Is it just me or has Sydney gone Movember crazy?
Moustaches have taken over the Parish. I can’t move without tripping over a moustache. Some truly horrible facial hair is being grown for a great cause.
The Movember website says:
Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men's health issues, specifically prostate cancer and depression in men.
Mo Bros, supported by their Mo Sistas, start Movember (November 1st) clean shaven and then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache. During Movember, each Mo Bro effectively becomes a walking billboard for men's health and, via their Mo, raises essential funds and awareness for Movember's men's health partners - The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. At the end of Movember, a series of Gala Partés are held to thank Mo Bros and Sistas for their support and fund raising efforts.
The idea for Movember came about in 2003 when a few mates were having a beer in a small bar in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Inspired by the women's health movement, it was recognized that men were lacking a way to engage and actively involve themselves in their own health. During a conversation about fashion and past trends, the idea came up to bring the moustache back for one month, and in doing so, have some fun, raise a small amount of money and hopefully encourage men to talk about their health with each other.
Since this time, Movember has continued to grow each year, both in terms of participation numbers and funds raised. In its first year, 30 Mo Bros took part in Movember and last year, in Australia alone, 125,000 Mo Bro and Sistas got on board, raising more than $8million for each of Movember's men's health partners.
Why does this cultural phenomena work so well?
- Movember is a brilliant piece of cultural creation. There are other charity days and months but this was something new that didn’t exist before. Those few mates in the Fitzroy pub found a way to do what seemed impossible - involve men in raising the profile of mens health issues
- Movember is simple, easily explained, limited in time commitment, and able to grow. It has made good use of technology, media and social media.
- It deals with something deadly serious in a fun and engaging blokey and competitive way. Earnest lectures on prostate cancer would never have achieved the same result.
I’ve been noticing pieces of cultural creation like Movember since reading Andy Crouch’s very stimulating Culture Making: Recovering Our Christian Calling. He reckons Christians typically aren’t good at making culture:
I wonder what we Christians are known for in the world outside our churches? Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture? I’m afraid so. Why aren’t we known as cultivators - people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done? Why aren’t we known as creators - people who dare to think and to do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful? ...People who consider themselves as stewards of culture - guardians of what is best in aneighbourhood, an institution or a field of cultural practice - gain the respect of their peers. Even more so, those who go beyond being mere custodians to creating new cultural goods are the ones who have the world’s attention. Indeed, those who have cultivated and created are precisely the ones who have the legitimacy to condemn, whose denunications, rare and carefully chosen, carry outsize weight. (p97-98)
As our churches try to not just grow - but to turn outwards, the issue of cultural engagement is a pressing one. How is it that we will eat, shop, build, travel, do family and school? As we face these and a thousand other issues - how do we relate to the culture? Crouch’s book may well chart a new course in his argument that we can be makers of culture.
Not everyone will create a Movember. But we must all make something of this world God has placed us in.
