Yesterday I passed a barbershop and saw ads on their wall outside of men with beards and short hair. It is a revival or saving electricity ?
In the US they were definitely out of fashion in the '80s and '90s. They were fashion statement that said “I’m a gross hippie” or worse, a BeeGee.
I was a teen at the time and the consensus among teen girls was that a beard was the ultimate dealbreaker of a physical attribute. Makes sense, really, because most guys our age couldn’t grow a nice one if they wanted to. (And also - hippies are gross). I always respectfully disagreed, and would point to our classmate, Murad. He had pretty well grown facial hair by junior year and he looked fiiiinne.
The exception that proved the rule? Luckily (for Murad) my classmates generally agreed, but refused to back down from their opinion in general.
That attitude persisted, with the occasional appearance of a goatee or soul patch in the late '90s, both of which proved to be a gateway drug that led to the appearance of proper beards. I think a lot of guys would have liked to have beards, but realized that they were driving away potential partners. But they were pretty normal by 2010.
I’ll drop this line from wikipedia, which should illustrate just how boringly mainstream beards have become in the US.
Since 2015 a growing number of male political figures have worn beards in office, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and Senators Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.
Damn hippies.
My wife and I both grew up in the eighties/nineties and this was exactly her attitude for years. It was only when I went ahead and grew one anyway - despite her reservations - and she decided she actually likes the way I look with it and now won’t let me shave it off!
Actually it is now moustaches that are back. And sometimes mullets.
I’d love to have enough hair to grow a mullet. Not that I want one, I just want that much hair.
Personally I’ve always found most men look more attractive with beards (I’m a straight dude) so I grew one as soon as I could.
After having it for a while I decided to shave as I hadn’t seen my actual face in a few years. After I shaved I realized that I have very chubby cheeks that make me look like a literal child.
I’ll never clean shave again
The question is: why are you shaving? Why are you so afraid of looking like yourself?
When you have a beard, people respect you. They listen when you talk and hold doors open for you. I have a hard time trusting a man with a clean shaved face, because our interaction is starting off with a lie. I feel the same way about makeup and fake eyebrows and plastic surgery.
copypasta?
An OC Rant with some light trolling in the form of toxic masculinity. Sarcastic but with elements of truth.
A fine cuisine. Pairs well with a nice Riesling.
As a clean shaved man who doesn’t shave because he can’t grow any sort of facial hair I feel personally attacked.
I actually dig the Native American, Mongolian, Japanese style. Like a few dark hairs, but mostly smooth. Sometimes it’s just like the mustache tips that get dark. Let it grow.
How far does this go? Are haircuts lies? What about clothing?
I’m a big believer that we should embrace our natural features, but nobody is trying to mislead you into believing they don’t grow facial hair.
Yeah and those who cake on makeup aren’t trying to mislead me into thinking they’re pretty either. It does also apply to some clothes. Not regular haircuts but certainly hair dying, straightening, and curling. I would apply it to nail extensions and high heels as well. I think it’s pretty fair to put daily full facial shaving into that same category. It’s all clown shoes to me.
If I may quote Nick Offerman…
I grow a beard because I am neither a child nor a woman.
In my case, it’s because I prefer it. Razors are expensive, and who has time to shave anyway? I’ve had a beard off and on since college in the 80s, when it made me look about five years older. Now it makes me look about 10 years younger. I’ll take it. :)
Razors are expensive,
They don’t have to be! Dual edge safety razor blades are like $10 for 100. You could splurge ($50 for a nice one, or hundreds for a really nice, probably unnecessarily expensive one) on a nice handle that will last you the rest of your life, or get just about as good a shave with one that costs $10. Heck, if you’re lucky you could find some old, nice one at a garage sale that’s already been around 70 years, and will easily still be working fine when you’re dead. Unfortunately, like just about everything else old and good, they’ve become a bit trendy, so it might be hard to find deals like you used to be able to.
Granted. I have both a safety razor and a mug & brush. It just doesn’t shave close enough. And I still just prefer a beard.
That’s fair. You can get a closer shave with more passes, but that’s hard on your skin as well. I can’t stand having too much stubble. It gets to a point where it itches like crazy. I pushed through the itchy phase once, and having a beard was alright, but I got some pretty crazy acne underneath it.
I feel you. I’m extremely lucky to never have an itchy phase while it’s growing and rarely have acne. Chalk it up to Neanderthal genetics, I guess. :)
The rent (razors) is too damn high!!!
I prefer to shave so individuals can see that I have a chin / jawline.
Good for you
I prefer not to shave, to make them wonder
Beards are where the Communism is stored. As the ruling class become richer and more obscene, class consciousness grows amongst the working class. Hence, beards.
I’ve got mine almost completely colonized with psychedelic mycelium!
Shaving sucks.
The real question is why shaving should be normalized, expected, or encouraged in modern society.
Long story short: WW2
The military required men to be clean shaven, which was partly tactical (proper gas mask seals), partly to whitewash the service (e.g., black men can have severe skin reactions to shaving every day), and had other benefits to unit cohesion and general order (routine personal fitness and hygiene).
Well, that stuck, and an entire (massive) generation of men and their male children were taught that to be good they simply had to be clean shaven. Those two generations make up the vast majority of business and political power in the US, so the idea of “success” and “power” was idolized by a clean shaven male. This was further accentuated by the counter culture reaction of this cohort’s kids in the 60s and 70s, where longer and unkempt “bad” hair was cast against this “good” clean shaven look.
Fast forward to today, those traditions and appearances have been baked into most of modern life. As the boomer population starts to fade away, so will the tyranny of the razor.
The boomers ARE the unshaven hippies tho. People born in the 40s and entering public life in the 60s-70s
Yeah, normalize either being okay. Just like long or short hair. Diversity is the spice of life.
Good answer. 👍
Ye, I just shave mine when it starts irritating my neck 🤷♂️
When I was still in the closet, I grew and maintained a big beard as part of my attempts at performative masculinity.
Not saying that this is what’s happening with most men who’re growing 'em out, but sometimes I see a bloke with a well maintained set of facial hair looking absolutely miserable and my egg radar starts shrieking.
oh hey its me
Though over the winter it was decidedly not well maintained, longest its ever been, etc. I kind of get weirdly less dysphoric about just letting things go vs. actively cultivating something I don’t necessarily want or like.
Cause our chins are weird.
SAVING ELECTRICITY LOL WUT
As everyone’s arguing about what the trend actually is, I went looking for hard numbers. Here’s some data spanning the Victorian to the late Cold War, from a paper by Dwight E. Robinson, but the link to it itself appears to be broken now.
Unfortunately, more recent information is googlebombed with people’s lightly supported fluff pieces, so a cursory look didn’t turn anything like this up for the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, and 10’s.
Thanks, and go go gadget valid link! https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/1976/robinson1976a.pdf
Dope!
Now that I think about it, you can just extrapolate that curve forwards and it matches anecdotal data about the 80’s and 90’s, reaching a similar smooth face extreme around 1990 to peak beard in the 1890. By that logic, it’s a 2-century cycle, and we’ll be back to all beards late this century.
