Ballad of the Beard

I recommend this video for the opening two minutes -- his look of sincere regret, overemphatic thoughtful rubbing, and rumbling, off-key mantra is worth that much.

Speaking of sweet

This beard is an oldie but a goodie. Sorry to use you as eye candy, Dan, but you are an influence.

Photo courtesy of Ben Taylor

Scooped

I missed the Octobeard boat. And then, halfway through November, someone told me about Novembeard. I must assume that there is also a Decembeard. And now, The Boston Globe ran this article on Manuary.

I will set about learning the other verbal tricks that grant men permission to embrace the beard Furbruary? MarchStache? -- but that's beside the point. Manuary is upon us, and a Boston publication took note. Huzzah. I will scrape my own blog entry out of the discarded trimmings of this timely clip; that is, I will now proceed to troll through readers' comments.

The most interesting point they raise is the notion that the beard is a traditionally masculine symbol in an effeminizing culture. I have always considered this in terms of the workplace-- men who work in sales tell me that customers find them "intimidating" and "less approachable" if they have a beard. Likewise, many company dress codes require men to save. It is the fourth piece of the three-piece suit.

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slow growth

I tell myself that things can grow incrementally, that this site doesn't have to be groomed regularly, that interviewing strange men about their beards, ostensibly for this site, is not rendered creepy and irrelevant by a lack of digital posting, grooming, or curating on my part.

It is a lie. If hairs had started poking their coarse, protein-rich heads out of my face when I started this blog, my present beard would be thoroughly untenable and potentially hideous. And bearing such scraggle self-consciously should make me even less attractive. And yet



it has some obnoxious charm.

(creative commons photo by j a r r o d)

them's the Pitts

Brad Pitt's beard, referred to as "facial furniture" by a gossip rag, he really raised some plucked eyebrows when he braided it.

Let me be honest. I should care, but don't. An examination of the Pitt-hair rhetoric might reveal pop culture attitudes toward facial hair, but I have so little respect, and so little context, for those publications, that I am going to ignore celebrity facial hair (Clooney included) at the present moment.

That said, search for an unlicensed pic of Brad's beard led me to the first of many mortal enemies-- she is a barber/anti-beard blogger Diane Woods. Why?

Because, as action-based, team-work promoting cartoons taught me, darkness cannot exist without light, the X-men cannot exist without Apocalypse's colossal counterweight, and beards are strengthened by those who would cut them down.

Foreshadowing

I've had some trouble in Internetworld in the last week--my Facebook account was hacked when a spyware program pulled up a duplicate screen and asked me to log in again. While I was posting about out BHJB PSA's on this blog, a glitch in LostbergSent, my other blog, shut down my laptop. A few days later, my laptop couldn't charge, so I ordered a new jack, only to discover that I was using a dud outlet.

This is all sorts of relevant, because each of these incidents can be blamed on an evil twin, the shadowy Other. Fake facebook, glitchy blog, failed outlet, digitally incompetent Lauren--if only they'd had beards, I would have had some warning.

Beard of Evil

James Lipton's Ponderous Beard

Sometimes, the beard is a symbol of maturity and wisdom. I can handle that, even though my three lonely chin hairs seems positively sophomoric in comparison. But a wisdom is not always paternal, and there's a bit of that in this ad series:


There are several problems with this beard. First of all, it looks like it was drawn on with a pencil. A pencil beard is intrinsically disappointing--it has the form of a beard, but none of the content. A beard must be man-made MAN-made, not a product of arts and crafts hour.
Issue two: the paternal overtones ruin any element of raw sensuality that is, okay, a crucial element of my DreamBeard. If a beard can teach a teenage girl to curb irrational behavior, I want no part of it. It's supposed to be about virility; sometimes virility is stupid, but it is in full bloom.

Kudos on handing a beard over to a woman however. Next entry: the prosthetic beard.