10. The Mustache Strike
Picturing nineteenth and early twentieth century Frenchmen often conjures up a face with a mustache. However, one group of Frenchmen that went smooth-shaven back then were domestic servants and waiters. The era’s bourgeoisie and upper classes wanted to mark off those “menials”, so as a condition of employment they deprived them of the right to sport a mustache. “Sentenced to forced shaving“, was how a contemporary newspaper put it.
That eventually came to be seen as degrading and intolerable by the ‘stache-less. Being French, they went on strike. In 1907, high-end waiters in Paris and the rest of France laid down their trays and aprons, and went on strike to demand higher wages, fewer working hours, and the right to grow a mustache just like other Frenchmen. The strike captivated the country, and forced a reckoning with the classist injustice under its nose. After two weeks, the strikers prevailed, and French waiters won the right to a mustache.
