How to groom your Movember whiskers

So you've grown out your beard and mustache this month to support a better awareness of men's health — but Movember is more than half over and you're starting to look, well, scruffy. How can you ensure this new look of yours is presentable this holiday? We talked to Alex Masi, senior hair stylist and barber at Le Reve Salon & Barbershop in Cherry Hill, for grooming tips.

A lot of guys come in with mustaches that grow over the lip, Masi said. That's just wrong (not to mention gross.) "The beard looks so much better if you take a trimmer and trim right above your lip so that all the hair isn't curling in the mouth," Masi said.

Commonly, men stop their beard at the point where the jaw meets the neckline. In some cases, that's too high, because it exposes double chins — and that gives a puffy look to the face. "You always want the beard to look like it's hugging the jaw," Masi said. "This way, you cast a shadow over the fuller parts of your face, and that slims your face down."

Though you want the hair on the cheeks to be filled in as much as possible, keep the hair there trim. But let it be fuller in the chin. The thicker the hair is in the cheek area, the rounder your face looks, Masi said. In other words, pies are for Thanksgiving dinner tables, not our faces.

Some guys are tempted to wash their facial hair every day. That's not a good idea, Masi said, because that strips the hair of its natural oils. Instead, Masi said, use a gentle cleansing shampoo — clarifying ones are too harsh — every third day. "If you go any longer than three days," Masi said, "the natural oils will build up too much, [and your beard] will look greasy and weighed down."

Facial hair is really coarse and needs a lot of moisture to keep flyaways at bay. Massage a cream- or oil-based product into your beard every day, Masi said, suggesting V76 Vaughn styling cream to keep facial hair looking its freshest.