Moustachio. 'Stache. Moonchen. Lip eyebrow. Handlebars. Call it what you want, the mustache is a globally recognized symbol of masculinity. I suppose that's probably why the creators of the "Movember" campaign created the fund raising event. Not only is it gimmicky (you get men growing mustaches of various kinds for an entire month AND get them to document their progress while raising money), but it also fits: a generally male feature (although I must admit, I have seen a number of women in my lifetime whose mustaches would make a lot of grown men cry) for a form of cancer that affects men.
One of my first brushes with this great male-lip-brush (see the humour here?!) came sometime when I was between four and six years old. My father decided to grow a mustache. Just a thin line above his upper lip. I'm not quite sure how I felt about it, though I'm sure I was scared shitless...almost like I was when he randomly shaved his head one day. Now, it's reasonably acceptable here in the West for men to grow mustaches. The mustache has had a history with artists and entertainers (Dali, Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin), naval and military officers, Italian barbers, and of course, the baddest mustache of them all (Hitler). But it's a feature that isn't so revered among many middle class South Asians.
For years (for the record, this still occasionally happens), I remember my mother cussing at me, sometimes chasing after me to shave (for the record, I've never grown a mustache. A beard and a goatee perhaps, but never a mustache). She'd noticed the hair above my lip getting thick, and offer this motherly quip - badmaash lagda...jaamat kar! Loosely translated, that means you look like a criminal...go shave! I'd taunt her, laugh, and eventually cave in. But I always wondered why she felt that way. The answer? Right there on the big screen.
Just like Hollywood had its good guys in white and its bad guys in black, Bollywood, too, has its clear distinguishing characteristics for the hero and the negative role (they still use those terms - the "hero" always wins the girl; "villain" just hurts, so they call it a "negative role"). The hero is always clean shaven, while the male in the negative role almost always has facial hair. I can think of very few exceptions where the protagonists in movies from the 60s, 70s, and 80s had facial hair (mustaches were part of some actors' overall persona, carried in from their personal lives), but you always knew who the lecherous, seedy, always up-to-no-good villain (I'm using the word here in this post because it's easier) was because of the mustache. Jeevan was a popular villain, who'd make the ends of his mustache all pointy like to show how he was scheming. Or Sadashiv Amrapurkar. He sometimes acted without it, but didn't look nearly as evil unless he had his sometimes grey, but mostly black lip chops. Mukesh Rishi would flip flop, with clean shaven good-guy roles, and other times as a mustachioed baddie.
But I guess over time, things have to change. There's been an evolution. Take the 2010 film Dabangg. BOTH the hero (Chulbul Pandey played by Salman Khan) and the villain (Chedi Singh played by Sonu Sood) have mustaches. And it seems the success of that film has spawned a whole new generation of handlebar growing heroes. Akshay Kumar is also sporting a 'stache in his Rowdy Rathore (which, on the surface, bears a *ahem* slight resemblance to Dabangg from the stunts and special effects right down to the leading actress and her coy-eyelash-batting). Apparently, Sonu Sood will also be gussied up in his latest release, Maximum, playing the protagonist with a pushbroom.
I dunno about you, but I don't get it. It's like good guys trying to get down and dirty, and the only way they know how is to grow a mustache. But it's also a bit confusing. It's hard to keep track who's who, after having it drilled into my head that only bad men come mustached. Plus, I kinda liked tradition...of having the good guys in one colour and the bad guys in another as much as I liked having the villains clean shaven and the baddies strut around their crumb catchers like they were untouchable. When they got their comeuppance, it made it all the more sweeter. Because that mustache made them who they were: evil.
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