Two decades on, the public health approach to masculinity championed by Movember remains as crucial as ever in the age of masculinity influencing and the ‘manosphere’, writes Herald columnist Mark McGeoghegan

A week from now, hundreds of thousands of men will clean-shave for the last time for a month and start growing a moustache for Movember. What started as a group of 30 Australian men trying to bring back the moustache in 2003 has since grown into the world’s biggest men’s health charity and a movement of over six million fundraisers over the course of two decades, funding over a thousand men’s health projects.

In a typically Australian and stereotypically male fashion, Movember took banter as an entry point to tackling some of the most impactful health challenges facing men today. There’s the obvious, like research into prostate and testicular cancer, or playing a pivotal role in lobbying for the world’s first men’s health strategy, announced last year by Sir Keir Starmer. But there’s also the less obvious, including a recent study exploring young men’s digital lives.

Much has been made in recent years of the impact of the ‘manosphere’ on young men and the implications for society. The crime drama Adolescence, name-checked by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, drew on some of the darker corners of the masculinity influencer ecosystem to inspire its story of a teenage boy who murders a classmate who rejected him, citing concepts that one would only otherwise have come across perusing online messaging boards like 4chan.

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