GROOMING Mustaches experience facial discrimination

Many sterotypes exist about mustache wearers.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Next time you head out, look around.
Focus your eyes, in particular, on that prime real estate known as the male upper lip, and you will witness one of the great generational dividers: The mustache.
Once a sign of virility and hotness, the great majority of young America now assigns three distinct possibilities to the mustache wearer: Porn star, cop or homosexual.
So while many in this generation adventurously accessorize their mugs with facial hair of various shapes and styles -- the goatee, soul patch, Vandyke, full beard, mutton chops, and petite goatee are all acceptable adornments -- few will dare wear the solo 'stache. Exceptions to be addressed later.
Over the years, its return has been heralded and even attempted by a brave few. But while today's youth have embraced bell-bottoms, platform shoes, and disco, there is nary a mustache in sight.
Stereotype
Five years ago, Kevin Lipski was sitting in his cubicle when he had an epiphany: Not only did his peers not wear mustaches, they were against them. He was 28, married, and living in San Francisco, so he decided to face the discriminators head on. Terming the effort "Mustache Summer," he coerced about a dozen friends to join him in an experiment and documented it on the Web at www.mustachesummer.com.
"People I barely knew would come up to me and say, 'What are you doing? Only gay guys and cops have mustaches.' Friends would go to my wife behind my back and ask: 'Are you really going to let him do this?'" he said.
Female colleagues in their 50s appreciated his new look, but everyone else thought he was a jerk. His single friend Jeff had it much worse.
"That man gave it up for the cause. He was dry all summer. Nobody would go near him," Lipski said. "He had a girl start to make out with him and then quit."
Esquire magazine's editor-in-chief, David Granger, said the mustache is fighting an uphill battle because when men look back at their life in photos, the ones in which they look the worst are the mustache years.
"Mustaches unfailingly make men look heavier and, given that photographs also add a few pounds, men always regret their mustaches," he said.
The mustache last lived in full glory in the '70s and early '80s, when studs like Joe Namath, Burt Reynolds, and Tom Selleck kept the mustache riding high.
The mustache has pretty much always had negative connotations, said Allan Peterkin, a Toronto psychologist and professor who wrote the book "One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair." But he attributes the modern anti-'stache movement to the '70s, when mustaches, especially big ones like the handlebar, became synonymous with swingers or gay men.
"Either of those representations turned off young men who identified as straight. They stopped wearing it," he said.
There are certain cultural exceptions. There is the much-discussed police and fireman mustache, which may help command authority in menacing situations.
And there are ethnic exceptions. A young black man may choose to wear a pencil-thin mustache and still be considered stylish, perhaps in homage to Harlem and the '20s. In the Hispanic world, many powerful men have chosen the mustache as a signifier, and so there is no stigma, said Latina beauty editor Yesenia Almonte. Young Latinos are choosing a thinner, more stylish version, to differentiate themselves from their fathers.
Through his Web site, Lipski heard from many Middle Eastern men desperate for tips on how to grow a great mustache.
The great majority of image consultant Elena Castenada's clients are men, but she rarely suggests they keep or grow a mustache.
"Mustaches in particular can make a man look sadder and meaner. The frown appears to be going down because of the hairline," she said.
Thus making all the more impressive the sacrifice of the men of Mustache for Kids. An annual effort by different men on both coasts, these kind souls get donations to grow mustaches in the name of the Make-A-Wish foundation, which grants dreams to gravely ill children.
"It was really strange ... just how people reacted to you. You would explain that you are doing it for charity, and still they look at you pityingly," said Steve Farrell, 28, of Nyack, N.Y., and last year's winner.
He and his colleagues raised $6,000, enough to grant one wish, and considered starting their own charity: Mullets for kids.
"We figured that's the only thing more stigmatizing than a mustache," Farrell said. "But the guys were like, 'Yeah, you're on your own for that one. We're all into charity, but you would have to make a lot of money..."'
Regardless of its past, there are many who believe that everything returns sooner or later, and that the mustache will have its time again.
Comeback rumors
There are some rumblings. Jack Shamama, a style writer at Gay.com, said he feels gay men are rediscovering the mustache. Interest in them had subsided during the '80s, when gay men were busy waxing and shaving everything to show off their gym bodies.
But now that straights are getting into the clean, hairless look a la "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," gay men are letting themselves go more natural, he said.
"Gay men, on a certain level, are back-lashing against the metrosexual," he said.
Shamama, 29, has had a mustache himself for the past four years and has noticed the compliments on the rise.
It likely won't be long, then, for the straight men to follow. Psychologist Peterkin suspects all the mustache needs is a popular musician or celebrity to pull it off and then it will be cool again. If, say, Justin Timberlake grew a mustache, all the teen boys would soon follow suit.
Esquire's Granger is also predicting a return.
"I'm not sure we'll ever have a Selleck-inspired golden age again," he said, "but as the goatee fades, the mustache will come back."