Osborn Fiber Studio

Saturday, Noel and I manned up for men’s health. Or, well, mo-ed up. For the prostates! Because, as Noel put it, men shouldn’t have to go through this alone. So the traditional moustaches for mo-vember were met by our mohawks.

What’s the deal? I’ll be honest, at first Movember seemed like a great excuse to get a mohawk. But when I thought about it, I realized I had a personal connection to Movember right in front of me. Over the past year, my father-in-law has been dealing with prostate cancer. Mercifully, he is a smart guy who goes to the doctor regularly, so it was caught so early that there’s some debate over whether to even call it cancer! But he still had to get some pretty unpleasant surgery, and it’s always terrifying being told (and then having to tell your kids) that you have the c-word. He’s doing great now; the surgery went well.

Even more than cancer research (as enormously important as that is!) Movember is about awareness. So many of these cancers are treatable, if you go get checked out regularly enough for things to get caught early. Women know this too, and the tests we have to get are hardly more pleasant than those for the lads, but statistically women are much likely to actually go to the doctor. Least year’s Movember slogan was, “Every year thousands of men die from stubbornness.” That’s a little demeaning, not to say sexist, so I’m glad they changed it. Still, hardly anything you go through at the doctor could be more embarrassing than all the dudes walking around campus with moustaches in very awkward phases… right? And it’s worth it if it could save your life!

Here we are before Michelle worked her magic. We look cute enough, but my bangs at least had gotten to the point where I could pull them back in extremely meh pigtails. Not to mention the unavoidable inch of roots visible whenever I wore my bangs down.

Michelle cut and styled and worked her voodoo magicks.

And in the end, we felt pretty empowered.

Short hair lesson of the day: Lots of people seem to think that having short hair is easy. It is, after a fashion – once you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes to do hair and make up. But here’s the thing: you have to do that hair and make up every single day. There are no days when you can just throw your hair in a ponytail or a messy bun or a hair clip and be done with it. No – you have to have hair done, with good skin and cute earrings every time you leave the house. Otherwise there is the constant danger of looking like a cruel stereotype of a lesbian from the mid-’90s.

Both Noel and I forgot to bring earrings to our epic hair-cuttings-off night, and I forgot to wear makeup. She still managed to look adorable. But when Jared first saw my hair, I’d pulled the front into a bit of a point, as below. He said it looked a little “Old Trek Romulan.” To which I responded, “Didn’t you write fan fiction about Romulans? Are you saying this is a turn-on?” Turns out middle school was a long time ago. Anyway, I’m still learning to style it, but every day I’m getting a little better at it.

It took a couple of days, but we were finally in the same place again on Monday, this time with makeup and earrings. (As it happens, we are also in D&D garb. Neither of us wear capes on normal days. Though we should.)

For the record, Jared is also growing a moustache in the more traditional observance of Movember (though he also looks fierce in a faux-hawk). You can donate to the Movember foundation though my page, Noel’s page, or Jared’s page.

We leave you with this wisdom from Nick Offerman, the man of the ultimate moustache. I think his advice holds equal profit for all persons of strength and vigor, no matter their reproductive organs, though I still don’t want a moustache at the end of the day.