November has been transformed into a moustache lovers' paradise. Aptly affectionately renamed "Movember," the month has been dedicated to spreading awareness and raising funds toward the prevention of prostate cancer. Men (and women?) grow their moustaches for the entire month, giving them the perfect conversation piece to get people discussing the deadly and once-taboo disease.
However, in a lot of ways Movember has turned into something evil.
For one, moustaches are great face hiders. They're kind of like wearing a great hat to cover a bad hair day. Some people turn a hefty moustache into the perfect way to disguise a not-so-perfect face. This technique makes it tough to spot attractive males when out in public. Say you're at the library, where I've been told people sometimes spend their time. You spot a male across the room. He appears to be single, and you check him out. Then BAM! moustache. Distracted, you can't decide whether or not to pursue. The horror!
Then there are people who take advantage of moustache growing season. They have no opinion on prostate cancer, nor do they have a desire to spread awareness. They're just jumping on the bandwagon and abusing the fact that women everywhere can't whine about their moustaches for an entire month. They seem to relish in the freedom to gross out women (not all - totally generalizing) without them being able to comment.
And there's the double standard. Were roles reversed and women grew out their leg or armpit hair for a month to support a cause, I'm sure men would have something to say. Maybe women are spreading awareness of breast or ovarian cancer. Men are still going to complain.
One also needs to consider the facial hair challenged men. These are the adults who are unable to produce more hair than a baseball team (nine on each side - Grandpa Tom's joke). These unfortunate men are subjected to teasing and questioning of the masculinity simply because they were born without a certain gene for hairiness. On the plus side, Just For Men hair colouring products make a killing off these guys. So at least someone wins.
The exact opposite on the spectrum are the men who use Movember to grow all of their facial hair. A man whose beard connected uninterrupted with his chest hair was spotted at the university this week. Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that mess is spreading awareness for anything more than the increasing price of razors.
Moral of the story: boys, it's cool to grow a moustache to support a cause. It's hard to be against something like that. But don't abuse your month of power. Because women don't forget things like that. And there are 11 other months in the year in which to extract our revenge.
