Why Moustaches Impress Women
By Derek Mead
There are a lot of dumb-looking people out there. Okay, I know, I’m one to talk, considering I generally look like a Night Train spokesperson that slept in a dryer at Laundry City. But I’m not talking about ugly people; there’s nothing you can do about that, and beauty’s in the eye of the beholder anyway. I’m talking about people who, in the name of fashion – or anti-fashion, or plain carelessness – that plain look ridiculous.
Walking around Brooklyn, I think it all comes down to hair. Some other folks rock these crazy off-camber haircuts and actually pull it off. Other people are cruising around with Padawan braids, beards styled to look like flames, crazy thick eyebrows like the girl on the right in the HBO Girls ads, and moustaches with the middle two inches shaved off. We all pay a ton of attention to our hair, and in the case of dudes, it seems like a lot of that emphasis is on our faces. Why do we care so much?
Tom Selleck has the great moustache in history, followed closely by my dad’s. Look at him in the 80s: wearing nothing but Hawaiian shirts and driving the crappy Ferrari 308. Yet he was the coolest dude on TV, and it’s all because of his ‘stache. We all know why, too: that bushy, deep black patch of lip hair made old Tom look overwhelmingly manly.
There’s only one minor issue here: men, who’ve been gifted with beards, these wonderful exhibitions of their own virility, keep shaving them off! Why? Well, the stuffy gents over at the Wall Street Journal once suggested that beards are an indicator of someone who’s bad at business, thanks to an article about corporate types who grew beards after losing their jobs. That may mean the clean-shaven look is a sign of success and responsibility, as razors aren’t cheap and you have to do it everyday. When male competition increasingly comes with the wallet rather than the fists, perhaps succeeding in the boardroom (and shaving that luscious facial hair) is more important than showing off your brute manliness.
Actually, I think that’s exactly where moustaches come in. Beards – despite being trustworthy — do have a kind of vagabond stigma about them. (And, because being cool is still more crucial to getting chicks than bank accounts or fighting, that’s why so many dudes still have them.) But the moustache offers a sort of middle ground. You’re getting to show off how manly you are, but it’s still acceptable – nay, lauded – in many circles. They instill respect because they’re the perfect balance between our red-meat-and-violence roots and our modern penchant for being, you know, clean.
