Movember mane

By Brendan Tyndall
[contributor]

Do you want to show the world you are serious about combatting prostate cancer? Or perhaps you just want an excuse to adopt the appearance of a 70s porn star, or a village person for a month, or just plain pissing of your girlfriend. Either way, the month of November has come, which is the time when men all around the world come together to grow a little hair over their upper lip.

Movember, which Wikipedia elegantly refers to as a “portmanteau of the words ‘moustache’ and ‘November’” (which strikes me as a bit ridiculous, because the idea that anyone who couldn’t put that together without the aid of Wikipedia’s overly wordy explanation would have any clue what the hell a portmanteau is, is laughable), began in 2004 in Adelaide, Australia as a way to raise awareness about men’s issues, most notably prostate cancer. Simply put, Movember is the hairy equivalent of those pink breast-cancer ribbons.

The event has since caught on worldwide, and its effects can be seen on the faces on men everywhere, from professional athletes to college students. Locally, Granville Island Brewing is offering a portion of sales from its seasonal brew Lions Winter Ale to support prostate cancer research. While moustaches were once reserved for silent movie villains, civil war re-creationists and dudes named Leroy, Movember has proved that all men can get in on the hairy action.

The only guidelines for Movember are that men must make some attempt at growing a moustache and keep it for the entire month. For myself it will be easy, as I usually wear a beard, it will just be a matter of getting rid of the rest of it. Others will have to go through the awkward experience of growing a stache from scratch, which is never a pretty sight. Unless you happen to have the blood of Tom Selleck or Burt Reyolds running through your veins, or you happen to be someone’s dad, chances are you are not going to look good with a moustache.

Movember also brings up the risk of alienating those who already sport a ‘stache. I usually wear a beard, and it always irks me in playoff time when some rube asks me “is that your playoff beard?” oblivious to the fact that the beard has been in existence since well before hockey players decided to appropriate it as their own, to the chagrin of bearded folk everywhere.

Whether you can only muster a whispy caterpillar, or your robust soupstrainer can conjure the air of former Calgary Flame Lanny McDonald, Movember provides men everywhere with an excuse to don a righteous stache — for the good of men everywhere.

After all, prostate cancer claims the lives of one of every six men, and researchers could always use help combatting the disease. So ditch your razor, and let that stache grow wild. It’s for the good of us all.