Fair-haired competition

WEST MEAD TOWNSHIP — Though it may not have been evident to visitors at the front of the Crawford County Fairgrounds, quite a blowout was underway near the back of the premises as a crowd of more than 200 gathered around the West End Stage at noon Thursday.

The atmosphere made it feel almost like a party, in fact.

And the guests of honor were hard to miss.

The first-ever Crawford County Fair mullet contest drew 62 competitors with business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back hairstyles of all shapes and sizes. Like a pageant devoted to finding harmony in conflicted coifs, the event drew passionate responses from friends and family members as contestants took a spin before celebrity judges.

“Show ’em what you got in the back,” emcee and former county commissioner Francis Weiderspahn said over the sound system from time to time to encourage the competitors. “All right, turn around and give ’em a little shake — I bet they’ll like that.”

Some relatively short mullets compensated for what they lacked in length with curly volume while others hung straight down like a curtain, extending well past their owners’ shoulders. Some had clearly adopted a hair product-heavy strategy while others sported what might be called the messy mullet.

A number of participating mullets challenged the traditional front-back divide, taking a “mostly business” approach to the forward-facing part of the hairdo: More than one competitor had the hair on their temples shaved short with line art designs, another had the front-and-center portion of his hair a bit longer than the sides and swept up mohawk style.

Perhaps the only approach missing from the field was minimalism: These hairstyles were not interested in modestly blending in. They wanted to be seen — and even if not always admired, they wanted to strike awe.

For Ben Miller of Spartansburg, the day started as many do at the fair — shoveling manure at the dairy barn. The 12-year-old Topline 4-H member was hoping to earn some spending money during what little downtime he had from showing dairy and market goats and market and breeding sheep.

Miller’s blond mane was two years in the making, but it really came together Thursday morning in the dairy barn when family friend Caroline Wheeler, a hairdresser, encouraged him to compete and put the finishing touches on his mullet: antler designs etched into the closely cropped sections above each ear, with a section about an inch in length coming to a point between the antlers and flowing tresses reaching to his shoulders in the back. It all added up to what Miller called, “The fair cut.”

Taking the West End Stage with four other finalists in the 9- to 16-year-old category, Miller followed the emcee’s advice, turning his back to the crowd and vigorously shaking his head from side to side. The effect of both the cut and the performance proved winning, and the $30 first-place prize provided Miller with additional spending cash.

Some might find shoveling manure a more enjoyable means of earning money than sporting a mullet, but Miller is decidedly not among them.

“I’m keeping it,” he said after his win. “I think it’s pretty cool looking, and in the winter, my neck’s not cold.”

Katie Miller, Ben’s mother, didn’t mind the mullet either.

“It’s his hair. He likes it and it’s something he’s proud of,” she said after the contest. “I think anything that makes you feel good about yourself and doesn’t hurt anybody else, you should go with it.”

Some contestants in the 8-and-under age group had spent their entire lives preparing for the mullet contest.

“The back hasn’t been cut since he was born,” Ashley Wood of Conneaut Lake said with a hand on the head of her son, Silas. “It’s just been growing for three-and-a-half years.”

Ashley said when the back of Silas’s blond hair grew in curly, she decided not to cut it. It straightened out a bit as it grew longer, but Silas was used to it.

“He decided he loves his long hair in the back and refuses to get it cut,” she said. “Any time we say anything about cutting the back, he’s like, ‘No!’”

Like many contestants, Silas’s preparation for the mullet contest — like a mullet extending beyond the shoulders — went further than just his haircut. His OshKosh B’gosh denim overalls, like his haircut, exhibited a contradictory nature: They were overalls, after all, but they were also shorts, extending just to his knees. Oversized blue muck boots reached up his legs nearly all the way to where the overalls ended.

Like Wood, 2-year-old Truitt Fox of Spartansburg, dressed in a black-and-red flannel shirt over a black tank top emblazoned with the message “Mayhem,” had also never had the back of his blond hair cut.

Only his “grammy,” Ellen Keller, has ever been allowed to give the front of his hair a few light trims.

“For the record, I wanted to cut it all off,” Keller said, laughing before the start of the contest. “It is cute, but it’s not my generation.”

As far as Amanda Post was concerned, the defining era for mullets came in the mid-1980s, a time when big hair bands filled stadiums and airwaves. The authentic spirit of those mullets guided her judging, Post said, and she felt qualified to make the call on which manes were best.

“I was there — I speak from experience,” Post said after the winning coifs were figuratively crowned. “I literally had a mullet in my senior year of high school. It was long and feathered on top and it was cut over my ears, and then it was long and curly in the back — ’84, of course I did.”

The crowd-drawing appeal of the spectacle was hard to pin down. Was it like people slowing to gaze at a car crash? Was it admiration for those willing to risk ridicule? Was there a kind of catharsis in seeing so many taking something so ridiculous so far?

Weiderspahn was impressed with the popularity of the event, which offered $20 and $10 prizes for second- and third-place finishers as well as the $30 first-place prize. Sponsors, including three county barbershops and a Townville spring and wire company, funded the prizes. The turnout of both contestants and spectators compared favorably to a similar contest held at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg earlier this year, according to Weiderspahn.

“It’s a chance to be a little bit different,” he said, speculating on the reason for the popularity.

Cheryl Weiderspahn, who coordinated the event with her husband, said the draw could probably be traced to the nature of the mullet itself.

“It’s a little bit of a rebellious hairstyle,” she said. “Anti-establishment would have been the phrase in our youth.”

If the hairstyle had a rabble-rousing nature to it, the contest was very much about giving crowd members what they wanted. Anthony Forne of Erie, wearing neon mirror shades and a sleeveless plaid shirt below his cowboy hat, was planning his presentation as he waited for the adult age group to take the stage.

“I’m gonna ride a horse up to the front,” he said, envisioning his entrance, “toss my hat out into the stands and turn to each side with a little hair flip.”

The side-to-side spin was an important element since it enabled the audience to see the American flag etched above his left ear and the large star above his right, while also getting a look at his waxed and curled mustache, his recently grown muttonchop sideburns and the voluminous curls descending in back past his shoulders.

“I’ve been preparing all summer for it — shampoos, conditioners, the hair oil,” he joked. “Picked out a whole outfit, bought a cowboy hat to toss.”

Mullets exert a certain appeal that makes their owners willing to go the extra mile, even as the appeal clearly does not extend universally.

“I always wanted one,” Forne said, “and the wife said I wasn’t allowed.”

As members of Forne’s entourage laughed, one noted a relevant detail: “But,” he said, “she’s not here.”