Stiff Upper Lip: Porn ‘Stache Rides Again

Troubling men’s style trends are not unlike sex crimes.

Some we walk into like a punch and resist them with everything we’ve got. Others leave us ashamed, wondering if we were somehow asking for it, and over-exfoliating with the loofah.

Some era-specific fads that fell by the wayside in retrospect worked rather well and could warrant being brought back into rotation: Nehru jackets, Carnaby Street suits, Beatle boots, and quiffs cut fine turns on the right men.

Then there are the ones that played out — cargo pants, camouflage, faux hawks, and Caesar cuts — because every guy you passed on the street jumped on the bandwagons. Lastly, there are the Untouchables — the Sucios — that still turn up in dark corners of the world: soul patches, extreme fade haircuts, Mantyhoses, Members Only jackets, Fabio hair, mandanas, and tribal tattoos that retain their claw-like hold on the oblivious.

The Porn ‘stache as this year’s most omnipresent trend polarizes as extremities are wont to do, in no small part due to the fact that there’s little in the way of mitigation when it comes to pulling it off with any sort of aplomb. It may not be as impossibly impractical as a Francois Sagat full-cranium tat or the genital-wilting braided beard, but you’ve got to be near the top rung of the ladder in terms of attractiveness (like this fine guy on the left) in order to even ironically attempt it.

The best case scenario is an ’80s Brawny paper towel coverboy mien; fail in your venture, and you risk the ignobility of looking like that cop from Sleepaway Camp. Virtually every postpubescent male celebrity has opted for some variant on the quicker picker upper, ranging from the appealing (George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Thomas Jane), to the dismaying (Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law), to the rape whistle-ready (the hideous Fu Manchus adorning Easter Island-headed Michael Phelps and douche-faced Pete Wentz).

Though satire-inclined urban hipsters (these are the same guys who tried to bring back the zoot suit during the especially lame late-90′s swing dance resurgence) are the ones likely to be given credit for sporting the look and propelling it back into the public eye, the truth is the Porn ‘stache has remained extant in various circles since the advent of hardcore porn in the late ’60s.

Pro baseball and hockey players are notorious for theirs, they’re the only follicles left unrazed by bodybuilders, and many a campaign strategist has cajoled candidates into going clean-shaven so as to make them appear younger and less sexually threatening.

Something of a parody of the debonair Old Hollywood lip warmer — of which John Waters’s ultra-thin version is a cheeky nod to — that became central casting shorthand for a smarmy, swaggering stud always at-the-ready to pound home, Porn ‘staches are as canonical to the medium as “What the hell are you doing in my underwear drawer!” premises, shag carpeting, and bow-chick-a-bow-wow soundtracks.

The look is thick (from the base of the nose to the top of the lip), wide and handlebar- and/or beard-optional, dark (blonds seem to have a harder time pulling it off, with only towheads Chase Hunter, Rex Morgan [right], and Gary Goss seeming to do it justice), and never too-groomed. John Holmes and Ron Jeremy were its patron saints for the hetero set, Paul Barresi rocked it in both lanes, and Colt Men like Byron Hawkwood (featured at the top of this post), Nick Chase, Tex Murdock, Peter Stride, and the awe-inspiring Leidermeister took it on or off from feature to feature.

If there’s a man to esteem for catapulting the porn ‘stache into the mainstream, it’s Tom Selleck, who spent his early career trying to convince Hollywood he was more than the hottest Just For Men box cover model ever. With the possible exception of Freddie Mercury, it’s doubtful that any legit celebrity ever wore it better. His star-making Magnum, P.I. turn effectively brought the Colt aesthetic to the aboveground and marketed it to the heterosexual female demographic, re-packaging it as the new ’80s machismo in the process. Within a decade, Selleck and his rough rider had become such recognizable gay icons that the running joke was that no straight man with an ear anywhere near to the ground of gay culture would wear mustache for fear of being mistaken for one of the boys.

My personal experience with a porn ‘stache devotee came in the form of a bodybuilder-turned-corporate moneyman I dated a few years back. A good twenty-five years older than me, he had one of those curvaceous, va-va-va-voom physiques and a Super Mario Bros. mustache that made him look like Colt’s iconic Bruno [left] (whose own magnificent facial hair made him appear to be far more mature than he actually was) crossbred with Chuck Norris, my pet name for him ultimately becoming “Fuck Norris”

As I child, I can recall my earliest libido-triggering arriving from the sights of the NFL’s massive Lyle Alzado and Chippendale-ish, feather-haired pro wrestler “Ravishing” Rick Rude (whose crowd-baiting trademark stance involved his leaning back with hands on head as if expecting to get blown), both flaunting action figure builds and some serious taint ticklers. Being a relative smoothie whose stubble is too fair and slight to ever grow one, it was his sheer physical difference — along with an oblique confession to “modeling” work he’d done during his twenties that he refused to elaborate on any further — that attracted me to him.

His Magnum so dominated his features to the point that even if I put my hand over it, I still couldn’t picture what he’d look like without it. When I asked him to shave it off just out of sheer curiosity, he balked, admitting that he’d worn it for thirty years and couldn’t bring himself to part with it. He simply felt naked and exposed when clean-shaven.

As with any ostentatious form of human plumage, the affect is often as much about veneering insecurity as it is lauding prowess. There are those women who have a psychological reliance on cosmetics as their self-veiling masks of glamor, but with men, the neurotic dependence tends to be on facial hair elaborately cultivated and designed like quills to summon up (and tacitly bulwark) their pillar-toppling, Samson-esque sexual mojo whose contempo Delilah goes by the name Gillette.