Movember is finally here!

Movember has launched. After pink everything, including gloves and cleats on my purple clad Vikings (killer outfit, guys), us men have unleashed a month of pent up, anxious but hopeful, “us too!” energy with a massive marketing, grassroots, and corporate effort that would knock over the thickest of pink-and-purple offensive linemen.

 Oh wait. Not really.

 I wonder, year after year, why men get the shaft on this “health awareness” train. Did we unwisely pick November after all the everyone's leftover annual donation budget was spent on pink cookies? Do men just plain suck at organizing our shit in time (again this year)? Do we lack a color (and a massive corporate effort) to shock everyone into a frenzy of donations and awareness?

 Honestly I think it's a mix of all of this and more. But one of the biggest being the lack of a color, and the corporate effort. If my memory serves me right, in the 90s or 2000s, the Susan G Komen foundation went HAM on pinkifying everything from car magnates to lemonade. This pink thing really took off and grew legs of it's own… in a bad way. Less than reputable profiteers made pink anything and labeled it as “breast cancer awareness,” so, regardless of where profits went (said profiteers pockets), they were still raising “awareness” by selling some cheap pink garbage, which was now everywhere. That omnipresence of this jow classic pink, regardless of the level of good being done (& we’ll just skip the whole discussion about non profit overhead at this point), i think really did create acute awareness throughout the land. Everyone from your local gas station to massive global brands got on board. And now, which I've made painfully clear I'm not a fan of, to this day, we have to watch little pink distractions bounce around the football field to support awareness.

 Yet. Here we are. Movember. No shave November. Men's frickin health month. And we don't have blue, green, neon yellow, or chartreuse accessories adorning every shop, street corner, or coffee cup. I think Matt Lauer grows his face fuzz out, but it's not mentioned on every news channel every hour. Yes, there's the Movember foundation. But their mix of bro humor and a mustache growing contest feels like it doesn't fit in the board room like the words “Susan G Komen.” How does a national broadcast anything take a mustache logo seriously enough to throw it up next to campbells soup and nationwide insurance? And how do I go to my in laws for thanksgiving with a ratty half-grown mustache and say “hey you guys, remember to take the balls, doctors appointments, and mental health of all men seriously. Oh yeah and donate to the cause.”

 Don't get me wrong. Breast cancer needs to be stamped out. We need to advance medical progress to help the millions of women (and men) who have to go through that and may die from it. It's affected several women very close to me including my mom. But it's time men find a way to create a focus, a name, and a color to rally the world to double down after a month of breast cancer awareness, and finally give a damn about the millions of men dying too young.

-Justin