Presidents from Grant (elected in 1869) to Taft (who departed in 1914) sported the ‘stache, including Grover Cleveland (both times). “Suddenly, they’re working under bosses in offices and factories.” At the same time, soldiers were coming back from the Crimean war sporting mustaches, which were associated with particular regiments, and it became a popular expression of extreme masculinity (alongside many bogus health claims, like that they’d keep disease from getting up your nose). Alun Whitey, another facial hair expert and lecturer in history at the University of Exeter. “For Victorian men, their role is out among nature, master of their domains,” says Dr. It’s why mustaches raged in with the modern age: Industrialization, it seems, struck some as quite emasculating. Throughout their history, men and their mustaches have often met over masculinity, or the loss thereof.
