Magnificent Mane

You really have to admire commitment, even if it's just to one's mullet.

And in the case of Tami Manis, here is the depth and breadth and length of her mullet commitment: she is 58 and has spent the last quarter century growing her magnificent Mississippi mudflap. At 5 feet, 8 inches, her mullet is four inches longer than she is tall, and here she affirms her commitment with a promise to take that tribute to Billy Joe Cyrus with her into the afterlife:

 “At my memorial, they can take it off then, and drape it across my urn."

Guinness World Records, which began as a publication to settle bets among people drinking Guinness over just such things as "who has the longest female mullet ever?" named Ms Manis, a nurse from Knoxville, as the crowned record holder in that category.

 

She reflects:  “Growing the longest mullet never really started out as anything other than it was the ‘80s and everybody had a rattail. And I started growing mine, and over the years, it’s just kept growing, so I’ve kept it.”

She names February 9, 1990 as her "mullet birthday." She was getting a haircut that day and while her long tresses were being shortened, she asked the stylist to leave a rattail back there to honor Aimee Mann of 'Til Tuesday, who did that song "Voices Carry" with a long McGyver down her back.

Aimee Mann is still around, performing a solo act these days, and so is Manis's mullet, kept in shape with every-other-day shampoos and a weekly application of leave-in conditioner, and a weekly braid done by a friend, which is the only way to keep that tassel off the floor.

She says it gives her patients something to focus on while she is treating them, which is good. 

"Gimme a head with hair. Long, beautiful hair. Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen," they might say.