“Never trust a white man with a mustache; never trust a black man without one” was the advice I had received one day from an anonymous woman at the bar.
She, a little tipsy, pointed her finger towards some random white guy at the end of the bar, who was rocking a pretty impressive lip rug. I had no idea how this conversation started or who this guy was that she was referring to, but I still took note of her heartfelt yet liquored up warning. There is something creepy about a white man with a thick mustache. Like at any moment, he is going to open his trench coat and flash his goodies. Like at any moment, he will try to lure you to his van in the parking lot, where unbeknownst to you, in said van, he houses the bodies of several dead and skinless prostitutes. Like at any moment, a really bad ’70s adult film will pop off and you will have to watch as his mustache dances around the sex faces.
And yet as creepy as a white man with a furry stache may be, so is a black man without one, which is why I am perplexed at this growing trend among some of our more distinguished African American men of shaving off their mustaches. Denzel did it; so did Idris. LL Cool J has done it and even President Obama too. While some men do it because they think it makes them look younger, other theories suggest that rocking a babyface like…well, Babyface, will make them appear less threatening and less hostile. And if brotha man is aiming for CEO of a Fortune 500 company, walking around like a hairless cat might actually benefit his ascension up the corporate ladder, according to this study. However, a mustache-less black man also looks like he might snitch on you to human resources for using the work phone to make personal calls on company time. Just saying.
As a general rule, I usually don’t comment on personal aesthetics, which I consider to be primarily a matter of individual taste, however, in terms of my own personal taste, there is something really unappealing about a black man without his hair handlebars. Of course, this doesn’t apply to men who aren’t able to grow and have the whisker-swag. However, a black guy who can grow facial hair and opts to shave it off always looks like something is missing from their faces. Besides the five o’clock shadow, which is probably another one of God’s ways of telling you that your Gillette is messing up his creation, the upper lip never seems to look normal. It’s always too thin and pale. It also looks cold. Sometimes when I see a mustached-man without his facial hair, I am tempted to take my scarf from around my neck and wrap it around his upper lip so that it doesn’t freeze to death. Poor thing.
And maybe it is because I’m from Philly, home of the Sunnah Beard, but facial hair on a man is just the epitome of masculinity. Like at any moment, he is about to tear an entire phone book in half or wrestle a would-be purse snatcher to the ground, even if mustache might not become head of the Coca-Cola Corporation. However, a study performed by Quicken and the American Mustache Institute has shown that men with mustaches are likely to earn 4.3 percent more than their bald-face counterparts. Therefore, a mustached man can take solace in that fact when their cherub-faced supervisor reports them to middle management for taking too long on lunch breaks.
Anyway, what is your preference when it comes to a man and his ‘stache: yay or nay?
