It’s that time of year again. 

The Movember campaign encourages men to sport follicle freestylings to raise awareness of men’s health issues, but what involvement can women have? And can letting it all grow out really change things?

The Movember campaign began humbly, founded in 2003 by Australians Travis Garone and Luke Slattery after a chat about the Demise of the Mustache resulted in a promise to bring it back with a month-long growth fest in the November of that year.

Ten years later and Movember has official partnerships with many prostrate cancer charities in different parts of the world, raising money for and publicising the work of these organisations.

Partnerships have also been forged in many countries with organisations that address men’s depression, and testicular cancer charities.

In the United Kingdom (UK) the organisations involved are Prostrate Cancer UK and the Institute of Cancer Research.

Money is raised for and distributed by Movember, and these partners, encouraging the men who participate in Movember to constantly remain mindful of boosting the profile of men’s health issues.

In the United Kingdom the Movember campaign raised 27 million pounds in 2012. Globally, it generated 92 million pounds and had 1.1million participants.

Thus there is no denying that this campaign works, and that busting out upper lip designs is a creative that has roused the interest of humungous numbers of individuals the world over.

However, how can women get involved in Movember, a campaign that explicitly targets male participants?  And is women letting their hair grow anywhere but on their scalp still the taboo it once was?

The Movember site itself calls female supporters of Movember ‘Mo sistas’, and encourages them to support ‘Mo brothers’ by – among other things – recruiting a team to raise money, organising events, donating money and ‘supporting and showing love for the mo’.

Though enormously successful, Movember’s focus on the moustache as a sign of masculinity makes this an explicitly gendered campaign.

This is an approach that inherently excludes the full participation of women through the rhetoric evident on its site: ‘growing a mo’ is left to the guys’.

And, in addition, it reinforces that growing facial hair is a masculine and exclusive trait that should be admired by women, as evident in the above mentioned sentiments about ‘mo sistas’ supporting mo’ growth.

Armpits4August is a campaign that urges participants to grow their underarm hair for one month in order to raise money for people with Polycistic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) by passing donations on to the charity Verity.

The campaign was launched in  2012, and Armpits4August say:  ‘A common symptom of PCOS can be hirsutism (excessive hair growth), so by growing our body hair we are working towards having pride in our body hair, not shame’.

The campaigners go on to explicitly outline that ‘We believe the shame a lot of people feel about their body hair is a consequence of living in a society that regulates, controls and dictates that female-assigned bodies must conform to incredibly narrow beauty standards, and which upholds a rigid gender binary that deems body hair a ‘masculine’ trait’.

Hence could Movember be said to be feeding in to – exacerbating – this societal dictat?

This predicament is further explored in a Women’s Views on News article, available here.

Women against non essential grooming (WANG) also see the removal of female body hair as arising from societal pressure, arguing that society has established a damaging and limiting link between conforming to expected beauty standards and being considered a worthwhile person.

WANG thus encourages the rejection of ‘prohibitive and narrow beauty standards imposed on women’, though welcomes ‘allies of any/no gender’ who resist or struggle against conforming to constructed beauty standards.

The ‘No shave November’ campaign or ‘Noshember’ urges men and women to give up shaving for the month of November, particularly referring to men letting their beards grow and women notably their underarm hair and leg hair.

This again, genders hair growth, with the website emphasising that letting hair grow is ‘lazy’, with the ‘plus’ that ‘it is cold enough to wear scarves or jeans […] to cover that unsightly hair’.

Why is body hair unsightly?

In the ‘ladies’ section of the Noshember website, the ‘Noshember guys’ thank ‘Noshemberinas’ ‘for all the ladies who have to deal with your man’s nasty annoying and downright manly facial hair’.

Why is it that when a man grows facial hair, or a mustache it is manly but when a women grows any hair apart from on her head it isn’t described as womanly?

This sentiment is reinforced by quotes scattered throughout the section, but principally in the referral to the female ‘Noshember’ Facebook group: ‘How long can you go?  *Oh btw [by the way], this group is only for legs, feel free to shave other places as you wish, cuz [because] I’m not gonna go there’.

Even within the gender binary constraints of growing body hair there is a hierarchy, with growing leg hair permissible when engaging in ‘Noshember’ but other hair on the female body seen as beyond comprehension or desirability.

It is a damning indictment of society that even foundations and campaigns concerned with bucking the trend for removing, or grooming body hair – bar Armpits4August – can be accused of fortifying stereotypes and repressive, patriarchal attitudes.

Both Movember and Noshember do not engage with the experience of trans men and women, and non binary persons, exacerbating perceptions of acceptance as clearly defined by alignment with and traditional expressions of gender.

Both these campaigns raise money for, and support charitable causes that suffer from under-funding and are highly necessary, however it feels like they may have missed an opportunity to engage with, and change, public attitudes to body hair and gender.

For shame.