From The Sunday Read Archives: ‘My Mustache, My Self’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

During months of pandemic isolation, Wesley Morris, a critic at large for The New York Times, decided to grow a mustache. The reviews were mixed and predictable. He heard it described as “porny” and “creepy,” as well as “rugged” and “extra gay.” It was a comment on a group call, however, that gave him pause. Someone noted that his mustache made him look like a lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P.’s legal defense fund. “It was said as a winking correction and an earnest clarification — Y’all, this is what it is,” Wesley said. “The call moved on, but I didn’t. That is what it is: one of the sweetest, truest things anybody had said about me in a long time.” On today’s episode of The Sunday Read, Wesley Morris’s story about Blackness and the symbolic power of the mustache.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Wesley Morris. I am a critic at the New York Times and I wrote an essay about my mustache.
0:12.4	I grew this thing the way a lot of people did a lot of things for the first time or, you know,
0:17.8	out of boredom or curiosity during this pandemic to stave off the misery outside our windows
0:24.3	and front doors. I decided with my friend Brian to grow a mustache and so we get on the phone one
0:33.2	day we do a zoom call and he reveals his and it's not good by his own admission. It is a handlebar
0:42.0	mustache not his thing and mine is a little more traditional. It is a short sharp thing that we both
0:49.6	agreed looked pretty good and he got rid of his. I decided to keep mine and it felt to me like
0:58.4	the most right thing I had done with my face in my entire adult life. I don't really know why I
1:06.9	kept it except it was speaking to me and I was trying to hear what it was saying and one day
1:15.4	I was on a different call with a different friend, my friend Nikita and she kind of put the whole
1:23.1	thing in perspective for me and it cracked my life open. I don't think I'm going to be the same person
1:30.8	after that and it is entirely connected to what this thing on my face makes me feel and connects me to.
1:38.8	In many ways I want to think Brian for making us go on this dare and I want to thank my friend
1:47.4	Nikita for saying what she said to make me think about my whole life. I'm getting a little emotional
1:52.6	just thinking about that but yeah I wanted to try to write it through and what you're about to hear
2:00.4	is the result. Here is my essay My Mustache Read by Dion Graham.
2:17.6	Like a lot of men in pursuit of novelty and amusement during these months of isolation
2:22.3	I grew a mustache. The reviews were predictably mixed and predictably predictable.
2:27.8	Pornie? Yes? Creepy? Obviously. 70s? True? The 18 and 1970s? On some video calls I heard
2:40.3	rugged and extra gay. Someone I love called me Zaddy. Children were harsh. My 11 year old nephew told
2:49.0	his minecraft friends that his uncle has this mustache. The midgame discussed was audible through his
2:56.0	head said. In August I spent two weeks with my niece who's seven. She would rise each morning
	...

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