Don't Shave It Off

Movember is an annual campaign taking place in November, during which men grow their

moustaches as a means of raising awareness for men’s mental health, as well as other issues

regarding men’s overall health including prostate cancer and testicular cancer (Ventresca,

2016).

The word “Movember” itself is a combination of the words “November” and “Mo” , which is an abbreviation of the word “moustache” in Australian slang (Ventresca, 2016; Movember Canada 2020a; Webb, 2013; Paine, Smith, 2015). Men participating in this campaign started to be referred to as “Mo Bros” and women, “Mo Sistas” (Paine, Smith, 2015). Movember was brought to life in Australia by Adam Gorone and his co-founders in 2003 and by 2005 had already raised $1.2 million AUD (Paine, Smith, 2015).

Ever since then the campaign has continued to do lots of good raising funds for men suffering with prostate cancer, all around the globe, particularly in Canada (Bitti, Mary Teresa, 2011). Many large organisations have also joined this movement and accepted funds raised by it such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA)(Paine, Smith, 2015), and the Canadian Prostate Cancer Genome Network (CPC GENE)(Bitti, Mary Teresa, 2011). A lot of the fund money goes into research and clinician scientist awards, which are the driving forces getting research done (Bitti, Mary Teresa, 2011).

The second most common cause of death for both men and women is cancer according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and in the case of men the most popular form is prostate cancer (Paine, Smith, 2015) which goes to show how much research that is being funded by the Movember campaign is contributing to the aid of men’s health.

To conclude Movember is a campaign that started off locally, in Melbourne, by one man and his mate in 2003 and now, over 20 years later the foundation has become international (Paine, Smith, 2015), and is raising millions all around the world that is all being put into research on combatting men’s health issues.