It’s just not right. We all know Dale Earnhardt was one of the few men who could truly pull off a mustache, and he was known for that signature facial hair, having a mustache for most of his career and life, and it’s obviously just part of what made him so intimidating, if you will… he came by the nickname honest.
And in an interview with ESPN back in 2015, Steve Ellsworth, Dale Sr.’s longtime barber, gave the public some insight into just how particular The Intimidator was about how it looked. And I think he was smart to do so, especially from a business perspective, because it added so much mystique around him and was so bad***.
Ellsworth started cutting Sr.’s hair in the early 80’s, and said that once he finally talked his client into letting him trim the mustache, Sr. was afraid his longtime sponsor Wrangler wouldn’t approve:
“I was intimidated by the Intimidator, to say the least. The first three times I cut his hair, I couldn’t touch the mustache. He liked that big bushy mustache. I finally talked him into to it, and he said, ‘Oh Lord! Wrangler’s gonna fire me!’”
And after that, Ellsworth thought he might never come back… but he did, and because of Sr.’s insanely busy schedule, he’d come in at 5:30AM (with an egg sandwich, of course), just to fit it all in. Eventually, they both realized that was a really horrific time to be getting a haircut, and Ellsworth started going into the DEI shop to do it at much more reasonable hours.
And even though it’s hard for most of us to imagine Dale Sr. without that iconic mustache, he actually did shave it off once or twice. In a 1999 interview with the Greensboro News & Record, Sr. recalled a snorkeling trip with Michael Waltrip, where he was having problems getting the mask to stay on correctly. It wouldn’t seal above his mouth because of the mustache, and water rushed in when he would go under the surface, so he really only had one choice.
He hopped up on the boat, and shaved it right the and there:
“Man, I was just drowning. I got up on the boat and shaved. Then I could go down about 10-12 feet and not drown. I don’t think it’ll affect any of my racing skills. It didn’t in ’82, anyway. We still won races.”
Like he mentioned, when he shaved it ahead of the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1999, it was just the second time he’d ever done it, the first being back in 1982. But of course, he knew it wouldn’t affect his racing skills, and he made sure to mention that it was already growing back too… classic:
“I don’t think it will affect my racing skills… it’s growing back as we speak.”
And a series of photos of him clean-shaven recently resurfaced on Instagram, and I just can’t get over how odd it looks. He still looks handsome, but something about this just feels… wrong.
ESPN reporter Ryan McGee left an insightful comment on the viral post, saying that he was at a Brickyard event that week and saw a women visibly upset over seeing Sr. like that, and she screamed out “No, Dale! NO!” over it:
“We were doing rpm2night from the Brickyard that week. When he got to the track, fans were all up against the fence watching drivers walk into Gasoline Alley and this one poor woman, when she saw him sans mustache she started crying and screamed over and over ‘No, Dale! NO!’
It was like the videos you see now of kids freaking out when they their Dad without a beard for the first time.”
Honestly, I get it… this is jarring. I feel like I’m not supposed to see him like this:
Tons of fans were shocked to see the photos, with many joking that they felt like they were seeing something they shouldn’t be:
“The mustache was back to its normal appearance the day after he shaved, that’s how fast he was.”
“Who is that guy?”
“He also had to shave it after the wreck at Talladega when Elliott’s car flipped on top of his and it got a little singed from fire.”
“He looks like if I tried to draw him from memory.”
“Thought this was a late April fool’s photoshop at first.”
“He just ain’t the Intimidator without the mustache.”
“There are men whose mustache are part of their identity, when they shave it it just looks weird.”
“This feels like when I was a little kid and my dad shaved his mustache for the first time and I couldn’t figure out the words for what was wrong.”
“I feel like I’m not supposed to see this.”
“It thought this was a cursed AI edit or something at first.”
“Therapist: ‘No mustache Dale isn’t real and it can’t hurt you.’ No mustache Dale:”
“This almost feels wrong to see.”
Of course, comments related to the now-legendary Figgy Earnhardt poured in too:
“Figgy looks so much like him.”
“FIGGY.”
“That’s not Dale. That’s Figgy Newton Earnhardt.”
“That’s Figgy.”
“Wow, he looks just like Figgy with no mustache.”
I think we can all agree that Dale Earnhardt with a mustache is the only way we should ever see him. Long live the legend and his iconic mustache.
