Hitler Style

October 15, 2007 - 3:30 PM by Stephanie

If you’re up for some feature reading, amble on over to Vanity Fair online and check out Rich Cohen’s feature Becoming Adolf.

It’s all about the history of Hitler’s Toothbrush mustache. How he made it famous, when the mustache came “onto the scene” and the two men who made it most famous: Adolf and Charlie Chaplin.

Two excerpts:

As for the Toothbrush mustache, it did not only die with the Führer—it was embalmed with him. It was his essence, and so it has been relegated to the black book of history.

This is the part where I am supposed to explain just why I decided to write this story now. I might talk about the re-emergence of facial hair on the world stage, or the rise of the “new anti-Semitism,” or Holocaust denial in Iran, but, the fact is, my interest in the Hitler mustache never started and never ends. It is always. If you’re a Jew, the Hitler mustache exists in the eternal present. I grew it for the same reason Richard Pryor said the word “nigger.” I wanted to defuse it. I wanted to own it. I wanted to reclaim it for America and for the Jews. My name is Rich Cohen, and I wear a Hitler mustache.

and…

In the street, some people looked at me, but most looked away. A few people said things after I passed. One man gave me a kind of Heil, but it was lackadaisical, and I am fairly certain he was being ironic. (People can be so mean!) Even friends said nothing until I asked, or else acted embarrassed for me. A woman said, “I think you were more handsome without the mustache.” I had been worried someone might try to hurt me. I imagined toughs from the Jewish Defense League attacking with throwing stars—Jewish throwing stars! But it turns out, when you shave like Hitler, you follow the same rule you follow with bees: They’re more scared of you than you are of them. Because either you really are Hitler, or you’re a nut. So people do with little Hitlers what people always do with lunatics in New York, the harmless or dangerous—they ignore, they avert, they move away. If you want to fly coach without being hassled, grow a Toothbrush mustache.

Worth a read. Thanks, Melinda!

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