After a week of sporting a handlebar mustache, I’ve been impressed by two facts. First, there is no shortage of references to mustache rides, at least in my circle of friends. Second, everyone in the world that wasn’t a grown man in the 70s things mustaches are the most ridiculous thing ever. I literally had a girl in a sandwich shop try to clandestinely take a picture of my (apparently ridiculous) face. She forgot to turn the flash off though. Congratulations.
All of the blatant laughs and stares I’ve gotten (not to mention being photographed like the freaks at Ripley’s) have got me a bit down about my mustache. Granted, in a way it IS a so-called ironic mustache, in that I do know that it is vaguely unbecoming; that’s part of the point, part of the attitude of the thing. However, the sheer level of rancor it inspires is a bit disappointing. I have worn a serious mohawk for months and not gotten a negative look from anyone under the age of 50, but a mustache isn’t going to make me any friends?
David Colman, in a fantastic article from the New York Times posits that “the mustache cannot shake its ties to the sexy-yet-buffoonish machismo of the mid-1970s, epitomized by Burt Reynolds, Sam Elliott and the Village People” as the reason the mustache hasn’t enjoyed the recent swell in popularity that the beard has. I think it doesn’t need to shake those ties, but rather retain them as part of the colorful history of an iconic feature of the male visage.
Despite the fact that I may temporarily want to shave my mustache when laughed at by women in the street, I’m keeping it. And I’m not shaving my chest either. The 70s were hideous in a lot of ways, and Burt Reynolds may have indeed been a buffoon, but don’t blame his masculinity for Cannonball Run.
I think you are much more handsome than Burt Reynolds. Keep the stache. Damn the man.