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Hot damn! Now that’s one sexy mullet.

A Tennessee woman has yeehawed herself straight into the Guinness World Record books by growing the longest mullet ever recorded on a female.

Tami Manis has grown her marvel of hillbilly fashion for more than 33 years, and at 5ft 8in (1.7 metres) it’s now been crowned the longest competitive mullet ever. And yes, mullet growing is a ‘competitive’ activity.

In an interview published by Guinness World Records – known for curating a database of more than 40,000 world records – she revealed how the music video for the 1985 song Voices Carry by the rock band ‘Til Tuesday inspired her to begin growing her hair particularly long in the back.

“The girl had a rat tail,” said Tami, a public health nurse from Knoxville, which is home to the University of Tennessee. “And I really wanted one of those.”

If we use the saying ‘business in the front, party in at the back’, then Tami’s backside is the Burning Man of mullets.

That hairstyle is a spin-off of the short-in-the-front, long-in-the-back hairstyle made popular in the 1980s and 1990s by the actor Patrick Swayze, as well as the musician Billy Ray Cyrus.

By 1989 Tami had a righteous mullet going, but then she cut it, afterwards regretting it immediately. And so, in February 1990 she went into the salon for a ‘little off the back’ for the last time, and the mullet has been inching its way down her back ever since.

Unsurprisingly, it is a frequent topic of conversation with friends, family and passing acquaintances, many of whom do not even realise how long her mullet is until she turns around.

[image:guinnessworldrecords] 

Last year, Manis signed up to compete in the US mullet championships (we told you it’s a real thing), which annually draws more than 1,000 applicants. Judges evaluating the ‘length, style, uniqueness and showmanship’ of each mullet awarded Manis the competition’s runner-up prize – the top prize that year went to Alexa Lindsey of Holland, Michigan, who has since died. Her death was unrelated to her hairstyle.

Guinness then created its own record category for the longest competitive mullet. Tami felt she had a shot, so she applied to be considered for the female record, a process that involved making a video that documented the length of her hair.

Tami secured the title and can still recall the moment when she received the package containing her Guinness certificate officially recognising her as the woman with the world’s longest mullet.

“When I opened it, I thought, ‘This is amazing,’” she said.

She said she washes her mullet with products from the manufacturer Hask, including shampoo and conditioner with argan oil in it. She also usually keeps it braided because her mullet is longer than she is tall.

Guinness insists that the mullet never really died out, even if its popularity faded beginning in the latter part of the 1990’s. Iran’s government, for instance, banned the hairstyle for being ‘too decadent’.

Tami however says she’s never really bothered over the popularity of mullets.

“I have just kept the hairstyle.”

You go girl.

[source:guardian]