The ObserverGender This article is more than 20 years old

Who says women can't be sexy with a five o'clock shadow?

This article is more than 20 years old

Hands up those of you who have been caught answering the door to the postman with crème bleach still clinging to your upper lip? When it comes to body issues, the female moustache is still a major taboo. Anyone with the faintest smudge of down spends long nights locked in the bathroom bleaching, waxing, shaving, threading - you name it - simply to maintain that elusive feminine mystique.

Even in the twenty-first century, moustache etiquette is a delicate thing. It's a secret that even the closest women friends keep from each other. Instead, we spend a fortune (the British women's hair-removal market is worth more than £30 million a year) perpetuating the myth that we're smooth, hairless creatures.

We're all serial defoliators now. When a friend was involved in a minor car accident, she had her microwavable moustache wax couriered to the hospital. I was let into the secret only in case she lapsed into a coma and needed my services on the defoliation front.

Nobody, but nobody, celebrates the female moustache. Which is strange, really, when well-trimmed body hair has become a minor art form. In the 1970s, feminists were much concerned with the politics of shaving, but now hair is regarded as part fashion accessory, part sexual display.

First, there was Hollywood's love affair with the Brazilian wax, then came news that a Knightsbridge salon had perfected the 'Tiffany' - trimming an area of pubic hair to form the shape of a small box. And who can forget the delicious scandal earlier this year when Vogue ran a Gucci advert featuring supermodel Carmen Kass pinned against the wall, revealing the trademark G logo shaved out of her pubic hair (a novel form of G-spot)?

So why can't we be more playful with the female moustache? Grow the hair a little more perhaps and have it braided, try a perm or even wax and sculpt it into a Salvador Dali? Heavens, why can't we 'out' the whole issue? After all, the downy upper lip is the natural birthright of a whole host of raven-haired beauties (yes, we mean you, Catherine Zeta, Nigella and Martine). But while we're happy to celebrate raven tresses, Mediterranean colouring and natural brows, no one wants to take on the humble moustache. Ladies, it's just the flipside of brunette beauty.

We need more style icons. There's Patti Smith, of course, who makes no apology for a dark upper lip, and Frida Kahlo, who exaggerated her mono brow and delicate lady tache (sportingly recreated by Salma Hayek in her film biopic of the Mexican artist last year). Lesbian drag queens are pretty good at fashioning a 'faux' moustache from crepe paper. But it's noticeable that male artists just won't go there. Even the surrealists, famous for blurring body parts, drew the line at the female moustache.

There are few hirsute heroines in literature. So thank heavens for Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins who created a mustachioed heroine for The Woman in White . Marian Halcombe may look unconven tional ('the lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache'), but she is brave, sparky and fiercely intelligent. She also inspires the extracurricular passion of the novel's villain, Count Fosco, which can't be all bad.

But when it comes to cinema, the moustache is still taboo. Obsessed with female beauty, the camera lingers on breasts, thighs, even (whisper it) a hint of cellulite. But a downy upper lip is a transgression too far, unless, of course, you count Helena Bonham Carter in Planet of the Apes (not exactly a helpful working model). Don't you just long for a moment when the hero bursts through the bathroom door, to find his beloved sporting a semi-circle of white foam on her upper lip, and insists: 'Darling, you look gorgeous'?

Which is why the quirky new Irish film Intermission, starring Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy and Shirley Henderson, is groundbreaking. In the film, Henderson plays a jilted fiancée who lets herself go to the extent that she doesn't care about personal grooming. For two-thirds of the film, she sports a moustache of shame - an emblem that she has Given Up On Men.

For an actress in her thirties, it's a very brave move. Henderson's moustache sits there, a great bristly beetly thing, obscuring her delicate beauty. To your shame, you find yourself willing her to bleach or exfoliate it. Anything to spare the relentless gaze of the camera. But then something magical happens - you stop caring. The moustache simply becomes another character trait. And when Henderson finally gets a new admirer, far from rejecting her 'dark shadow', he suggests a box of Jolene crème bleach. Forget Milk Tray, that's the man I'm letting through my window.

· Intermission is released on 28 November

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