Movember Or “What The Hell Is That?”

This is Movember. A time of deep dread for wives and girlfriends. A time for usually clean-shaven men to allow facial growth to bloom upon the lip. A time to remember why, for the other 11 months of the rolling year, daily rituals are observed in order to preserve marital harmony and prevent personal embarrassment.

The ‘Stache. It is an enigma. Some men sport it to great success like the dashing Clark Gable (Rhett Butler. “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”. Just Google it.). On the other hand Daniel Craig looks like he should be driving a bus. Tom Selleck gave us the iconic Magnum P.I. ‘stache and while Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Little Tramp’ is adorable, Hitler . . . not so much.

There’s the Joseph Stalin walrus and the Charlie Chan fu man chu. The pencil thin Dastardly Dan and the waxed and meticulously groomed Hercule Poirot. Jamie Foxx has a lip liner, Angela Merkel desperately shaves twice a day and it is well-known that older Italian women, while not having a particular style, exhibit respectable amounts of facial hair between the nose and upper lip.

Many women have a problem with the ‘stache because of its texture. When Princess Leia wished to express her revulsion at the prospect of a smooch from Han Solo she pronounced the now famous line, (famous to us Sci-Fi nerds anyhow), “I’d rather kiss a Wookie!” (What’s a Wookie? A Wookie is a walking shag carpet. What’s a shag carpet? I don’t have time for this.) Now while kissing a Wookie may be extremely unpleasant because of the excess of facial hair, and therefore the allusion to a ‘stache, it must be pointed out that Wookie’s themselves do not have ‘stache’s.  How do I know? Because how can you have a moustache when your daily grooming involves combing your face?

Another problem women have with the ‘stache is the time between shadow and full-blown facial hair. This is the “My mother was right” period of the ‘stache, otherwise known as the “unemployed bum” look, where the woman uses all her self-restraint to not grab the nearest facecloth and attempt to rub the offending dirt off her man’s face. The ‘stache grower who successfully survives this stage will now look at himself in the mirror every morning admiring the growth, often stroking the hair with his fingers trying to achieve the ever elusive look of zen contemplation.

So to all you would be Tom Selleck’s or George Cloony’s out there trying to raise awareness of men’s health issues I say this. Good for you. And if your wife refuses to kiss you for a month just remember . . . she didn’t marry a Wookie.

“Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way!” Princess Leia