What’s in a beard?
As each beard-emblazoned chap steps into his shower, does one not assume cigar ash and cognac washes from deep between those coils?
If you’re sitting on the fence of an enduring beard/no beard dilemma and still haven’t decided if face fauna is the right look for you, there may be a few key things to consider.
Foremost, a beard can be far more than facial fuzz. We owe more respect to these chin-borne testosterone strings.
A beard could be a non-verbal cue to the exotic village you’ve relocated to that you’ve gone rogue from MI6 and don’t want to be asked too many questions.
Or a symbolic reminder that it’s probably time to reconnect with society after your book-writing escape to the hinterlands.
Sometimes it’s just an excuse to strike up Oscar-winning conversations with a volleyball on a deserted island.
Perhaps a beard can be even slightly more than that.
A decade into my thus far uncontested obsession with medical research investigating testosterone and men’s health, my persisting opinion is that growing a beard may be one of the very last crude devices us men have left to display (more favourable) classical traits of masculinity.
Personally, I don’t typically rock a face-forest, nor am I a man who can’t grow facial hair. As a younger fellow I once chinned a beard that would have made Zeus question his gender.
And so it is that I’m neither for nor against this modern adaptation of retro-fitted jaw-junk. I have however come to speculate a rationale for the trend which may be worth discussing between fellow Gents, and Scholars of man:
“Without a great war for freedom to return from, or the incrementally antiquated responsibility to fund and protect a family, how else are modern men to tick the masculinity box? Is it necessary to? Are men and women even all that different?”
Perhaps these days the journey to masculinity is a more dynamic and trend-bound one than it once was. Previously led by adversity and forced from necessity, our newfound freedoms to redefine a man’s modern purpose appear to have allowed us to discount a reliance on logic. No longer must we voluntarily enlist to oppose tyranny when we’ve already been low-key conscripted into an untested system of shifting sociopolitical ideals that describe “real” men as showing gentler qualities once reserved for our sisters.
A real man shows his emotions, a real man sacrifices career trajectory for fatherhood, a real man relies on his wife to provide for the family…
Whilst I’m sure many ‘real’ men can and do do these things, having feelings or retiring at 30 doesn’t make you any more a man than having thumbs.
It’s rightly unacceptable to cling onto classical models of manliness, particularly those that once purposefully or inadvertently obstructed women from opportunity.
It’s undeniable that men and women are more the same than they are different. And a man need not a sister nor a daughter to profoundly support women in the pursuit of the equal opportunity to prioritise the many facets of life according to their choosing, as to which many a man is supported (pending also his circumstances, strengths and weakness, opportunities and obstructions, height and health, assertiveness and commitment).
But in throwing off the line from the perishing docks of systemic chauvinism, it seems as though many an otherwise civilised gentleman has also been cast off from any semblance of support or structure. Unless he actively attempts to map a new coast for himself he is left to drift into uncharted waters, with no anchor nor navigation to a new shore.
The modest gentleman, once explained more subtly by his labourious occupation, career ambition or brave wrist-wrenching of lids off pickle jars, now shares these responsibilities with his wife or partner, finding himself reduced to more overt (and frankly functionless) assertions of testicular worth.
In a world where traditional categorisations of gender are evolving and intertwining, it’s no surprise that younger men are at a growing loss for footing when searching to define the fundamental qualities of a man which are ours to reconcile with our intuitions, instincts and inherited identity.
Surely, the great men before us must have bequested more robust qualities to us than our facial hair.
I implore you gentlemen, to ponder further on your own traits and contemplate the potential androgen-enriched qualities bestowed upon you, not all of which are desirable, might you mind.
Our definitions for “man” don’t need to agree, but do promise you’ll have developed one of your own before you find yourself rocking a fuzzy top-knot in a pair of vegan jean shorts not knowing how you got there or how to get back.
If you’re looking for answers, and you’re already standing in front of a steamy mirror agonising over picking up that dry Gillette, try imagining the man you wish you were, for your partner, your friends, your children and the world you leave behind one day. Do you really think your final legacy will be influenced at all by whether or not it was built with a beard? I hope not, for your sake.
Whatever it is you ultimately choose to do, before you lace the next silk tie below an unkempt jawfro, remember that there should be more to your being a man than letting your razor rust.