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| Sunday, 09 April 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Hail the
chief, hail those handlebars!
Why spend so much on expensive clothes, perfumes, flashy cars, trendy phones to promote your masculinity when its right under your nose? by Aditha Dissanayake
Most men who have stopped shaving their upper-lip, including our own shutter-bug Avinash Bandara believe a mustache on a man separates him from the boys, and of course from the women. They dismiss men without a hairline on their lip as effeminate and baby-faced individuals who cannot be called men in the real sense of the word. Artist Jagath Punchihewa, in line with Confucius who is supposed to have said "a man without a mustache is a man without a soul" says his mustache is the quintessential thing about him.
Giving a woman's perspective of "grizzly hunks", Mrs. Anandi Balasingham says mustaches and masculinity are believed to go together among South Indians. "I liked my husband's mustache till it started to turn grey and he had to shave it off". Mr. Balasingham highlighting the value of a mustache recalls how he first started to grow one at the request of the Principal of Zahira College, Dr. A. M. Aziz, when he joined the staff as a teacher. One day, Dr. Aziz had mistaken him for a student and commanded him to "Get back to the class at once". When he realized he was addressing one of his own staff members, Dr. Aziz had suggested Mr. Balasinghem should grow a mustache to differentiate himself from the students. One quick glance at the men around you, be it on the street, in office, in Parliament or on a Sinhala or Tamil teledrama on TV, it is obvious that the mustache has embraced all styles and lengths. Conquering those of the "anti-stache" establishment who have tried to fight for the liberation of the upper-lip, the reign of the mustache seems to have finally arrived. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Call it the handle-bar, the pencil-line, the duster or the Hitler-cut,
mustaches seem to have reached its apex these days with none other than
President Mahinda Rajapakse (he is the second President of our country to
have one) setting the trend. 
He feels masculine and safe, thanks to the well-trimmed hairline on his
face (ravulen thamai okkoma shape kara ganne) and believes he has gained a
stern, forbidding look from his mustache. Yet others like Deepal says he has
never given a second's thought as to why he had started to grow a mustache
while he was a final year student at the University, "I have never shaven it
off since then, even though I give it different 'forms' whenever I feel like
it". 
