Magnificent moustaches, bold beards and masterful muttonchops, it's all here in Jo's Mo Show.
One of the versions of thick, macho moustache strongly associated in the Australian visual lexicon with sportsmen of the 1970s and 80s.
It’s curious that one of the writers most associated with the toughness of Australian bush life was himself not an exponent of the matted, rugged bushman sort of beard.
Sport was a potent means by which, in the lead up to Federation, Australians began to assert a sense of themselves as youthful, manly and athletic – the products of an equally young and virile new nation.
Like the Barkly or the Hooker, the Greenwood is an eccentric facial hair mode that seems to have largely avoided being repurposed in contemporary times.
According to an 1981 Australian Women’s Weekly profile of fast bowler Dennis Lillee, a moustache was a ‘compulsory’ accessory for sportsmen.
Beards were generally been out for British military men in the 1800s: civilians might have worn them as badges of masculinity, but in the army they were perhaps a bit too close to indiscipline for comfort.
Being hirsute was the go in the 1850s, 60s and 70s; but around about the 1880s the beard began to wane.
Otherwise known as the ‘Pool Cleaner’ or the ‘Porn Star’ moustache.
The image of a hairy swag-wielding bushman might be one popularly associated with Australia in the late nineteenth century.
A handsome devil of a mo; sleek; natty; perfectly manicured; alternately rakish and debonair, wicked and agreeable.
This exhibition illustrates changes in beards, moustaches and sideburns from the 1780s to the 1980s.
This exhibition illustrates changes in beards, moustaches and sideburns from the 1780s to the 1980s.
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