Welcome to Movember town

Meet the Mo Bros

The real meaning of all this is there in the official Movember motto: “Changing the face of men’s health”. The Movember Foundation is now the biggest single funder of prostate cancer research and support programmes in the world, raising £79.3 million for men’s health causes in 2011, with more than 850,000 people taking part. The moustache is supposed to be the male equivalent of the pink breast cancer ribbon.

But does all the japery risk obscuring that? The Movember-inspired “No Shave November” (which extends the concept to beards, mutton chops, ladies’ armpits, etc) has no fundraising element. Moreover, when I surveyed a dozen or so female colleagues, not one realised that Movember had anything to do with male cancer. They seemed to assume that it was about men being dickish, as usual.

As one of the original founders of Movember, Adam Garone, explained in a recent TEDx talk, that was more or less how it came about. “Normally, a charity starts with the cause, and someone that is directly affected by a cause. They then go on to create an event, and beyond that a foundation to support it.” Not so with Movember, he said. That began with a beery observation that no one wore moustaches any more — this was the pre-hipster era — and developed into an amusing prank. Only later did the four original “Mo Bros” see the charitable potential.

“We were inspired by the women around us and all they were doing for breast cancer,” said Garone. “And we thought: there’s nothing for men’s health. Why is that? Why can’t we combine growing a moustache and doing something for men’s health?”

Initially, the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia was sceptical — less so when Garone came back a year later with the equivalent of £21,600, raised by the first sponsored Mo Bros. The “movement” grew so popular in Australia and New Zealand (where mustachioed policemen, newsreaders, gynaecologists, etc, are a November commonplace) that even “ultra-conservative” cancer charities got on board. In 2008, it began to spread to Canada, the US and the UK, where it has had notable success. Some £22 million was raised in the UK last year, with more than 254,000 people taking part.

Some women have mistaken all this for FHM-style laddism. One feminist wrote on the blog Anatomically Incorrect: “The thing about Movember is that not only is it aesthetically offensive, it’s flat-out garden variety offensive”. Not only does Movember encourage men to style themselves in a way that the author does not find appealing, it also promotes “homosocial relationships” and “outdated” ideas of virility, by equating manhood with the ability to grow a moustache.

Like much of what passes for modern feminist discourse, this argument rests on no one in the world having a sense of humour. For the point of Movember is not to conform to “traditional masculine ideals” but to look slightly ridiculous. The idea is that your pathetic protuberance starts a conversation. Given that one in nine men in the UK will be diagnosed with prostate cancer (comparable to breast cancer), conversations are important. Often, the way that males approach serious subjects is through humour.

The moustache, meanwhile, provides the perfect totem for modern masculinity. Moustaches were long-associated with genocidal dictators, grim-faced Union leaders and unreconstructed American truckers. They had all but disappeared in the clean-shaven New Labour era, a victim of Thatcher’s cuts. As the Super Furry Animals once sang of Peter Mandelson: “Victor Panache / Lost his moustache / In a PR war”.

The 21st century moustache plays with this conflicted legacy. It is knowingly ridiculous, almost a piece of semi-permanent fancy dress, a raised eyebrow to the world. And yet, at the same time, it expresses a longing for authenticity, for a time when men knew what was expected of them, and this natural growth (like female pubic hair) grew unhindered by social mores.

Perhaps, then, the moustache expresses — even resolves? — two contradictory masculine impulses. It is at once light-hearted and deadly earnest. The Movember male is haunted by nostalgia for the days when he was sure of his purpose, and is maybe struggling to take himself seriously. But he is sincere in his solidarity with his masculine brothers, ready to make himself vulnerable, open to emotional conversations. Ready also to learn from his feminist sisters. He also has excellent facial hair. Surely that’s progress?