Mustache Madness

Photos submitted by Bauer, Mamerow, and Neary

Gabby Weisgerber and Riley Veenendaal

Charger Press is a news source dedicated to what really matters: breaking stories about the girls’ locker room, rubric changes, and most importantly, the argument on the color of classes.  Continuing this strand of serious journalism, we ‘mustache’ you a question… How much do you really know about the history of mustaches?

Let’s take a quick dive into the prickly history of the mustache!

A mustache is defined as “a strip of hair left to grow above the upper lip” (Oxford Dictionary), so for those of you who are gonna get angry and say, “Those are beards! Not mustaches!” keep in mind that as long as they have hair above their lip, THEY HAVE A MUSTACHE. In the 16th and 17th centuries, roughly 90% of men had some sort of facial hair throughout Europe (History Hit). Men saw having a beard as a sign of manliness, which played a large role in defining their chairacter. 

Following this time period, the mustache started to take over—and it happened right under our noses! By the early 1800s, mustaches were flamboyant, curled, and often carefully sculpted to link up with excessive sideburns (BBC). Similar to how fashion trends can appear and disappear throughout time, the trends of mustaches have also gone in and out as men try and recreate the many famous furry hairstyles to impress their friends, family, pets, and everyone in between!

Since we are fascinated by the mustache, we have many questions revolving around why people choose or choose not to have it. After all, to stache, or not to stache, that is the question! This could not remain unanswered; therefore, we took it upon ourselves to conduct interviews with people from Hamilton who wanted to share their thoughts on the mustache matter. 

First, we asked Mr. Bauer, HHS principal; Mr. Neary, a fitness and health education teacher; and Mr. Mamerow (the man, the myth, the legend!), a technology education teacher, why they decided to have a mustache now or at some point in their lives. 

Mamerow: “IDK honestly. I started growing a mustache when I was a freshman in college. I have had a mustache since then, so I have had a mustache for 10 years. My dad had always had a mustache when I was growing up, and he had shaved it off the day after he retired from teaching, so he had it every single day. He was like ‘yeah, I started growing it out when I was in college.’ He had it his entire career, so I was like ‘I’m going to grow out a mustache,’ and it worked out really well when I was student teaching because if I hadn’t had it, nobody would have known the difference between me and half the students. I would have looked like I was a senior. And then I just kinda kept it.”

Bauer: “I like to mix it up. My wife said it looks good.”

Then, we asked Mr. Neary if he feels more powerful or authoritative when he has a mustache. 

Neary: “Not really. In a school aspect, it's a funny thing that kids can make fun of, so there's more interaction. My wife doesn’t hate it, so there's also that. It's a funny thing with kids; [they] either love it or hate it, so there's more conversations.” 

We also asked these teachers if any celebrity/person has inspired them to have a mustache:

Bauer: “Tom Selleck, Rollie Fingers, Mr. Mamero.” 

Mamerow: “YES! The Norwegian ski jumper [Robert Johansson]. This guy in the 2016 Olympics had the nickname ‘The Flying Mustache.’ And I was like that is cool, but it’s not like when I grew mine out I wanna look like that; however, once I started growing it out and people asked, ‘why'd you grow that,’ I was like ‘oh idk this guy is pretty cool.’ Other than that, my dad always had a mustache; he never had one that was curled, but he always had a mustache. I can’t really think of anything in particular that made me want to grow it out.”

We also asked Mr. Neary if overall, he was pro mustache: 

 “Yes, pro mustache,” replied a confident Neary.

Finally, we specifically asked Mr. Mamerow an extremely important question: What do you do to take care of your mustache? 

Mamerow: “When I wake up every morning, I wax it, so I use mustache wax. It's a product that has beeswax in it. There's different types of wax; mine is almost like a hair gel with wax in it. The guys that use purely wax have to heat it up and pull it into position and heat it up and then when it cools off, it solidifies. I’m not that dedicated, and I mean, that stuff stays in position all day. It’ll spring back basically, and then it’ll just wash out at night. Occasionally, if it's really dry out, like the middle of winter, I’ll put some beard oil in it to keep it pliable and not so wiry.”

All of these interviews caused us to think about all the different types of mustaches one can have. As we found out, there are many different wings for your nose! You can rock a beard with a mustache, a mustache with no other facial hair, a goatee, and so many more! And don’t worry, we won’t keep these styles stached away from you!. Some even go for a more subtle look, maybe only combing their mustache and calling it a day whereas others may put a lot more effort into their mustache (e.g. putting gel in it, twirling it, shaving it in a specific way to maintain a certain shape, etc). However, personal preference is the most important thing here when determining what you want to do with your facial hair. After all, all that matters is that you like it! Still—as mustache connoisseurs—we want to help those lost souls out there who are in a hairy situation and struggling with that very important question: What should I do with my facial hair? After much research and taking many polls of students here at Hamilton, we have cut out what we’ve found to be the most important factors to consider when deciding what you want to do with your facial hair. 

The first and obviously most pressing question is: Do mustaches even look good? Our student body responded as follows…

Next we asked the student body: Would you ever grow a mustache? 

We also asked our student body: Who is your favorite celebrity with a mustache? While a large majority of our responses were “N/A,” “idk,” and “Don’t have one”—and even one person stating “gross”—there were some strong winners in this category. The most popular responses in this section were Travis Kelce, Robert Downy Jr., Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Ted Lasso, Top Gun men, and Tom Selleck. 

Finally, we asked our student body, “What teacher at Hamilton has the best mustache?” The top chosen teachers were—drum roll please—Mr. Malcore (8.5%), Mr. Tennessen (9.1%), and our top chosen teacher with 44.3% of the votes, Mr. Mamerow!

For those still in desperate need of help for what facial hair suits you best, we have combed the internet trying to find the best information that will help people determine what type of facial hair will look best on you based on head shape, beard thickness, etc. If you are the person that needs help with this, click on this link from the website The Art of Manliness to discover what facial hair—or lack of facial hair—works best for you! (But know that a mustache will always look great!) ;)

We hate to say it, but although we were skeptical at the beginning of our journey, the extensive research on the mustache has really grown on us! Thank you for coming along this mustachulous journey with us, and we hope you have enjoyed learning all about the mustache as much as we have!