Movember Is Coming. Can We Talk About the Kind of Men's Health Nobody Posts About?

Photo by Shoeib Abolhassani on Unsplash

Every November, the mustaches appear.

Some are magnificent. Some look like a dare gone wrong. All of them are, in theory, for a good cause: Movember raises real money and real awareness for prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men's mental health. I respect that. Genuinely.

But I also notice something. Growing a mustache is about the one form of self-care that requires zero vulnerability. Nobody has to talk about anything. Nobody has to admit anything. You just stop shaving and accept compliments from strangers. It's the only health campaign where the main side effect is a slightly itchy upper lip.

And look — if your mustache gets one man to book the doctor's appointment he's been avoiding, it did its job. But since we're talking about men's health anyway, can I bring up the part nobody puts on a poster?

A lot of men are starving for touch, and almost none of them will say so out loud.

I see it constantly in my work. Men who are doing fine on paper — job, friends, maybe a partner, definitely a group chat — who flinch the first time someone puts a hand on their shoulder and means it. Not because anything is wrong with them. Because somewhere along the way, they learned the script: men don't need comfort, don't ask for gentleness, and definitely don't admit that being held sounds nice.

So they don't. They carry it. And it shows up as the stuff we do talk about in November: the low-grade depression nobody names, the irritability that isn't really about traffic, the loneliness inside a life that looks full.

Here's what I want to say plainly, the way I'd say it to a friend: being touched — safely, consensually, without an agenda — is health. Not a luxury. Not a reward you earn after fixing everything else. Health.

That's not just my opinion as a guy who does this for a living. It's the throughline of eight years of sessions: men walk in braced for something and walk out softer. Shoulders drop. Breathing changes. Sometimes somebody laughs at how good it feels to just... be held for a minute, like it's a ridiculous thing to have been missing. It isn't ridiculous. It's human.

So here's my Movember proposal, and it costs nothing:

Check the boxes that are easy to skip. Book the physical. Do the self-exam your doctor keeps mentioning. Text the friend you've been meaning to text — the one who's been quiet lately, or the one you've been quiet with.

And notice what your body is actually asking for. Not the performance of wellness. Not the mustache (though keep the mustache — some of you look great). The real thing underneath: rest, contact, someone in your corner who isn't grading you.

If part of what you're noticing is that you don't remember the last time you were touched kindly, with no strings and no performance — that's information, not a flaw. It's also, not coincidentally, what I do. Massage, cuddle therapy, sacred intimacy, coaching: different doors into the same room, which is a man allowed to receive.

You don't need Movember's permission to take care of yourself. But since the whole month is about men's health anyway, consider this your nudge from a guy whose entire job is the part of the conversation we're still skipping.

Take care of the mustache. Take care of the man under it, too.

— Trevor

P.S. If you know a man who needs to hear this, send it to him. He probably won't ask for help first. Most of us don't.