When Tahvo Simonson was 15, he found a small lump and was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
“Honestly, it was a really shitty time when I was 15, but I kind of pushed through it,” he said. “Me coping with it was just kind of being [laissez-faire] about the whole thing.”
Now 21, Simonson is cancer-free and working as an electrical apprentice in British Columbia. Although Simonson’s story has a happy ending, not all men survive these types of cancer. He said it all comes down to being proactive about your health.
“Statistically, men do not check their prostate or their testicles so if I hadn’t have caught the tumour when I did, it could have ended very differently,” he said.
Simonson said he grows a moustache during November to spread awareness, but this is the first year he has decided to fundraise for the Movember campaign.
“I actually broke my arm six weeks ago and I’ve been off work . . . and I was honestly really bored so I needed something to spend my time on. So I thought something charitable would fill that void,” he said.
HELPFUL HANDLEBARS
The Movember Foundation was born in 2003 after its Australian co-founders Travis Garone and Luke Slattery dreamt up the idea over drinks in Melbourne, according to the foundation’s official website. That year, they challenged 30 of their friends to grow moustaches and make facial hair trendy again.
By the time the foundation’s 2014 campaign rolled around, “mo bros” and “mo sistas”—also known as Movember participants—had raised a total of $677 million for 832 men’s health projects.
According to the Movember Foundation’s website, donations invest in four different areas that affect men’s health: prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health, and physical activity. They fund various initiatives in each of these areas, including awareness, education, support programs, and other projects.
With the success of the campaign, health care professionals and researchers have jumped on the bandwagon, receiving funding for their work with every helping handlebar pledging money to the cause.
Hayley Ferguson, co-organizer of the annual Relay for Life Movember campaign at Carleton, has seen similar success with their photo booth campaign that photographs students’ moustache progress weekly on campus.
“I think it has been really successful as the years have gone on,” she said. “Usually people have a clean shaven face and all of a sudden they have a bushy beard and people ask a lot of questions about it.”
In 2014, the Carleton campaigns raised $25,000, which they split between Relay for Life and the Movember Foundation.
THE RAZOR-THIN LINE
Despite its success, some critics have called the Movember campaign “slacktivism.”
The Oxford Dictionary defines slacktivism as “actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement.”
Kerry Duncan, a University of Ottawa (U of O) graduate, published a journal article in U of O’s undergraduate philosophy journal, AFFECTUS, in 2014 about the hegemonic limitations of the Movember campaign. She said she doesn’t think the campaign does enough.
“I don’t think I would call it slacktivism, but I question if it’s even activism,” she said.
Duncan said she worries campaigns such as Movember end the conversation on awareness by tying the condition to the campaign.
She said she thinks people who critique campaigns are often assumed to not support cancer research.
“[That] is really short-sighted,” she said. “There’s no deeper conversation on how it affects people’s lives.”
Ferguson said she does not think Movember is an excuse to save money on razor blades, and that Carleton’s Movember campaign ensures that participants raise awareness and funds.
“A lot of people think that it just means you don’t shave your face for November, but there are guys who style their faces,” she said. “So if they raise x amount of dollars for the example, then they will do handlebars or shave it certain ways.”
In addition to growing a wicked ‘stache, Ferguson said students on campus have to create a fundraising account on the Movember Foundation website to take part in the end-of-the-month Shave Off.
“The more money you raise, the more they’ll shave off their face and their head,” she said.
Simonson said he does not think the Movember campaign is slacktivism because it takes significant time and effort to participate.
“Since its start 11 years ago, the Movember movement has raised $600 million worldwide. I’m not sure how you raise $600 million with ‘little time or effort,’ but if you figure it out, let me know,” Simonson said. “I exercise everyday—usually more than an hour—because of my pledge, and I speak with people every day about Movember and why I am doing it.”
MARKETING THE MUTTON CHOPS
Duncan said part of the problem comes from the Movember platform, which she said she thinks only focuses on the experiences of white heterosexual men.
“By excluding so many people’s experiences and voices in your imagery, you’re saying those experiences don’t exist,” she said.
Duncan said this exclusion stems from the foundation’s branding.
“For example, if you’re a ‘mo bro,’ you’re expected to grow a moustache, you’re expected to be able to raise money, you’re expected to have a prostate, you’re expected to have a certain amount of strength and not be a person struggling with cancer,” she said.
Duncan said this stereotype of a “true man” leaves out trans women and ethnic minorities who have greater risks associated with prostate and testicular cancers.
For example, black men are twice as likely to develop and die from male cancers, according to The McGill Daily. In that same article, author Ralph Haddad said trans women are excluded from the campaign, which targets only its “market audience,”—white heterosexual men—in its education platform.
“The campaign itself started with four white guys in Australia being like, ‘we want to grow moustaches for fun,’ ” Duncan said. “Clearly what they’re saying right now is they want specific types of men and specific types of women to participate.”
Duncan said this exclusion is most noticeable in the treatment of “mo sistas” within the movement. She made reference to a group of tweets that called women “gross” who decided to not shave in solidarity.
“It’s a continuation of the idea that women should not have hair,” she said. “We all have hair on our bodies.”
She said this year’s campaign shows no improvement in eliminating stereotypical understandings of gender.
“This year focuses on old people being healthy and their representation of a “mo sista” is a young white woman who is completely hairless,” she said. “I’m . . . sitting here and wondering, did they photoshop her arm hair out? She’s a brunette, we have arm hair.”
Simonson said he thinks the Movember community is very supportive and allows many people to participate in something that focuses an issue that isn’t talked about that often.
“There are many issues that only affect men, or disproportionately affect men, such as suicide rates and prostate cancer, and I think having a moustache for one month out of the year gives me a lighter, less serious way to broach these very serious topics with people,” Simonson said. “The more everyone educates themselves on these issues the less scary they become . . . [education] takes away the fear of the unknown.”
Simonson said he thinks the Movember campaign is important because it raises awareness and makes people realize that prostate cancer could happen to anyone.
“As I learned at a young age, it can’t always be the other guy. Eventually something is going to happen to you or someone close to you,” Simonson said.
SCREENING AND SIDEBURNS
Ferguson said this issue of stereotyping is problematic and the Carleton campaign organizers are taking steps to make the campaign more inclusive across the board.
“We try to include everyone,” she said. “Every year, we try to take critiques like that and learn how you feel about that and change our choices so that at Carleton, Movember can become a bigger thing.”
She said the easiest way to do this is by focusing on education, because participating in the campaign is not the only way to beat cancer.
“What we try to do is enhance the statistics and fun facts that we can tell everybody,” she said.
By promoting screening, Ferguson said this will allow their campaign to focus on saving the person, which she said is far more important than fuzzy upper lips and penises. She said campaigners need to shift their focus back to the importance of screening.
“If [people] see one person growing a moustache, they don’t think anything beyond what it has grown into,” she said.
Ferguson said this is especially important because of misconceptions surrounding male cancers. She said many men think these cancers only happen in older people. This may be true for prostate cancer, which affects men 45 and over, but in the case of testicular cancer, those diagnosed are much younger.
“Testicular cancer is most prevalent in men ages 15 to 45,” she said.
These sorts of facts are not lost on cancer survivors like Simonson. His goal this year is to encourage men to use Movember as an excuse to get their prostate screened.
“It’s really important I think that men check themselves regularly,” he said. ‘It’s not like it’s a hard thing to do. You’re down there already, and it’s not a big deal to feel yourself.”
