The Hubris of The ‘Stache

In celebration of No Shave November, The Greatest Blog Of All Time presents a series on facial hair.

P.S. Another ‘stache post bears mention of Movember, a campaign to help fight prostate cancer ‘n stuff. In particular, today we highlight the work of Jason Sweeney, who posts Manly Mustaches Of The Animal Kingdom every day.

It is CLEARLY recorded that the ‘stache is a very controversial topic. Just take a moment to think about what associations are made when you think about a ‘stache.

Hint: It’s ALWAYS a negative association.

It’s never pleasant. But it wasn’t always that way. The ‘stache was once on the verge of being the KING of facial hair.

Then, tragedy struck.

Aristotle defines the Tragic Hero as being a character “who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.”

An example of this is Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which the titular character is ambitious to a fault. In this case, the fault being just straight up murdering people.

Thus, the ‘stache must be looked at as the Macbeth of facial hair. Here’s why.

During the Battle for Masculinity (which will be detailed next week), the image of facial hair became less and less pleasing. Large beards had gone from being a badge of honor to being a badge of filth.

In particular, during the cultural clashes between high class society and the hippie movement (seen in the AMC documentary “Mad Men”), facial hair was so associated with the filthy, disgusting, godless flower children that to have it at all meant that you were despised by popular society.

But things were different for the ‘stache. It was still regarded as clean and acceptable. It was a way for a man to show his masculinity yet also show that he was still a functioning member of society.

The Glory Days of The ‘Stache soon led to the pride of the ‘stache, however. And this inevitably led to its downfall.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the ‘stache became disgusting to humanity. Even as recently as the 80s, it was still accepted. It was still respected. It was still LOVED.

And although the ‘stache stood as the final place where having facial hair was respected, it gets no credit for its hard work. Its Macbeth-like ambition, if you will (and you WILL).

The overnight change in opinion wasn’t a result of one major mistake on the ‘stache’s part. It isn’t like everyone who enjoyed peeping through other people’s windows got together and decided this would be the calling card.

No, it was much worse than that. Everyone who HAD a ‘stache during the Glory Days….

….became our dads.

There is one motivating factor that humanity clings to harder than anything else. It’s not freedom. It’s not success. It’s not survival.

It’s the fight to not be like our dads.

Thus, due to dads, an entire facial hair style through no fault of its own became despised. All the ‘stache ever wanted was to be the king. But humanity couldn’t give it that.

This made the ‘stache into a true tragic hero.

It should be noted that according to Aristotle, the tragic hero must invoke pity. But who actually pities the ‘stache? Nobody, of course. So why doesn’t humanity have any pity for the Macbeth of Facial Hair?

Because, children, in this particular story, we are the villains.

What other Shakespeare comparisons can you make to ‘staches? Cause I’m sure there’s like 1,000,000 of them.

What’s your view on ‘staches?