At 8 years, maybe your only worry is having enough toys to play with, but for Emmitt Bailey, a kid from Menomonie, Wisconsin, is how to maintain the very particular hairstyle that has turned him into the 2022 USA Mullet Championship. 8 other young contestants.
Emmitt has just won the contest in the kids’ category thanks to his mullet, and let’s be honest, his charisma to fully rock this hairstyle that is not for everyone. He was named the champion in the kids’ division, beating out 68 other contestants.
“It’s cool that so many people tell you that you got sweet hair”, he said to BuzzFeed News.
According to her mother, Emmitt has been growing his mullet, which he has nicknamed “Mufasa”, for two years, and at the beginning, she wasn’t so much of a fan of his hair choices.
“He was pretty adamant about wanting the mullet since the beginning,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I wasn’t on board right away, but it’s just become part of his personality now. He just likes to do his own thing and have his own hair.”
Emmitt won the competition with almost 10,000 votes. He was followed by Epic Orta who got 8,400 votes and William Dale Ramsey who got 4,058 votes. The winner was elected with online voting from the public.
In addition to the kid’s competition, the Mullet Championship features teen, male and female categories, and is selected through judges and online public voting.
The competition has been running since 2020, when Kevin Begola, the owner of Michigan menswear store Bridge Street Exchange started the event to have some fun and to celebrate the iconic ‘80s hairstyle.
“You’ll hear a lot of people say, ‘It’s not just a haircut, it’s a lifestyle,’ and I really do think that’s part of it,” Begola told BuzzFeed News. “Most people with a mullet, obviously they can take the heat if people are kind of giving them crap about it, but I think we’ve kind of turned that corner”, he said.
Emmit won a 2,500 cash prize, which he plans to spend on a go-kart, and a pair of Pit Viper sunglasses. As part of the social side of the competition, half of each competitor’s $10 entry fee is also being donated to Maggie’s Wigs 4 Kids, a Michigan charity that provides wigs for children experiencing hair loss due to cancer, alopecia, or other disorders.
