Conor Kenny
Staff Writer
An old Victorian adage holds that “kissing a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without salt”. As far as sexual allegory goes, it doesn’t quite best the claim made by an ex-lover of Nicholas Soames that making love to him was akin to “having a wardrobe fall on top of you with the key sticking out”, but it nonetheless struck me as rather profound. After all, what could be more appealing to your better half than enjoying the pleasures of both a passionate kiss and a thoroughly abrasive facial scrub in one go? If this kind of logic prevailed more often, perhaps the demand for Clearasil exfoliating creams would have long subsided.
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The moustache, and indeed deliberate facial hair of all descriptions, have long been a polarizing fashion statement. Men sport their itchy growths proudly as a symbol of their masculinity, while their erstwhile female admirers view these post-pubescent sprouts of glory with apparent disgust. And yes, the appeal for men to cultivate facial hair may well stem from an instinct no more complex than a primal urge to display one’s masculinity, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be beneficial. Take the Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, who was told by a coach in college that he couldn’t grow a moustache even if he tried. Spitz seemed to take this comment as a personal slight on his virility, and four months later had managed to develop a rather prominent nose-tickler. Swimmers are normally expected to dispense with all body hair in order to reduce drag, but such was his personal attachment with his fuzz that he decided to keep it for the 1972 Olympics. The entire Russian swim team decided to follow suit after Spitz told their coach in passing that, “(my moustache) deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet-shaped in the water, and that’s what has allowed me to swim so great”. Wow.
But aside from being a badge of manliness and a useful piece of sporting equipment, the moustache is perhaps at it’s most potent when employed as a fashion accessory. If you ever want to make it big in Hollywood, you won’t get very far without one. It’s the essential fitment of any macho-man, bad guy, or porn star worth their salt. Remember Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘There Will Be Blood’ as the menacing Daniel Plainview? Now ask yourself, would his Oscar have been possible without that glorious upper-lip plumage? Somehow I doubt it. Then there’s the dashing Tom Selleck (or Richard from ‘Friends’) in Magnum P.I., sporting one of the most iconic soup strainers of all time, so distinctive that it was eventually named after the actor himself. Is there any greater honour?
The truth is that the desire to grow one of these beauties is no mean feat, and sadly something that very few of us can achieve with any gravitas. The scraggly efforts I witnessed friends make over Movember are proof of this, and there surely can’t be any bigger turn-off to a member of the fairer sex than a teenager with what appears to be pubic hair superglued onto his upper-lip. Movember might be over, but there’s never a bad time to raise awareness for bad facial hair. And if your missus actually does like her eggs some seasoning you can at least console yourself with the other anonymous proverb that queries “why cultivate on your face what grows freely around your arse?”
