Mustache Implants On The Rise In Middle East As Men Seek To Emulate Famous Arab FiguresWhen the men in our lives ponder growing mustaches, they're met with reactions ranging from kindhearted skepticism to biting ridicule (we're usually dishing out the latter). Here in the U.S., mustaches are typically reserved for hipsters, earnest Movember participants, your very uncool uncle or Ron Swanson.
But over in the Middle East, mustaches are all the rage. CNN reports that the desire for a bold mustache has jumped remarkably among Middle Eastern men in the past five years to the point that men are undergoing surgery to attain the perfect 'stache in order to emulate powerful Arab public figures.
Several plastic surgeons tell CNN that they're performing more mustache implants than ever. Turkish surgeon Selahattin Tulunay says he now performs around 60 follicular unit extraction surgeries a month, and a Paris-based surgeon says men from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Lebanon traveling to France to get their procedures done. "My impression is more and more they want to establish their male aspect," he says to CNN.
In other words, mustaches = masculinity. The symbolic meaning isn't new -- mustaches have long been valued in Arab culture as signs of grit, maturity, wisdom and virility. Arab leaders from Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have all sported them. (And in 2008, Hamas militants abducted a Fatah member and unceremoniously shaved off his mustache as a sign of disrespect.) Men with mustaches clearly command power and admiration.
Humans are funny critters. Having had a moustache most of the time since my twenties (simply because it grows there and I can't see any reason to try and stop it) I know that moustaches have absolutely zero to do with grit, maturity, wisdom and virility. It's just hair, FFS.
Ok, anyone here know someone who has had a moustache transplant?
Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West.
Topic: Grow your own soup strainer.