Aine Pennello
Staff Writer
Handle bars, Dalís, Chevrons and Horshoes galore. It can mean only one thing: Movember.
In an effort to raise awareness of prostate cancer, clean-shaven men or ‘Mo Bros’ around the world grow out their facial hair for the month of November in return for donations towards medical research.
While the moustaches and the cause are 100% male, the charity event is anything but. Women are more than welcome to take part in Movember by becoming ‘Mo Sistas’. A Mo Sista’s main task is to raise money by holding fundraisers and parties or by making and selling one-of-a-kind moustache lollipops, aptly named ‘Mollipops’. Last year a total of 12,700 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas in Ireland alone raised a combined 1.6 million euro.
Here at Trinity College though it seems the Mo Sista role is being reinvented: meet the Bo Sistas.
Initiated by chairwoman Bella Fitzpartick, the Trinity Knitting Society is holding its very own Bovember charity. For the past month, Knit Soc members have been working hard at the society’s weekly ‘Stitch and Bitch’ meetings, knitting and selling bow-themed hair clips and safety pins for Mo Sistas and Bo Sistas to wear with pride.
All proceeds go to prostate cancer research (which is helping people with proton therapy support groups and other means of recovery) minus the cost of the clips. To date, the Knit Soc has raised almost 100 euro with plans to knit more bows to supply shops in the Temple Bar area.
The bows are easy to make, says Knit Soc Librarian Elizabeth Hayes who coordinates the society’s knitting workshops. “The obvious question we get asked is ‘why don’t you knit moustaches?'” she says. The bows are a lot more practical Liz explains, and make the perfect gift with many men buying the clips and pins for their daughters, girlfriends and sisters.
Before Bovember was born however, Bella originally had a very different idea. “I was thinking about having some sort of female version where we don’t shave our armpits but I don’t think that would have any money coming towards it,” she jokes whilst wearing a sleeveless top.
On a more serious note, Bella says there is a need to blur the gender lines when it comes to health issues. “At the end of the day prostate cancer isn’t just a male thing. Breast cancer, or any other kind of cancer, isn’t just a female thing,” she says. “When you support prostate cancer you support some girl’s dad, you’re supporting some wife’s husband. Equally with breast cancer you’re supporting some man’s wife.”
“At the end of the day we’re all people, we all need to look after each other,” says Bella whose mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I’d like to think that’s what our society is about. It’s about trying to be as inclusive as possible,” says Liz who also points to the transformation of knitting in the 1990s and early 2000s from a cutesy, cozy hobby to a more subversive and radical craft. Hence the name of the society’s weekly meetings, ‘Stitch and Bitch’. “I think that means we can go into male things like prostate cancer,” Liz says, calling Bovember a natural form of evolution as knitting becomes more multi-purpose than its traditional use of clothes-making. Many organisations such as Oxfam have been successful in harnessing knitting as means of promoting charity. Two of the most recent campaigns include the worldwide campaign to knit sweater for penguins affected by oil spills off the coast of New Zealand and, closer to home, the Innocent Big Knit held by Innocent Smoothie drinks to raise awareness of Age Action Ireland and provide hats for the elderly during the cold winter days.
Bella, when asked if she would call herself a Mo Sista, shakes her head, “I’m a Bo Sista,” she replies. Her message is for everyone to get involved regardless of their gender or the gender orientation of a particular cause, “Don’t think you can’t just because something’s pink or because something’s a moustache.”
