Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Fri 17th Jun 2011

 

If there is one lesson I have learned from my many years living here in Spain it would be this : Under no circumstances stare, and instead act with total passivity and nonchalance in the presence of the 'Spanish Mullet'.

Growing up in the UK in the mid 1980's, as a ten year old it was almost a competition that was held amongst peers to have the craziest and most outgoing haircut. Quite often this was only permitted during the school holidays for obvious reasons.

Hair would be spiky and gelled on top and long at the back. Some would grow a 'rat's tail', others would cut their hair short on top and have it permed at the back, a few would have streaks. Some twenty-odd years later me and my friends look back on any surviving photographs that have not been destroyed as evidence with shame and embarrassment.

However, it seems that for many Spanish teenagers - and those much older - the hairstyles stolen from British pre-adolescents of the 1980's are still very much in fashion.

Yes, I did say 'Fashion'. I could not think of a more appropriate word.

It is by no means unusual to see a guy in his mid-20's sporting a mullet that I swear to god I last saw on one of the Chuckle Brothers. And they do it with no sense of irony. The first time I witnessed such a thing my initial thought was that it must have been some kind of charity fundraising event and my second was that he must have been the victim of some horrific accident and was fortunate to wear his hair in anyway he could, let alone in a style of their own choosing. Half of the time I'm not sure if the haircut is aspiring to be a mohican, or if the victim could not decide between wearing his long or short, and so chose both.

And then there are the glasses.

It seems that Spanish women of the late teen to mid-twenty age group like to wear crazy spectacles. Elton John would have to think twice. Particularly when coupled with a mullet, I am instantly reminded of watching Timmy Mallet on some saturday morning kids TV program. Not especially an image that I would have thought many sexy spanish chicas would have chosen to aspire to. Thank god they steer clear of the brightly coloured dungarees or they would not only look like they were from the 1980's, but that they had been shipped in specially from Greenham Common.

I'm quite certian that there is no greater number of offenders of the fashion code here in Spain that there is in the UK - it's just that they flaunt their disregard and contempt under the noses of the fashion police quite openly. And they do so with such enthusisam that it's a good thing that capital punishment was abolished here some time ago.

I would upload pictures, but I fear that I may be in breach of public decency regulations.