I have the fashion sense of an American toad so I’ve never been on the cutting edge of fashion trends. I’ve been wearing essentially the same clothing since the ’90s, my hairstyle hasn’t changed much since I lopped off my long hair in college, and I’ve had a goatee—or some form of one—since Alice in Chains played unplugged on MTV.
So it was only last summer, when I was writing some articles for Ink Link about the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, that I started to notice that many of the young men on the team had mustaches—and they didn’t appear to be ironic.
Lately, my 19-year-old son has been trying his hand at growing a mustache, and the results have not been good. Like me, he struggles to grow thick facial hair—I barely had to shave until my 20s—and the mustache makes him look like he is the starting center for a middle school basketball team.
“You need to shave that,” I said to him last weekend.
My son stared down at the floor like he dropped some hair. “I guess you’re right,” he said, defeated.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the resurgence of the mustache. While I’m vehemently opposed to the revival of the mullet—which I shamelessly flaunted long after the trend originally passed—I’m ambivalent about the mustache.
We recently started watching “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” in the films class that I teach, and there is no denying that the mustaches on Tuco and Angel Eyes (Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef) are truly magnificent. Not only do they characterize, but they’re also powerful feats of facial growth.
Make no mistake, the robust mustache is a statement. It says, “Here I am, and you need to deal with it.” To be completely honest, a strong mustache can also be intimidating, almost frightening. While I can’t grow one myself, I can admire it.
Meanwhile, I’m on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. If I were to shave a mustache and let it grow out, I would look like a guy who should be guessing your weight at a carnival.
You see, the chintzy mustache is also a statement. It says, “I’m here, and I’m trying, but it’s just not working.” It has an air of quiet desperation, an emasculating quality. In the end, if you can’t grow a strong mustache, it’s best not to grow one at all.
Which might be the only sage advice that I can pass on to my son.
Ultimately, the mustache is almost impossible to ignore and not pass judgement, one way or the other. Maybe that’s why it is coming back in style for younger Gen. Z men who grew up on social media and want to be seen because there is no way to be anonymous with a mustache. Even if it is shaved Clark-Gable-pencil-thin, it is a statement.
I wrote a poem1 about mustaches in one of my poetry collections that is now out-of-print, so I’ll share it here.
“Men with Mustaches”
A man with a mustache must be watched closely,
like a storm cloud concealing lightning in its coat.
A man with a mustache might be a porn star,
a scrawny guy with three legs, sweating pools of sex.
A man with a mustache might sell you a used car
and promise it will change the way you drive. It will.
A man with a mustache might wear his shirt unbuttoned,
his chest hair screaming like a room full of fangirls.
A man with a mustache might sell tickets
for a Ferris wheel and piss behind dunking booths.
A man with a mustache might try to write like Hemingway
but only succeed in drinking himself to sleep.
A man with a mustache might, in fact, be me
before I shaved it after scaring myself in the mirror.
A man with a mustache must be watched closely;
I guarantee he’s looking at you, chewing on a toothpick.
Originally published in My Next Bad Decision (Artistically Declined Press, 2014)
- Warning: There is some NSFW content here. ↩︎