What your mustache says about you

About six months ago, Micah Fitzerman-Blue, a screenwriter from Los Angeles, was shaving off his beard when he reached the region between his nose and upper lip and thought: What if I stop?

“I was self-conscious, at first, because I had never worn just a mustache,” he said. But after confirming that his wife didn’t hate him and realizing how common they had become in the Echo Park neighborhood, he quickly embraced his appearance. “I turned 40 this year and I have two young children, and it makes me feel more like a father, but a fun father,” he said.

He’s hardly alone. Able to evoke everything from rugged masculinity to whimsical irony to fatherly playfulness, the mustache enjoys one of its periodic revivals.

“I’ll be on the subway at some point, I’ll look around and five other people in a 10-foot radius will have mustaches,” said Jimmy Brewer, 27, an actor from New York who grew his mustache while riding. . vacation seven months ago. He then landed a role in the ensemble of the Broadway musical “Shucked” and was asked to keep it until the end of his contract. “I’ve always admired them on other people because it seems like the people who wear them are more self-confident,” he said.

Although it’s hard to separate the data on mustaches from the data on facial hair trends in general, industry insiders say the rise is pronounced and recent. Once the dominance of the creeper, porn star, counterculture icon, or old-fashioned dude, the mustache is becoming another option for facial hair.

There are many reasons. The mustache is masculine yet playful in a world that enjoys new ways of relating to gender styles. He was about to make a comeback after a decade where everyone had a beard anyway, and the quarantine allowed a lot of people to try it out and find they liked it.

“It’s started to gain a lot more momentum in the last year, especially since ‘Top Gun’ came out,” said Matty Conrad, who runs several barbershops in Vancouver as well as a popular YouTube channel dedicated to facial hair care. “I think the mustache today is where beards were in 2010. But if it ends up having that staying power, then the people who went to it for the wow factor will start looking elsewhere.”

Nicky Austin, the hairstylist and makeup artist responsible for maintaining Ted Lasso’s iconic mustache, credits the rise of mustaches among her clients in Los Angeles to the pervasiveness of beard culture, as well as a new openness to grooming.

“I know men who visit their barber every weekend to keep their fades looking fresh, which would have been unheard of 20 years ago,” he said, adding that those who experience male-pattern baldness often find that mustaches change the rules of the game.

Attention is also part of the fun. Christian Illuzzi, an artist from the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens, has been surprised by the attention his mustache has received. He’s had a beard since he was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in the 2010s, only adopting his full mustache in recent weeks.

“I’ve gotten compliments before, but never as much as on my moustache,” Mr. Illuzzi said, echoing the experiences of others. “Kids on the street will say, ‘Hey, awesome mustache.'”

Mustaches became more common in queer spaces in the late 2010s, especially the thin ones that complemented the groomed, leather-and-harnesses Tom of Finland sexual aesthetic that reigned supreme. And they could have stayed on the brink of mainstream popularity if the pandemic hadn’t hit. During that time, men began to transition from beards to independent mustaches, bringing others with them.

“Quarantine definitely freed me from having to deal with that awkward in-between phase, which has always kept me from having one,” said Lucas Johnson, an English teacher in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn who has grown thick, wide, and chevron style. mustache two years ago. “As someone in my late 20s, it’s been a nice way to feel trendy while still feeling like I’m ascending to a more mature adulthood.”

He also appreciates his versatile partnerships. “The mustache connotes authority, but it also suggests a certain silliness,” he said. “He’s very masculine, but he’s also very flamboyant and has a kind of understated queer code. The entire gender spectrum is obsessed with my mustache, just like me.”

The popularity of the mustache has always been particularly susceptible to cultural icons and trends of the moment. In the early 1900s, mustaches were often elaborate, like Theodore Roosevelt’s bushy walrus style or the waxy tips of the English mustache (think Archduke Franz Ferdinand), ironically though briefly revived in the early years by the hipsters with suspenders all over the United States.

Until 1916, British soldiers were prohibited from shaving their upper lip, perhaps because of the mustache’s deep associations with virility and strength.

The more artificial styles were also easy targets for ridicule. Charlie Chaplin’s toothbrush mustache, that little patch over his lip, was adopted specifically for his humorous appeal‌before he was associated with Adolf Hitler and lost his place in the fashion cycle forever.

After the 1950s, the mustache became the countercultural facial hair of choice for a myriad of groups considered subversive: long-haired hippies, Marxists, gay men. Freddie Mercury wore what is still one of the most iconic mustaches of the century.

As the stark stylistic divide between mainstream and counterculture began to blur in the 1970s and 1980s, the mustache became associated with a masculine swagger and was found on the faces of Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott and others. Not everyone could pull it off, which was always part of its appeal, but these hyper-masculine associations lent themselves to exaggeration, and the mustache was playfully adopted in queer culture. It also became pervasive throughout the porn industry, giving it a whiff of degeneracy.

Of course, in many places, such as the Middle East and Mexico, the mustache absorbed its own rich set of associations, and these were often carried over to the United States, giving the style different meanings for different groups. Also for African-Americans, its evocation of authority and assiduity made the mustache particularly popular with leaders during the Civil Rights era, including Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr., before it fell out of favor in the 1970s. (As Wesley Morris detailed in a 2020 essay in The New York Times, remains a vivid way of relating to black identity).

By the late 1990s, the mustache had gone so far out of style that few thought it would ever return. But as a critical mass of mustache wearers has gathered, the style has slowly been freeing itself from the subculture associations it garnered in the 1980s, leading more people to imagine it on their own faces.

Today, two options have proven particularly popular: a chevron (like the one worn by Ron Swanson in “Parks and Recreation”) and the prominent mustache embedded on a stubbled face, known as a beard mustache (Think Henry Cavil , The Weeknd, or any Ph.D. student in Brooklyn) The more groomed options, including the pencil mustache, the parting mustache, or the waxed-tip mustache, remain the domain of the exceptionally capable among us.

But any style choice that significantly changes one’s face will feel a little comical, a little ironic and playful. And in a world revisiting the very core of what masculinity means, those associations may be welcome, too.

“I think a lot of people are dealing with questions about how do I embody my masculine side in a way that feels good and doesn’t feel performative,” said Mr. Johnson, the English teacher in Brooklyn. A mustache, he said, “feels like a fun way to enjoy it without compromising sensibility, quirkiness and style.”

The free-standing mustache, which requires at least a minimal degree of grooming, also suggests that the wearer is someone who takes pride in their style. Ari Goldstein, a University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School student who initially grew his dark mustache as a prank in college, enjoys the mustache’s intentionality.

“It makes me seem more approachable and friendly,” he said. “It’s also a way to look a little unique without having to choose an outfit.”

Like others, Mr. Goldstein appreciates that his mustache is a topic of conversation, though he tries not to get too invested in what others think about it. “I think people map their own meaning onto your mustache,” he said. “My mustache means something to me, but people are likely to associate it with other mustaches that they have feelings for, so I think the range of reactions I get, which is quite wide, reflects the broad role of mustaches in society. society”.

As the mustache becomes more popular, many men realize that they know very little about its maintenance. What style works for your face? How should it be trimmed? How long does it take to grow?

“Just because the guy wants something doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right for his face shape, hair texture or growth pattern,” said Mr. Conrad, the Vancouver hairdresser. “Part of it is about working with what you have.”

But small adjustments can have a big impact. The only difference, she said, between that Ted Lasso mustache that parents love so much and that Burt Reynolds mustache is a subtle shape.