20131030.0621

Tomorrow, I am going to do something that I have not done--at least not intentionally--for some years: shave my beard and moustache.  I have worn a full beard since entering graduate school, a bit more than eight years now (with the occasional adjustment for having sneezed while trimming); I wore a goatee for some years before that, and a moustache in some form since high school.  The fact that tomorrow will see me trim down the beard growth I have let accrue and shave away what the trimming leaves behind, then, is a strange one.

I am doing it to highlight the contrast for my participation in No-Shave November, noted here and discussed more fully (if with overly commercial and hipsterish overtones) here.  One of the ideas underlying it, as those sources note, is to accentuate features traditionally ascribed with manliness (the sources note that women are free to participate, but the presentations and discussion focus on facial hair--beards and moustaches, typically masculine features) in the hopes of linking those features to an increased awareness of male health issues, notably prostate cancer (which the US CDC notes is among the most common, and commonly fatal, forms of cancer).  In effect, knowing about men's health issues becomes a manly thing and a corrective to the common trope of manliness in which a man endures pain and discomfort without comment.  (It remains good to do so, of course, to not whine about things when nothing can be done about them, but it is also manly to work to correct problems when they arise instead of ignoring and enduring them--and regular medical examination is something that can be done.  Cars get regular maintenance.  Houses and tools do.  Why not the men who associate themselves so strongly with such maintenance?)

Being a man, I am necessarily concerned with issues of men's health--and more so since learning that a small and precious life depends in no small part upon my ability to provide for it.  (Before any of you ask, yes, I am making appointments to see a doctor about some nagging health concerns I have.  I pay for health insurance; I might as well get the benefit of it.)  Being a man who sports a beard and moustache normally, No-shave November seems to me to be an easy thing in which to participate (I know that I may be chastised for taking the easy way out).  Being a man who has the good fortune to work in an environment conducive to doing so is a great help, as well; I have not always had the kind of job that would allow me to do such a thing as neglect shaving for a month.

There is always the danger in awareness-raising that all that will happen is the awareness-raising, that those who strive to raise awareness will content themselves with doing so and will not take such actions as will help to correct the problem of which they seek to make others aware.  I hope to not suffer such a thing.  Again, I am setting up appointments for examinations and the like, working to correct my own behavior in the matter.  If finances allow (and, given my work, they may well not), I will be making some donations to organizations that work to find better treatments and cures for the disease.  And I will encourage others to do the same, overtly through my words and tacitly by means of the awesome beardliness that November will bring back to me.