|
|
|
November 12th, 2011
03:47 pm - Movember
The semiotics of the moustache: to signal 'natural' masculine identity plus social constraint on identity. So, a Victorian model of maleness which pre-exists culture but finds its form via culture. Authoritarian, structured, conflicted. I know I have read that expressed better.
I used to hate moustaches but I kind of like them nowadays. Inner struggle more poignant than oppressive. Moustached men at least wear their struggles under their own noses. It's yer smooth-cheeks you wanna watch out for.
Anyway now it's Movember, when guys grow moustaches for charity. Here is a list of my top ten moustaches for Movember:
Walter White
Clement Attlee
Blackadder
AE Housman
Terry Thomas
Random steampunk guy
William Shakespeare
Marx
Wild Bill Hickok
Harold Rex
Now, nearly everyone of those you think 'You poor guy'. Coincidence? Or inner conflict expressed via facial hair?
|
Speaking as a sartorial beard-wearer, I'm not sure my moustache "counts" - a bit like Marx, I think it may be a look that says "can't be bothered shaving", but moustaches on the other hand require at least some cultivation.. So I think Nietzsche should make the list ahead of me and Karl.
LJ has suddenly taken against my open-ID. So this is to say this is Steve if I come out anonymously. Yes, the semiotics of the beard is different, and less conflicted I think. The Marx I linked to there is actually Groucho. But you are right Nietzche would be well placed in the gallery of tormented moustaches.
I had to block anonymous comments because I was getting so many spam comments featuring explicit yet strangely tedious porn, and I was fed up with deleting them. Hmmm. I didn't check out the link but didn't think of Groucho because of the amount of paint involved. But I guess that's a type of cultivation again. Kind of primitive Grecian 2000. My dad had a mustache and as a kid I strictly forbid him to shave it off, ever (Unfortunately he did when I was like 25)!
Love my men scruffy, so I say: go for it, Movember! There were loads of moustaches when I was growing up, and I think they might be coming back into fashion. I was thinking about how many there used to be, too. Lots of politicians... even Harold Wilson had one in his younger day. Made him look like a spiv, though.
The magnificent handlebars of Jimmy Edwards, too. And Gerald Nabarro. I think that there was something "Officer class" about wearing one, with its implications of public school and all the baggage that brought with it. Maybe beards had a more democratic thing about them, being worn by both officers and men in the Navy.
Back in the 70s when hair started growing out of my face, I was kind of into the mainliness of being able to grow one at all, as so many of my contemporaries remained smooth. I tried some beard topiary a little later, but a kind of Lemmy lookalike was the best I could do. May I offer my great-grandfather, James Fildes Pearson, in about 1875?  Lovely, and he doesn't look that tortured by the conflict between nature and culture. Managed to pick up a rich wife, and I'm sure looking like that helped! |
|
|
|
|
LiveJournal.com |
