17. The Great French Mustache Strike
The stock image that comes to many people’s minds when picturing 19th and early 20th century Frenchmen usually involves a mustache. However, one group of Frenchmen that went smooth-shaven during that era were domestic servants and waiters. For whatever reason, the French bourgeoisie and upper classes of the day wanted to mark off those “menials”, and so deprived them, as a condition of employment, of the right to sport a mustache. “Sentenced to forced shaving“, was how a contemporary newspaper put it.
That came to be seen as degrading and intolerable by the ‘stache-less, so, being French, they went on strike. In 1907, high-end waiters in Paris and the rest of France 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 finally prevailed, and French waiters won the right to a mustache.