Beards are Best
They're like a machine gun for your face.
Science can plumb the mysteries of the universe, cure disease, and reveal the origins of man – but can it provide insight into the age-old mystery that troubles every man, namely: What Do Women Want? Yes it can, dear Reg reader, yes it can. According to research conducted at the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre of Sydney's …
I've had my beard since the mid-90s, ever since I overheard a feminist co-worker say she thought beards were a disgusting symbol of patriarchal oppression. So I grew it out to spite her and by extension all feminists and I've kept it ever since. So yeah, I suppose you could call mine a machine gun for my face!
I do keep it fairly short though, around 1 cm, because it gets annoying if I let it get too big. I end up chewing on my moustache and constantly twisting my chin hair with my fingers after a couple of weeks of no trim. Also, the part on my jawline either side of my chin seems to grow twice as thick and fast as anywhere else on my face, eventually resulting in the appearance of my chin looking wider than my forehead, which as you can imagine just looks daft. So I trim around once a week, which is a lot better than having to shave every day.
In my middle age, parts of it have gone grey, while the sideburns are vivid ginger, and the rest of it black. I've been compared to skunks and tortoiseshell cats more than once because of it!
"I end up chewing on my moustache and constantly twisting my chin hair with my fingers after a couple of weeks of no trim."
I found that the best part of having facial hair. I used to love playing with it (read whatever you want into that, LOL)
It's backfired now I've got rid of it, though. My other half is constantly telling me off for pulling at the skin under my chin. It's a subconscious thing, I'm trying to stroke my bears, but it's not there.
"Beards add years to your age".
There is something in that: in my younger days facial forestry of any sort looks naff, but now I'm in my forties I've had a goatie for a couple of years and think it really suits me. I think my face has 'aged' in to it!
Oh and if you ask me 10-day old growth is NOT stubble?!
re: beards and age
You need to be careful, as a couple of young chaps when I was at school tried the facial hair thing to buy fags and booze, but all they could manage was a Barry McGuigan - esque couple of lip-hairs that fooled nobody.
Is it safe to assume that this study was not sponsored by Gillette?
I have maintained a beard since the 70s, and it even survived for a short while (as a trim goatee) whilst I was working for Gillette Australia.
The company and I parted company (amicably) after a short while though: I was not a world-wide enterprise, office-politics kind of employee and they were looking for a workaholic-type of person. Sadly, both of my bosses lost their families to divorce (I heard later from a former colleague), so I am not sorry to have left - 36th anniversary coming up soon! :-)
Much more dangerous than food debris (I eat like a human, and food very rarely touches my beard...don't want to waste food, mostly) are the dangers of short cigarettes (roll-ups) and a predilection for the most dangerous Chinese lighters I can find on eBay...quite often end up setting bits of my beard on fire.
Environmental hazard, ages ... Just like the rest of life. That food could save it one day. Or you could just learn to eat properly.
I grow when occasionally, though I am at an age when it is less of a good idea. However, women do seem to react in various ways: mother usually against, colleagues and wife for or neutral
Comes and grows. Hair today, gone tomorrow.
Beards add years to your age
I don't think the relationship is purely additive or linear. A gentleman of my acquaintance first started sporting a beard in his late teens, and rapidly ended up looking like he was in his thirties... and has stayed looking more or less the same age, and is now actually in his late thirties
If he actually stoops so low as to dye his hair and beard, I expect he'll carry on looking much the same for the next couple of decades, too.
As someone who has normally kept clean shaven and all the women I've formed long term relationships with (include both my first and current wives') have complained if I've forgotten or haven't got around to shaving.
But a couple of times when I've been away from normal civilization for a while and haven't been able to shave, nor even get near soap for a few days, I've been damn near jumped on by very attractive women.
Perhaps this is related to the reports that suggestion that women are genetically programmed to find the ideal father for their offspring, and then to go and find the ideal mate to sire them.
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I had a beard in my passport photo some years back, but was clean shaven at a time of a visit to Israel. Airport security were not happy, oh no, so not happy, that a visual discrepancy stood^H^H^H quaked before them. These days, She Who Must Be Obeyed disallows anything older than 2 days. Must be 'cos I'd be so attractive to others...
This is typical evolutionary psychology pseudo-science. They take some people in one society at one time in human history and assume that their views represent all people ever since the Pleistocene. Never mind that most human males on the planet now do not produce beards anything like those of hairy Europeans (many human groups have men who produce no noticeable facial hair through the course of their lives). Never mind that people's ideas of beauty and attractiveness can easily be demonstrated to vary from culture to culture and over time in the same culture. Seriously, science is about dealing with the facts that are out there--not by denying them. This is just more fake, non-scientific junk people who want to live in ignorance propagate. :)
IBM used to have (or allegedly had) a rule of no pipe smokers, no beardies. I think they assumed that both wasted a lot of time fiddling. Mrs Thatcher had a similar prejudice.
I can't quite understand why older men going grey (or white) would want to multiply the problem by growing grey/white facial hair. Presumably to make up for thinning on top. I'm wary of men who sport beards and heavy glasses -- clearly they are hiding behind these contrivances !
But maximum odium for young hipsters with wispy beards -- the sort who may also wear skinny trousers that hang around the crotch and beanie hats. I guess the sought effect is to look like one of Garibaldi's guerrillas, though this seems less than convincing when seen with iPad in manbag around coffee shops in Hoxton.
Fihart, in my case, I grow a “salt-and-paprika” beard because I’m finally able to do so; there were a couple of patches on my face in the typical beard zone from which no hair grew until I was in my 40s. Up top, my forehead (called the “fivehead” by Mrs. Deficient) started receding when I was 16; without a beard, I look like an extraterrestrial trying to blend in as a human, despite the dead giveaway of an unusually protruberant cranium. (No grey up top yet; it falls out before it gets a chance to go monochromatic.) I’m only partially hiding, though: my spectacles have thin frames.