Movember’s bearded lady

Think it’s only men participating in Movember? Think again. The first Australian woman to publicly participate in the month long men’s health event, Queenslander Losa Morrison (pictured below), decided to show her support for men’s depression and mental illness awareness by shining a light on what is usually seen to be a fairly embarrassing problem for women.

Morrison, who defines herself as a “femme” lesbian, decided that instead of undertaking her usual ritual of waxing and bleaching, she would embrace her facial hair and sport a goatee during Movember.

“I felt that there is a connection between women not wanting to discuss facial hair issues and men not wanting to admit mental health issues. Just as women feel they lose their femininity by confessing they have facial hair issues, I think men feel emasculated if they were to confess that they have prostate cancer or mental health issues,” Morrsion told the Star Observer.

The chance for Morrison to ‘own’ what many men and women perceive to be an embarrassing problem has been a very proud experience for her.

You can donate to her campaign here.

“I felt very different to other women. Apart from my mum, I had never met anyone else who could do it. I’ve always felt I needed to hide it, even from my partner,” she said.

Morrison hopes that her campaign, which is one of the country’s top earners, will also bring attention to the issues that some women face and the extreme measures some will go through to just ‘fit in’.

She said she was also inspired by her father, who was diagnosed with depression earlier this year.

“I think there are some people out there who just need to be reminded that everyone is different. There is no normal way to be and we need to remind each other of this. Growing my facial hair out is my way of letting other women know that they needn’t feel weird about having that issue.”

Morrison’s campaign has already attracted an incredible amount of attention from mainstream media, something she could never have imagined.

“It has been amazing! I feel I’ve had a bigger response from mainstream than from the gay community but this is probably just because those who are different are more accepted by the gay community and it isn’t really news that a woman has a beard.”