How Full Was My Beard

And the Lord said, let there be beard. When it comes to the male faceplate, hair is everywhere. You can’t swing a canister of Old Spice without hitting a twentysomething sporting serious chin fuzz. What the goatee was to the ‘90s alt/grunge guy, so has the beard become for the early 21^st century indie rock dude. And we’re not just talking about a goatee, mustache, sideburns, stashburns, Royale, Van Dyke, soul patch or “Miami Vice” stubble; it’s gotta be a Full, Chinstrap, Donegal, Garibaldi, Reed or Verdi at the very least. Greenpeace may have to step in to save disposable pivot-head razors from the endangered species list. So how did Grizzly Adams replace Dave Grohl as a facial icon? What historical precedent made Joaquin Phoenix go from clean-cut Johnny Cash to razor repelling Rasputin?

The ancient Egyptians, Indians and Greeks all admired beards. In Greek mythology, Zeus and Poseidon were always pictured in flowing beard mode, meaning both heaven and the seas were plagued with clogged drains. The Spartans were said to punish cowards by shaving off a portion of their beards (but honestly, considering how hard-core those Spartans chaps were, having only your beard cut off must have come as quite a relief.)  It was in the time of Alexander the Great, long before the Gillette Mach II, that the custom of the smooth shave was introduced. Apparently, Alex “feared the beard” -- that is, he thought his soldiers’ whiskers would serve as handles for their enemies to grab onto while his men were treated like shish kabob. The beard-grabbing paranoia persisted into the Middle Ages, when holding someone’s beard was a personal offense worthy of a duel (settled with straight razors at ten paces?) Indeed, famed Castilian knight El Cid was known as “the one with the flowery beard” (unlike Sid Vicious, a.k.a. El Sid, who was known as “the one with the gnarly odor”).

Abe Lincoln didn’t just shop at the Big and Tall store; he was the first U.S. President to rock a beard. Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and yes, Jesus, all got on board the beard bus. In fact, eight of the figures in da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” are sporting beards (no official word on how many shaved right after dessert). Beards have also been big with Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Rastafarians (although in the case of the latter, it might just be a great place to hide your stash). Beatniks, hippies and the occasional late-era Beatle were the most recent cultural trendsetters to indulge their beard fetish in public. Then punk rock came along and killed/scared off facial hair for a few decades.

Fashion trends come and go, and guys may have ditched their shaving kits for now, but the final blow has yet to be landed in the Battle of the Beard. Because no matter what they might profess otherwise, women don’t like to kiss beards. Once beard-mania runs its course, the ladies will have their men making a beeline for the cutting edge. So keep that lather within reach.

No, I don't have a beard. Does that make me weird?