“A man without a mustache is no longer a man,” a woman in Guy de Maupassant’s 1883 epistolary short story “The Mustache” lamented. “The mustache is the spice.” Throughout most of the 20th century, the mustache was indeed the spice. Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Errol Flynn, and Clark Gable made the style suave in the earliest decades of the movies. Later, Burt Reynolds had one in the 1977 film “Smokey and the Bandit,” and Mr. Selleck sported a thick brush in the 1980-88 television show “Magnum, P.I.” (It also became a mark of villainy, thanks in part to the mustache-twirling cartoon character Snidely Whiplash - not to mention dictators from Hitler to Hussein). But its prominence didn’t last.
The executive editor of men.style.com, Tyler Thoreson, says that today, “Pop culture has been utterly de-mustachified.” No major movie stars have mustaches anymore, nor do teen heartthrobs or anchormen. As Mr. Della Valle sees it, the mustache is now generally thought of as the realm of “homosexuals, white trash, child molesters, cops, and uncles.” In perhaps the clearest sign that the ‘stache had fallen out of mainstream favor, the creators of Brawny paper towels “shaved” their iconic Brawny Man in 2003. The new image, a company executive, Michael Burandt, said at the time, “Signals to shoppers that these towels are completely updated and have moved into the new millennium.” Mustaches, in other words, are so last century.
(click the picture for the actual article entitled: Mustache Love By RUTH GRAHAM | December 13, 2005 )
