The One Where Julian Learns About When Mustaches Happen
The Sternal Journal
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Wow, Sternal Journalists.
You guys really loved my new words from quarantine (at least those of you who reached out loved them. Maybe some of you have been seething at their silliness for a full week, still not cooled down enough to write a pointed but level-headed letter of complaint).
For either camp, I made an audiovisual pronunciation guide on instagram and it can be viewed here.
You'll notice that it is very mustache heavy. As this is another Sunday Sternal, and therefore I am flying by the seat of my pants to chase down an idea I think is worthwhile, I've tracked down what I guarantee to you is the most interesting thing I've learned about mustaches.
We're not talking about longest mustaches, or craziest styles, or the fact that there is such thing as a mustache spoon that Victoriwn English gents would use to sip their soups without getting their mustaches soupy (losin' a lot of soup there).
No, those are chump facts. Those are facts that your 9 year old cousin learned for his Zoom fourth grade class' social studies project and is whipping out to try to impress your extended family's weekly Google hangout trivia with way too many people on it.
And when he does try to wow everyone with one of those "Needs improvement" facts? You will be ready to crush him.
(Because, yes, learning loss due to COVID is very real and sad, but your 9 year old cousin is already sort of an alpha in the family and if you don't take him down a peg now, he'll grow up to become an i-banker and not one of the ones who feels a little bad about it, nono, one of the ones who doesn't even realize some people think it's bad to be an i-banker!)
Whether that hypothetical applies to you or not, the fact is interesting and fun:
Research done on this subject has noticed that the prevalence of moustaches and facial hair in general rise and fall according to the saturation of the marriage market.
If you're thinking, "Esqueechamay?!" you took the word right out of my mouth. (Give it back. It's mine).
Anyway, I saw that sentence on the Wikipedia page for mustaches (Big Sunday Sternal vibes) and so I clicked through and found this article abstract in a psychology journal I obviously wudn't gonna pay for:
Using annual data on British beard fashions extending from 1842–1971, it was found that mustaches, and facial hair in general, are more frequent when there is a good supply of single men of marriageable age.
Listen, the summary said more than that, but a lot of it seemed to be assumptions, and the study was published in 2001 based only on British beard fashion between the 1840s and the 1970s, so they weren't the wokest of assumptions.
If you'd like to read the whole thing or pay $39.95 for a SINGLE ARTICLE (WHAT?! THAT IS NOT A PAYWALL. THAT IS A PAYFORTRESS), you can find it here.
But anyway, why do you think that's the case? They thought that men were growing mustaches to be more physically attractive when there was competition and shaving them to be less threatening when there wasn't. Which... I don't like think the opposite of attractive is non-threatening. Do you? I don't really have a take on any of this and as I'm writing, I realize it may not be an interesting fact.
But I do think it could toss a grenade of weirdness into your family's weekly trivia. So give it a try! Let me know what you think!
As far as recommendations, I'm loving Wind of Change, the new investigative podcast from Crooked Media which explores whether an early 90s German power ballad was written by the CIA.
That's all for now!
Love,
Julian