The Deadly Toothbrush

"A kiss without a mustache is like an egg without salt," runs an old Spanish saying. That is only one of dozens of attempts to define the psychology of the mustache. Scientists examining the ticklish subject have offered assorted explanations: mustaches are telltale signs of political conservatism or father worship, emblems of confident nonconformity, or "epigamic adornments designed to win mates, like phosphorescence in fireflies."

Astonishing Contrast. By any definition, the mustache is supposed to bespeak virility. Thus it has long been associated with that most virile of pursuits--war.* German soldiers used to grow mustaches when they found their Kraft ebbing. British soldiers during the Crimean War gained a fearsome respect for their fearsomely foliaged Turkish allies, and many of those who survived proudly bore a bristle back home. Such pubigerous leaders as Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, Stalin, De Gaulle and Chiang Kai-shek maintained the military tradition of the brush-style upper lip.

Perhaps the world's most dedicated mustache researcher is a man who does not have one: Major Geoffrey Peberdy, former British army psychiatrist now on the staff of Newcastle General Hospital. Writing in the Journal of Mental Science, he tells of his mental health study of 400 mustachioed applicants for officer training. He divided up the candidates by type of mustache: trimmed (short hairs over entire upper lip), bushy, toothbrush, hairline and divided. For trimmed, bushy, hairline and divided types, the "pass" rate was an average 23%--about the same as clean-shaven men. By astonishing contrast, not a single man with a toothbrush mustache passed. Incredulous, Peberdy persuaded a fellow psychiatrist to run a similar test at another British military base. There, also, to his surprise, not a single toothbrush passed.

Precise to a Fault. Combing the boards' appraisals, Peberdy found a consistent pattern among the toothbrushed men: the boards in general ruled them to be "too limited in imagination, too little appreciative of the views of others, [liable to] create rather than disperse interpersonal tensions. Like their mustaches, so tended these men: faintly rebellious, energetic but prickly, precise to a fault, disciplining to near ruthlessness and disciplined to near self-mutilation." Good Soldier Peberdy reassuringly hastened to add that in the selection of officer candidates "the cut of a man's mustache could of course never be of influence." But just to be on the safe side, would-be subalterns with toothbrush mustaches might do well to shave--or keep a stiff upper lip.

* Although one historian points out that no U.S. President with a mustache ever declared war--partly because the U.S. has had no mustachioed President since William Howard Taft (1909-13).

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