Late Puerto Rican legend, Raul Julia, was sublime as Gomez in ‘91’s *The Addams Family*, but John Astin’s original turn as the scheming Castillian Patriarch in ‘64 is just as good.
Image: *The Addams Family*, episode 7: Halloween With The Addams Family (circa 1964) | Wikimedia Commons

A moustache cannot be creepy.

A moustache isn’t sentient.

A moustache isn’t going to choke slam you into a black hole or take the piss out of you in front of your pals.

A moustache can’t do much beyond looking damn cool… normally, that is.

Rewatch any Mandalorian scene with Giancarlo Esposito’s perfect turn as Imperial baddy, Moff Gideon. Or, if you don’t scare fast, Google a few serial -- em, how do we sidestep the flags here… life extinguishers. Either way, you’ll spot creeps with moustaches, and it’s all but sullied one of man’s coolest expressions of style and sophistication.

But it bears repeating: A moustache itself is not creepy.

There’s a basic spectrum within which a moustache’s purpose will fall, though a lip rug’s value isn’t limited to it; As with everything, there are always exceptions.

1) The pièce de résistance atop a don’s untouchable sense of steez (let’s bring this word back). Think Lionel Richie, Burt Reynolds, or your offbeat uncle who says the shit we all think.

2) A hardly registered piece of facial hair championed by Ned Flanders and at least two of your past teachers.

3) The mark of a totally depraved, maybe even dangerous, deviant of society — a total and utter creep.

If you’re wondering, hipster ‘states don’t count since they’re (usually) worn in the name of irony.

There’s something at once spooky and sprezzatura-esque about a moustachioed Dracula, and Italian horror fans of the ‘20s got just that in the cover of *Dracula: L’uomo de la notte* (or “the man of the night”), the Milanese version of Bram Stoker’s seminal epic. (circa 1922)
Image: Sonzogno (publisher) | Wikimedia Commons

But, here’s the thing: As with an insult or a compliment, a moustache is as valuable — or as invaluable — as its source. It’s really as simple as that.

And while a moustache can serve three clear roles, it holds a paradoxical kind of power that flies in the face of roles themselves, one that’s fuelled by its wearer’s will.

And once its worn, a moustache will take said wearer places, whether those places feel familiar or not. Unlike a beard, the follicular equivalent of a mallet to the senses, a moustache calls attention in a different, quieter way. It’s what’s inside a man that’ll determine how his ‘stache will serve him on the outside. For you academics, that was the premise that’ll precede the rest of this piece.

For the sake of transparency, yes, this time of year evokes flashes of creeps and demons, both of the commonly shaven and the rarely moustachioed ilks; Did you get a good look at señor Gomez Addams in the pic up top? Ever seen the late Christopher Lee as the prince of darkness in 1971’s Count Dracula? You know that handlebar was slicker than spilt blood.

And, yes, November’s around the corner, so we think of the state of men’s health and the “mos” we’ll soon sport in its name.

But let’s face it — when that hot air gives way to chilled winds, and when those leaves start to blow, we also think of all that’s creepy. And unfortunately, our western culture has rendered moustachioed creeps — the legit ones that make your blood run cold — so common, it’s almost a trope. Such is the bittersweet fate to which one of the most masculine of facial hairstyles finds itself eternally arrested; This small, hormonal manifestation of manliness can go from a a suburban father’s signature to one of several descriptors read aloud on a grim, nightly news broadcast.

According to this 2017 Psychology Today article, a “Google [image] search of images using ‘creepy guy’ as the keywords” yielded six out of eight shots with moustaches. Google the same thing today and the first 12 pics you’ll find will feature four moustaches, each as award to behold as the next.

But at the same time, an outlier lurks in the dark, one who’s not a creep (not quite, anyway), yet his moustache takes the duality in him — the good and the bad — and twists both into something nebulous… to the point where you’re left wondering about the chap. Is he cool, or not?

If one thing’s for certain with this unappreciated archetype, his moustache looks fucking cool despite all the ambiguity. Think now of Lieutenant Marty Castillo from Miami Vice (which still holds up) or almost every affable, yet somehow unsolvable weirdo played by Johnny Depp.

Like its grandfather, the beard, a moustache holds great power. And that hair maketh a man’s demeanour just as much as the kind on his head, or the shoes on his feet. But again, it’s what’s within a man’s heard that’ll decide what his moustache says to the world.

And like Frankenstein himself, the moustache lives forever in flux, destined to drift back and forth from irrelevance to infamy, from one polar end to the other.

But a moustache cannot be creepy.

There are only creeps who wear them.

And yes, there are those who walk the line between creep and dude.

There are those men, too.

And yes, a moustache can even make a man scary.

But let’s not mix it all up.

Let’s not.

There Are No Creepy Moustaches, Only Creeps Who Wear Them