Gay mustache

As a kid raised in Canada in the 1980s, all my heroes had mustaches. In that time, I’ve slowly accepted my own bisexuality, but, at times, I can forget about it.

We’re in an age where the most popular musician in the world, one of our great sex symbols, rocks a mustache, or at least a socially distanced assembly of hairs pretending to be one. More than a decade later, as that generation moves into management and ownership positions, the result is a more open world, in terms of the facial hair we can sport.

To Woods, his beard, which he hadn’t shaved in 20 years, was an attempt to reject his identity and fit in with a heteronormative framework of what a man should look like. I can count each individual hair on my chin and opine as to why it’s redder than the top of my head. I asked her whether she still didn’t like it. Many gay men, particularly within the Castro Clone community, began shaving their facial and body hair in an effort to appear healthier, as youth and vitality became associated with survival.

And it stays on the faces of public figures,” says Dr, Peterkin, pointing at a modern timeline of mustachioed Black men, from Martin Luther King Jr. to former Attorney General Eric Holder, to clergymen, to actors, from Carl Weathers to Michael B. Jordan. Rock became pop, uptown started to meet downtown, and as the free-love ‘60s gave way to the key-party ‘70s, former hippies graduated law school and moved to the suburbs.

“Suddenly, they’re working under bosses in offices and factories.” At the same time, soldiers were coming back from the Crimean war sporting mustaches, which were associated with particular regiments, and it became a popular expression of extreme masculinity (alongside many bogus health claims, like that they’d keep disease from getting up your nose).

This goes on.

But I never did. It no longer has to adhere to the narrow definitions of masculinity that once dictated its style.

In essence, today's mustache exists in a space where it can be both a nod to past notions of manliness and a tool for redefining contemporary masculinity. But where did this stereotype originate, and why does it continue to be associated with queerness?

The History of the Mustache

The mustache has a rich and varied history, dating back thousands of years.

And then a very famous mustachioed German made the whole enterprise rather unattractive for a good while.

Today’s mustache might be caught in circles of irony that bite and play with centuries of attempted manliness, but at the same time it’s escaping the bristling tyranny that inspired it for so long.

The mustache, once a symbol of rebellion, became increasingly seen as a marker of gay identity, which prompted discomfort among those threatened by the queer community.

The mustache’s prominence waned during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, as the gay community faced stigma and vilification due to the disease’s widespread association with LGBTQ+ people.

Conservative politicians, who are taking up the mantle of masculinity and family values, have begun growing beards en masse — one only has to look to Vice President-elect JD Vance or Senator Ted Cruz. It was also linked to subcultures like swingers and adult film stars, symbolizing sexual freedom and defiance. To be able to grow a beard and to choose not to has always felt to me, at a gut level, like a rejection of one’s male identity.

A point of clarification: I don’t judge people for not growing facial hair.

As modern masculinity continues to evolve, the mustache’s role as a symbol has shifted, allowing it to exist as a simple, unburdened form of personal expression.

Embracing the Mustache Today: A Nod to the Past, Joy in the Present

The history of the mustache is rich and complex, stretching back to ancient Egypt and evolving through various cultural associations with masculinity, rebellion, and nonconformity.

On those few days when I trim my beard down to keep my chin hair aligned with my sideburns, I almost don’t recognize myself. However, rather than seeing it as a rejection of the perceived effeminacy and Queerness I was once afraid to be associated with, the beard is now a reminder that I can simultaneously embrace my own Queer identity while existing in, and also directly opposing, the oppressive paradigm of heteronormative society.

Statement Correspondent Joshua Nicholson can be reached at joshuni@umich.edu.

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