Fake Mustache Care Tips for the Winter Months

Winter is trying to murder your fake mustache, and it has a three-month head start.

Fake mustache care in winter comes down to keeping it dry, keeping it far from open flames, keeping your nose from leaking on it, and storing it somewhere warmer than your ex’s heart.

Nail that and it survives until spring.

Skip it and your upper lip spends February wearing a caterpillar that lost a bar fight.

• One thin coat of glue. Not a spackle job.
• Stay away from fireplaces, hair dryers, hot tubs, and anyone who says “let’s light some candles.”
• Tissues in every pocket.
• A humidifier in the bedroom, where most of the friction happens anyway.

Your nose is the enemy

The call is coming from inside the face.

Researchers who studied 90 people at a ski resort found 96% of cold-exposed people developed a runny nose, which doctors call skier’s nose and everyone else calls disgusting.

Now look at where a mustache lives. Directly under the drip, like a white leather couch parked beneath a leaky toilet.

Those are worse odds than a bachelor party ending before 2 a.m.

Your winter mustache is getting slimed. The only question is whether it happens in private or on a work Zoom with the regional manager watching in HD.

Dab upward with a tissue. Never wipe sideways, unless you enjoy ripping the whole thing off like a bad waxing appointment in front of your in-laws.

Wet hair and glue get along about as well as a vegan at a pig roast.

Fake mustache care tips for the winter months start with the glue

Spirit gum is 40 to 50 percent ethanol with a flash point of 12°C. That makes it boozier than most office Christmas parties and just as likely to catch fire.

Twelve degrees Celsius is sweater weather.

Your upper lip is wearing a flammable liquid at a temperature where people still order ice cream. Grandma’s birthday cake is now a hazmat situation.

Lighting a date’s cigarette is out. So is getting cozy in front of a crackling fire, which is how a man loses his mustache, both eyebrows, and any shot at second base in one evening.

Let the gum go tacky first. Then press and hold it in place for at least 30 seconds.

Thirty seconds of firm, steady pressure on the upper lip. Think of it as foreplay for your face.

Everybody assumes cold weather calls for extra glue. Wrong.

A thick layer never dries all the way. The mustache slides around like a drunk uncle on an icy driveway, and by the second eggnog it’s hanging off one corner like a broken garage door.

Glue it indoors, too. Spirit gum on frozen skin grabs about as well as a pickup line at a funeral.

Never apply it in a parked car with the heater blasting. Ethanol fumes plus a guy fondling his lip in the rearview mirror is how you end up on the local news.

Heat melts it faster than a shirtless firefighter

Regular synthetic hair will singe or melt under dry heat from blow dryers, flat irons, and curling irons.

Plenty of guys hit a frosty mustache with the hair dryer to “fluff it back up.” They end up with a lip that smells like a Barbie left on the grill.

Steam is the safer way to reshape synthetic fiber. Great news for shower lovers, terrible news for your glue job.

Hot tubs are a double threat. The steam loosens the adhesive, and everybody in that water already has questionable intentions.

Hot cocoa is sneakier.

Sip from the side of the mug like a Victorian widow hiding a secret, or dunk the whole mustache in marshmallow foam and live with the consequences.

Static cling and dry winter air

Furnaces heat cold air without adding a drop of water, which is why static shocks hit harder in winter.

The EPA recommends indoor humidity between 30 and 50 percent. Heat winter air without adding moisture and you blow right past the bottom of that range.

Result: a mustache that’s dry, frizzy, and irritable, exactly like whoever pays the gas bill.

A charged synthetic mustache puffs straight out. It looks like it just spotted something it liked across the room, and nobody at Thanksgiving wants to see that.

Run a humidifier at night. In a pinch, one light swipe with a dryer sheet tames it, but stop there unless you want your girlfriend asking why your face smells like April Fresh.

Can a fake mustache get frostbite?

The mustache can’t. The lip under it absolutely can.

The Mayo Clinic says frostbite most often hits the fingers, toes, ears, cheeks, chin, nose, and penis.

Of everything on that list, the mustache is the only one you can peel off and toss in a drawer. Please do not test the others.

You can get frostbite in 30 minutes or less when the wind chill hits -15°F. That’s shorter than most first dates and still longer than a lot of guys brag about.

Early frostbite starts with tingling and numbness.

Under a glued mustache, a numb lip feels a lot like a normal lip. You won’t notice anything until you try to whistle at a pretty stranger and just spit on her.

Wear a loose scarf over the mustache on brutal days. Yank it tight across a fresh glue job and the mustache stays on the scarf while you walk into brunch looking like a plucked chicken.

Hands off the merchandise

One study found people touch their face about 23 times per hour, and those were medical students trained to know better.

Over a four-hour holiday party, that’s roughly 92 gropes. Your mustache gets more attention than the host’s wife, and she has noticed.

Every twirl tugs the glue.

Every stroke drags in chip dust, eggnog, and whatever was on your cousin’s handshake. Keep your hands in your pockets, which is solid advice for the office party in general.

The lips underneath

Chapped skin under a mustache is chapped skin nobody can see, so nobody warns you until it cracks.

Dermatologists say to skip lip balms with menthol, camphor, lanolin, or fragrance. They also say stop licking your lips, because evaporating spit dries them out worse.

Somebody please tell every guy trying to look seductive at the bar.

Balm goes on at night, after the mustache comes off.

Slap it on under the glue and the whole thing starts sliding south mid-conversation. Nothing kills the mood like facial hair heading for your chin.

Peel it off with a proper remover. Ripping it off dry leaves your lip redder than a teenager caught on the family computer.

Where it sleeps at night

• Comb it gently and let it air dry flat.
• Back in its original packaging or on a clean plastic tray, far from the radiator.
• Not the nightstand drawer. Whatever lives in there doesn’t need the company.
• Somewhere the dog can’t reach, because the dog will eat it, and two days later it’ll reappear on the lawn, and nobody is emotionally ready for that.

Movember is next month

The charity says mustaches have funded more than AUD $1.8 billion in men’s health work, including prostate and testicular cancer, making it the only time a hairy lip has done anything good for the testicles.

Purists call fake mustaches cheating.

Your prostate does not care whether the fundraising is grown or glued.

Plenty of men can’t grow one anyway. Puberty took one look at their upper lip, shrugged, and put all the hair on their back.

Tonight, buy a bottle of remover and a cheap humidifier. Tomorrow, glue one thin coat, hold it thirty seconds, and stay an arm’s length from anything on fire, including your cousin’s new girlfriend.