RAZORS will get an extra workout tomorrow morning as 120,000 ''mo bros'' around Australia shave their moustaches off.
Mo bros have been growing a moustache since the first day of ''Movember'' to raise money for men's health issues. Mo bro Brendan Sloane, a film producer best known to many Canberrans as ''the Magnet Mart man'', likened growing a moustache to having a small dead animal on his face. ''It's dirty, it's itchy and small children seem to run at the sight of it but it's a great cause,'' he said.
Quinten Brown, the owner of Flames Fitness, a gym which burned down in September and now operates out of temporary premises in Mitchell, organised about 20 trainers and members to become mo bros.
''My wife suggested it. We had just done a fundraiser for the rural fire brigade and she said, why don't we Movember? It's just a good bit of fun,'' Mr Brown said.
During the week participants attended gala parties for the chance to be selected Man of Movember. Women were able to support men as ''mo sisters''.
It's been four years since the first official Movember campaign rescued the hairy upper lip from the dustbin of '70s fashion. One of Movember's founders, Luke Slattery, recalled the conversation that inspired the now international campaign.
''We were having a discussion about growing up in the '70s and '80s, and how everything in fashion from that period was coming back.
''We wondered what happened to the moustache, and how funny it would be if we were all sitting around with moustaches,'' he said.
Very funny indeed, to judge by the tone of the Movember campaign. Few Australian men, it seems or women can take the moustache seriously.
But for all the laughs, the campaign's aims are deadly serious. Slattery and his co-founders, inspired by the campaigns women ran to promote the breast cancer issues, wanted to find a way to promote men's health issues. They researched men's health issues and found two they felt deserved greater exposure: prostate cancer and depression.
Slattery says the moustache provided an ideal way of getting men, notoriously shy about discussing health issues, to do just that. ''It became a catalyst for conversation, and therefore awareness.''
The Movember campaign has become phenomenally successful, spreading not just around Australia but also to New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Britain and Spain.
MrSlattery said last year Movember raised $16 million. Administration costs accounted for about 10 per cent of the money raised.
In Australia Movember directs the net profits to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue, which addresses depression-related issues.
Beyondblue chief executive Leonie Young said it was ''fantastic'' to be one of the beneficiaries of the funds raised by the campaign. She said although more women than men suffered from depression, men were used to thinking of health issues in purely physical terms and were slow to consult a doctor.