While the fake moustache has been an item of fashion for a while now, Movember seems to have exploded its chicness. According to a quick glance at my Pinterest feed, there are at least half a dozen ways in which I, being of the facial hair challenged variety, can participate in Movember. The Pièce de résistance: Moustache Macaroons.
Not only could I take myself off to the kitchen in order to bake up this tasty treat in support of my men-friends, but I, along with any interested gal-pals, could also pose for photos - with a carefully poised macaroon - before consuming. A delicious snack and a means of filling the void of moustache envy: yes, please.
However, if my baking skills weren't feeling up to par, I could choose from several other options: paper cutouts, jewellery (the rings were rather fetching), or even moustache plasters. Yes, moustache plasters. These manifestations of the moustache, in their quirky and sometimes random (a scarf with 'tache knitted in) appearances, scream of my moustache envy. In them, my lack was made apparent.
With this onslaught of creativity all geared towards helping me, a smooth faced girl, achieve the moustached glory that the boyfriend is currently sporting, I realised that Freud got it wrong. As I woman, I don't envy man's penis; I envy his moustache.
If we follow Freud's theory of "penis-envy", every little girl is really a little boy - until she realises that she isn't, through seeing her lack of penis. The rest of her life, if she is to successfully become a woman, is concerned with supressing/dealing with this lack. I see it. I don't have it. I want it. However, for this month of Movember, the moustache appears to be "it", not the penis; they are raising money for prostate cancer - the link isn't that far fetched.
The possible flaw of my argument: pleasure. According to father Freud, I'm meant to envy this thing penis for the pleasure and power it provides. But, if the boyfriend's declarations of "I can't wait to be rid of it" are at all worth listening too, I, perhaps, don't envy his moustache after all. It is, I must admit, a rather silly bit of growth upon his upper lip, but it is for charity - the only thing that has prevented him from ditching it.
Freud's solution, I believe: it isn't that I desire the actual moustache, just as I don't desire the actual penis. I want the symbol - what it represents, as the manifestations I keep seeing attest. None of these moustache manifestations resemble, very much at all, an actual moustache. They are the moustache made pretty. 'Girlified'.
So, perhaps it isn't that Freud got it wrong and the moustache is just a reincarnation of the original. After all, the goal isn't to be man; it's to be like him. And what better way to achieve this than through the high mimicry of baking-stitching-painting-drawing a moustache.
Whichever the case, come December 1st, the good deed will be done and we'll cut his off - the moustache, not the other.