Growth begins in the dermis, the thickest layer of skin sandwiched between the epidermis and hypodermis, in young men between the ages of twelve and sixteen. As testosterone levels rise, some of it converts into dihydrotestosterone, which stimulates hair follicles to produce thicker, rougher facial hair, usually first appearing on the upper lip. This hair grows at a rate of roughly half a millimeter per day. On average, it takes around 600 individual whiskers to cover the upper lip and form a mustache.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Archaeologists believe, based on Auguste Mariette\u2019s findings from an 1871 dig in Meidum, that mustaches date as far back as 2600 BC. In a mudbrick and limestone tomb just north of the pyramid of Snefru, Mariette unearthed a statue of Rahotep, an Egyptian prince from the Fourth Dynasty. Rahotep, as depicted in the statue, has a thick layer of black running across his upper lip, detailed and manicured like a mustache.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mustache may be a perfect, postmodern symbol of masculinity: playful, ironic, virile, independent, and, above all, sociable. Men of the mustache make up a new fraternity, one of the few, non-militaristic options for male bonding across age, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.\u201d \u2014Allan Peterkin, One Thousand Mustaches: A Cultural History of the Mo<\/em>, 2012.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I get a lot of comments on my mustache. Most of them come when I\u2019m in a bar, and almost all of them are from men who also have mustaches. Recently, I was in a hotel bar when a mustached man approached me. He had been at the other end of the bar with whom I assumed was his girlfriend before he grabbed his Old Fashioned and sauntered over to me.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you think I do for work?\u201d he said as he approached me. He looked to be in his late twenties, and, save for the mustache, he was as nondescript and homogenous as late-twenties white guys get.<\/p>\n \u201cExcuse me?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor work,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat do you think I do?\u201d<\/p>\n I paused for a beat and looked him up and down. \u201cUh, maybe tech sales or something in finance. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n He took the empty barstool next to me and said, \u201cEverybody always thinks I\u2019m, like, a cop or something because of the \u2018stache.\u201d He ran his thumb and forefinger through his mustache. \u201cBut I knew you\u2019d get it.\u201d He then went on to tell me what he really did for work, but most of all he wanted to talk about his mustache.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s not a fan of it,\u201d he said, pointing toward the woman he was with at the other end of the bar, who was now watching us. \u201cMy family doesn\u2019t like it either,\u201d he went on. \u201cThey say it looks like a porn \u2018stache.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe man who decides to sport lip adornment asserts his masculinity and desire to tyrannize over the home. No matter how prettily he waxes it, droops it, shingles it, at heart he\u2019s the Man\u2019s Man and ruler of his own roost.\u201d \u2014Cornelia B. Von Hessert, New York Times Sunday Magazine<\/em>, September 24, 1944.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Around the mid-1800s, the British military required all officers and soldiers to wear mustaches. The rule was so strictly enforced that troops who couldn\u2019t grow a mustache resorted to painting one on with dark wax. The belief behind the decree was that the compulsory mustached look showed uniformity among the troops and gave each soldier an aura of strength and virility that a clean-shaven face could not.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIn wrestling, my mustache made me look more like a villain. A good mustache can give you the look of the devil.\u201d \u2014Jesse Ventura, Former Governor of Minnesota and Professional Wrestler.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2016, John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, was rumored to be a possible choice for Secretary of State in president-elect Donald Trump\u2019s cabinet. Trump, however, nominated ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson to the position in lieu of Bolton. Many of Trump\u2019s close associates claimed it was Bolton\u2019s prominent, thick, brush-like mustache that ultimately helped Trump in finalizing his decision for Secretary of State. An anonymous source close to the president-elect at the time said: \u201cDonald was not going to like that mustache.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Prophet Muhammad tells his followers in the Hadith: \u201cDo the opposite of what the pagans do. Keep the beards and cut the mustaches short.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The mustache was in danger of extinction in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Behind this threat were the Three Horsemen of the Mustache Apocalypse: 1. Emperor Hirohito, who donned a thin swath of fuzz layered across his upper lip. 2. Joseph Stalin, famous for his robust, imposing patch of hair finely groomed at the ends. And 3. Adolf Hitler, universally identified by his jet-black toothbrush-style mustache. The mustache, then, became synonymous with the enemy in the United States.<\/p>\n For over twenty years the mustache lay dormant in America. In the late 1960s, however, Hollywood kickstarted the mustache revival, most notably in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Robert Redford, playing Harry Longabaugh AKA the Sundance Kid, sports a mustache. By the 1980s, Hollywood had succeeded in its revival. Every Thursday night, from 1981 to 1988, millions of Americans tuned in to CBS to watch mustached private investigator Thomas Magnum (played by Tom Selleck) solve lurid cases involving missing persons, stolen valuables, and the occasional murder. Magnum represented the ideal American man\u2014brave, tough, intelligent, rational\u2014and his famous Chevron mustache became an inseparable part of his identity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I first tried growing a mustache when I was twenty. I did it out of curiosity; partly to see what I would look like, and partly to see the reactions I\u2019d get. I let my facial hair grow for a week before I shaved it down to the mustache. It wasn\u2019t much of a mustache, just a subtle patch of stubbly black hairs above my lip. This was a couple years before the mustache renaissance of COVID and quarantine, so my freshly sprouted whiskers weren\u2019t well received. The first day I went to work with the mustache, my coworkers were quick to inform me that it made me look like a creep, or, even worse, a pedophile. My family echoed these comments. Strangers, too, I noticed, looked at me differently. I remember one gas station clerk, an older woman probably in her sixties, told me she hadn\u2019t seen someone as young as me with a mustache since she herself was my age. Nevertheless I kept the mustache for about six weeks, and although my mustache grew fuller, the comments and strange looks didn\u2019t let up. My sister\u2019s wedding was what finally made me shave it. To me, it simply seemed more pragmatic to return to my old look than to deal with the responses from family and friends who hadn\u2019t yet seen the mustache. By that point, I was fed up with all the comments and attention it elicited. It would be another few years before I let the hair above my lip grow for longer than a day or two.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1916, the British military overturned its mustache requirement. The novel tactic of chemical warfare required all ground troops to wear gas masks to prevent the inhalation of deadly chemicals, and mustaches made it difficult for troops to properly wear the masks. It was an easy decision, one made by General Nevil Macready. Shortly after he abolished the rule, Macready said: \u201cOn 8th October, 1916, the order allowing all ranks to grow or not to grow mustaches according to their fancy was signed… I dropped into a barber\u2019s shop and set the example that evening, as I was only too glad to be rid of the unsightly bristles to which I had for many years been condemned by obedience to regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMy mustache gets so many questions he has his own agent now.\u201d \u2014Tom Selleck, Emmy-nominated Actor and 1980s Heartthrob.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to historian Christopher Oldstone-Moore, in accordance with twentieth-century American social mores, a man with a clean-shaven face signified a virtuous man, a man committed to his community and the betterment of the collective. The mustached man, in contrast, was a maverick, a wildcard, a man who marched to the beat of his own drum.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI think people map their own meaning onto your mustache. My mustache means something to me, but people are probably associating it with other mustaches they have feelings toward, so I think the range of reactions I get, which is pretty broad, reflects the broad role of mustaches in society.\u201d \u2014Ari Goldstein, Student at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Confession: My facial hair mostly only grows in the mustache and goatee areas. I can grow a noticeable mustache and goatee in about two weeks, but the hair on my cheeks and jawline can\u2019t keep up. I\u2019d grow a full beard if I could, if I had the patience. Yet every time I try, it\u2019s the same story. The mustache and the hairs on my chin overpower the rest of the hair on my face until I reach a point where I shave it all, save for the mustache. My father, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers that I\u2019ve seen pictures of have all worn mustaches and no beards at some point. So I suppose all of this had been determined for me a long time ago.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThere is no love without a mustache! The mustache is essential. It gives character to the face. It makes a man look gentle, tender, violent, a monster, a rake, enterprising!\u201d \u2014Guy de Maupassant, \u201cThe Mustache,\u201d 1883.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Facial hair distribution is determined by \u201cindividual genetic variations in androgen receptor sensitivity within hair follicles,\u201d which, really, is an ornate way of saying it\u2019s all genetics. There\u2019s very little one can do to affect mustache growth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The last president of the United States to wear a mustache was William Howard Taft, who lost his bid for reelection to Woodrow Wilson in 1912. On March 4, 1913, Taft left office, and there hasn\u2019t been a mustached leader in the White House since. Every year, on March 4, the American Mustache Institute celebrates Taft Day to remember our last mustache-wearing Commander in Chief.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The preferred spelling in the United States is \u201cmustache.\u201d In the UK, and in every other part of the English-speaking world, the preferred spelling is \u201cmoustache.\u201d Thousands of years ago, in Hellenistic Greece, the word started as \u201cmustax,\u201d meaning \u201cupper lip.\u201d Medieval Latin transformed the word into \u201cmustacchium.\u201d The Italians, in the fourteenth century, called it \u201cmustaccio.\u201d Around 1580, the French started calling it \u201cmoustache,\u201d and the name stuck. At some point or another, Americans decided to drop the \u201co,\u201d and \u201cmustache\u201d became uniquely American. Mark Twain had a mustache, Teddy Roosevelt had a mustache, Clark Gable had a mustache. The moustache, then, was for men like Sir Charles James Napier, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or Neville Chamberlain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAs someone in my late twenties, it\u2019s been this nice way of feeling fashionable while still feeling like I\u2019m ascending into more mature adulthood\u2026 The mustache connotes authority, but also suggests a certain amount of silliness. It\u2019s very masculine, but it\u2019s also very flamboyant and quietly sort of queer-coded. The entire gender spectrum is obsessed with my mustache, as am I.\u201d \u2014Lucas Johnson, English Teacher from Brooklyn.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the fall of 1966, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 350 students walked out of a school board meeting in a protest that became known as the Mustache Saga. The protest was directed toward Grand Rapids Public Schools\u2019 systemically racist policies. One of the policies, a minor one, but ultimately what the whole event was named after, was the school district\u2019s ban on mustaches for students. The policy, as protestors pointed out, mostly affected Black students.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anybody with a mustache knows how domineering it becomes in terms of one\u2019s physical characteristics. Without a mustache, I\u2019m often described as \u201ctall\u201d or \u201cbrunette\u201d or \u201cthe guy with coffee-stained teeth and a crooked smile.\u201d But with a mustache, I\u2019m always \u201cthe guy with a mustache.\u201d You can be tall or short; you can be heavy or thin; you can have long hair or short hair or black hair or blonde or purple; you can have freckles or rosacea or clear skin; but none of this will matter if you have a mustache. The mustache becomes you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSchool officials agreed Wednesday to clarify South High\u2019s code for student grooming but decided to maintain its policy against students wearing mustaches.\u201d \u2014Grand Rapids Press, October 26, 1966.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The unnamed narrator shaves his mustache after wearing it for over ten years in Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re\u2019s 1986 novel The Mustache. He decides to shave it on a whim, in a lighthearted attempt to prank his wife, Agnes. But when the narrator, now without a mustache, sees Agnes for the first time, she doesn\u2019t comment on his missing facial hair. Friends and coworkers, too, don\u2019t mention the missing mustache when they see the narrator. This leads the narrator to believe his wife is pulling a reverse prank on him in which she\u2019s also involved all his friends and coworkers. When confronted about the prank, however, Agnes claims the narrator has never worn a mustache. The narrator then says he can prove he had a mustache from the pictures they took on their latest vacation in Java. Agnes tells her husband they\u2019ve never been to Java, so there are no pictures. This triggers a crisis in the narrator\u2019s mind that results in him fleeing to Hong Kong in an attempt to leave his old life in Paris behind, a life that he now sees was never what he thought it was. The novel ends with the unnamed narrator sitting in a warm bath, a straight razor with a tortoiseshell handle in his hand, and hacking away at his upper lip until it turns to bloody shreds of flesh and tissue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oh all of you poor single men<\/p>\n Don\u2019t ever give up in despair<\/p>\n For there\u2019s always a chance while there\u2019s life<\/p>\n To capture the hearts of the fair<\/p>\n No matter what may be your age<\/p>\n You always may cut a fine dash<\/p>\n You will suit all the girls to a hair<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve only got a mustache<\/p>\n A mustache, a mustache<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve only got a mustache.<\/p>\n \u2014Stephen Foster, \u201cIf You\u2019ve Only Got a Mustache,\u201d 1864.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n In Ancient Sparta, men convicted of cowardice were forced to shave half their mustache. This was done to evoke unmistakable public stigma and shame.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Pugilism Hypothesis explores how different biological evolutions in humans, particularly in men, have been altered by our pugilistic nature\u2014millennia of hand-to-hand combat with fists and small objects. Facial hair, the theory goes, was grown to protect the face during physical competition or fighting. If the theory is true, which many biologists say it is not, the mustache\u2019s raison d’\u00eatre is, biologically speaking, taking a punch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You can be tall or short; you can be heavy or thin; you can have long hair or short hair or black hair or blonde or purple; you can have freckles or rosacea or clear skin; but none of this will matter if you have a mustache. The mustache becomes you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","writer-riley-winchester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21890"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22448,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21890\/revisions\/22448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}