a gas that protects us from the sun’s potent UV rays. It’s nature’s sunscreen.
If it disappeared, well, that wouldn’t be good. Like, dystopian levels of “not good.”
Farman and others pointed the finger at chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, a type of chemical
that had been commonly used in hairspray, air conditioners, and refrigerators; levels of CFCs
had risen high enough to damage the ozone layer. But even though that theory was confirmed in the
1980s, it had actually been developed in the 1970s. It was in *that* decade that
manufacturers voluntarily stopped using CFCs and the United States banned CFC use
in aerosol products, except in the case of certain medical applications like inhalers.
So those 2-foot-tall hair‘dos in the ‘80s did not actively contribute to the hole in the ozone.
As for that hole? We don’t hear about it much anymore since the passing of the Montreal Protocol
in 1987, which banned most ozone-depleting substances from use on a global level.
With some luck, the ozone could be fully healed in the next few decades. Hopefully.
It’s considered one of the biggest consumer products blunders of all time. In April 1985,
after months of research, Coca-Cola unveiled a drink they dubbed New Coke. It was a sweeter,
more syrupy version of their classic recipe, one they hoped would better compete with the
surging rivals at Pepsi. This wasn’t just an alternative. It was a replacement.
Why was Coca-Cola so confident in switching up one of the most beloved soft drinks in the world?
Taste tests! Extensive market research demonstrated that subjects preferred
a slightly less fizzy and slightly sweeter Coke product. And this wasn’t a few people
they cornered at a shopping mall. The company conducted a reported 190,000 taste tests,
and the results were highly encouraging. Unfortunately, what Coca-Cola didn’t count on
was the emotional connection people had with the taste of OG Coke. New Coke was quickly condemned
by soft drink enthusiasts, and common wisdom has it that Coke pulled the drink from shelves
almost immediately owing to mass outrage. While the drink had plenty of detractors,
though, none were as vocal as Gay Mullins, a semi-retired real estate agent who found New Coke
so off-putting he sunk $100,000 into a campaign against it. Mullins was often cited in the media,
giving interviews and buzzworthy quotes like calling the lack of soda choice “un-American”
and the new formula “unbelievably wimpy.” He sent out bumper stickers and set up telephone hotlines.
Gay Mullins was waging a war against Coca-Cola, and he was winning.
It turns out that his motives may not have been entirely altruistic. Mullins later admitted
he was hoping to cause enough commotion for Coca-Cola to pay him in hush money, or even
inspire Pepsi to feature him in a campaign. When Coke finally relented and withdrew New Coke as
its primary offering in June, Mullins said he’d be happy to speak on their behalf—for $200,000
per appearance. In the ultimate sign Mullins may not have been a true devotee, he couldn’t
tell the difference between Coca-Cola Classic and New Coke in a blind taste test. Mullins,
you gotta do your research, like us Skittles-stans who fought for and won green skittle’s return to
Lime over green apple. Good work comrades. One other big misconception about New Coke:
It didn’t actually go away in the ‘80s. Coca-Cola left it on shelves and let consumers decide
which flavor they preferred. The company actually kept production of the product
rolling until 2002 under the name Coke II.
Everyone knows the story. The ‘80s were ruled by Mötley Crüe, Poison, Van Halen—gods of rock
who sported the kind of hair that could destroy the ozone layer. Which we now know is nonsense,
of course. Either way, in the early 1990s, the Seattle sound took over. Spandex pants were traded
for cardigans and Nirvana and Alice in Chains sounded the death knell for flashy rock bands.
Of course, the so-called grunge scene grew popular, but it wasn’t exactly at the expense
of hair bands. No less an authority than Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe has said that
he bought Nirvana’s Nevermind album and passed it around, encouraging people to listen to it,
and that the business of his band didn’t change. Grunge offered a new sound, but it wasn’t like
New Coke. It wasn’t replacing other genres. There also wasn’t really any rivalry. Kurt
Cobain reportedly bought and loved Too Fast for Love by the Crüe. Alice
in Chains opened for both Poison and Van Halen. So what really happened to hair rock? Dee Snider
of Twisted Sister once opined that hair bands did themselves in and were already in decline
by the time grunge took over. He said, quote: “It became too commercialized, and then it got
unplugged and [became] nothing but power ballads and acoustic songs, and it wasn’t
metal anymore, it had to go, it had to change.” So why did the media portray a grunge takeover?
Well, it made for a pat story. But it may have also been that hair band listeners were simply
aging out of their ‘80s tastes and looking for something else, which they would have
done with or without grunge. Cultural tastes change constantly. After all, you can’t rock
a mullet forever. Unless you hold out just long enough for them to come back in style.
Leave a comment below telling us your favorite 80s hair rock song. And thanks for watching.