On Beards

My dear Friend and Kutenist Sir Basil Paprika continues his October onslaught with a dissertation on the beard, its provenance, relevance, and maintenance. I have not met with a finer piece on the matter. An interesting detail - like all great anthropologists and scientists, Spencer is himself removed from his object of study - Jane Goodall was no chimp, Levi-Strauss no savage - Spencer McB is himself a beardless man. His objective viewpoint, and his fascination, can thus be readily explained - sprout on, noble father, sprout on!

With the inevitable approach of Movember and the haggard attempts to sprout magnificent plumes of moustache hair where none had been seen before that will soon be in evidence everywhere, I have been put in the mind of contemplating the reasoning behind facial hair of all types, and thinking about why our culture gives a shit.

Having begun with Movember, I will now stop talking about moustaches at all, and start talking about beards.  (What a segue!  Genius.) The Romans, progenitors of most of our cultural heritage, were almost all clean shaven, and this was back in the day when shaving meant scraping a newly sharpened knife or sword across your face.  Shaving took commitment.  To see a bearded man walking up and down the Via Appia, casually purchasing slaves or participating in orgies, was almost unheard of.  Only Emperors were allowed out in the streets with unshorn faces, and even they didn’t really know what they were doing when it came to beard styles.  Nero’s horror-inspiring neck beard made him, as it was so well put by cartoonist Kate Beaton, “look like a dickhead”.[1]  But how did this tradition of theirs begin?  After all, beards are awesome, aren’t they?  And the Romans were certainly awesome enough to merit awesome beards.  Well, it seems that the Romans didn’t shave at all until Scipio Africanus got it into his head that the blood and intestines of too many Carthaginians were making his beard all messy, and he decided to get rid of the damn thing for the sake of efficiency in both morning ablutions and murder.  So, the first Roman to shave was also one of the most awesome.  So awesome, in fact, that everyone in Rome immediately started copying him and did so for the next six hundred years.

So how did we get to the state where we think that beards are super cool?  We have beard contests, we praise people walking around with bizarre facial hair, exaggerate historical beards to emphasize the magnificence of that particular beard owner, and often equate the masculinity of a person with the viewing pleasure we are granted by looking upon their beard.  Take, for instance, Hemmingway.  Hemingway is one of the founders of contemporary masculinity, and he had a pretty awesome beard.  It is therefore often claimed that beards somehow make someone more awesome, simply because they are emulating one of the most superficial aspects of an awesome man.

I will now finally come to my point by illustrating it with a contrast between the tales of two beards.  The first beard belongs to a man named Jack Passion.  He is the contemporary record holder for beard length in the United States.  I think, anyway.  I couldn’t be bothered to look it up.  I know for certain however, that he has one a great many Beard Contests, using the tremendous girth and redness of his beard to dominate his competitors in a brutal contest of beard strength that will certainly be declared a sport as soon as the obesity level in the States increases a few more notches.  Passion is the owner of what one must admit is a tremendous beard.  He is also a sniveling, arrogant, whiney, pathetic little tool.

Let us contrast Jack Passion (somewhat unfairly) with Kuan Yu, a General of one of many Chinese factions during the 220 CE fall of the Han Dynasty, immortalized by the legendary tales of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  He was famous for his loyalty, his unmatched skill in battle, and his beard, and was seen as a paradigm of masculinity.  One day, Kuan Yu was riding innocently across the plains of Northern China, guarding the wife and daughter of his brother in arms, who he was determined to find.  He was confronted by two bandits, who, failing to recognize him immediately, challenged him to a duel.  Now, Kuan Yu had already killed about 50 people that day and so wished to avoid further conflict, as the ease of victory bored him somewhat.  So instead of drawing his sword, he dismounted his horse and took off the hair net bag he had been using to protect his beard.  The long, flowing, straight sheer black hair tumbled slowly down, uncoiling from the tight cylindrical bun in which it rested into a long black line of inimitable beauty.  The stark black length of hair, freed from all constrains, swayed gently in the wind, moving as one, as when a swarm of grasshoppers move together to darken the sky with their shadows and seem to move with one mind.  The glint of the sun off the silken hairs moved the hearts of all who saw it.  The anger of the bandits was unable to withstand the glorious sight, and as they looked upon that beard they realized that they stood in the presence of a great man.  They clamored down off their horses and dedicated their lives to Kuan Yu in perpetuity, offering up their very souls if doing so could aid him in his quest.

So what is the difference between these two beards?  That of Jack Passion impresses only in a technical sense.  We measure our surprise upon seeing its redness, and we then measure its length, width, and volume, in order to determine that he has an impressive beard.  The beard of Kuan Yu impresses itself upon men’s souls, not merely because of its beauty, but because of the way he wields that beard.  He is the one who makes his beard impressive, not the other way around.  Likewise, the Vikings weren’t awesome because they had beards – they were so awesome that they made their beards look cool.  Hemingway wasn’t masculine because he could wear a beard well, he was masculine because of the way he lived his life, and that life made the beard seem masculine.  Passion’s beard, despite its length, is supported by no true character underneath, and will never truly impress.  It is the man that makes the beard, not the other way around.  Adding or subtracting facial hair from one’s face does nothing to make or reduce a man (or woman, I guess).  One’s awesomeness is defined by one’s actions, not one’s facial hair.  And that is why I will not be wearing a moustache for Movember. (Expert conclusion!  Nailed it again.)