Beards - A New Masculinity?

If I had a beard I could win respect. If I had a beard I could stoke it wisely. If I had a beard I could fashion its end into a point and raise it skyward in triumphant style; a sceptre, a shield that I could weave and groom and stand before the bare faced plebs and shout “I am a man with a beard. The word ‘man’ is but a synonym for beard…” Without my beard I am nothing, without me my beard is nothing! And so the thought trailed on as I shaved my teenage whiskers, waiting in pensive anticipation of the day I could finally grow one. My life had been dominated by heroic bearded figures; my father, various historical intellectuals, even our postman sported a bristled coat of grey weary fibers, and at 16 I was consumed with the notion of wearing my testosterone on my chin. Imagine my surprise when here and now, in 2014 I stand bearded amidst a brier-patch of hairy twenty-somethings. These thoughts were not the lone passions of a teenage fantasist, but rather the collective consciousness of a generation who, so full of hope and defiance in the face of economic destitution and general national apathy grew their badges of masculinity as if to say; “This world will notice me as I past swiftly through it. We will make itchy the skin of time between those two great infinities, and give it a rash it will not so hastily forget!” More likely is the fact that they have been made fashionable by various rock and rollers, actors and ‘youtube’ stars. Beards are ‘á la mode’, part of our generation’s fashionable stamp on time. The sixties had beards, the seventies had beards, in the eighties people discovered cocaine and as a result decided to shave constantly. Who would have believed that now in the age of drones and superfast fibre-optic broadband we would revisit the age old rite of passage, first worn by the cavemen as they finger painted elephants to cave walls? One could explain the hairy phenomenon in context of our current masculinity crisis. Before a man’s masculinity could be measured in feats of heroism, misogyny or acts of violence. Basically how close you fell on the spectrum to being ‘James Bond’ was an accurate gauge of your masculinity, and he never wore a beard. Now in the great future of the 21st century we have slowly begin to ebb out those traits as gauges of a man’s musicality while yet figuring out how else to display it. Before it had been so simple, shoot the ethnically exotic boss, save the blond dame, dismiss her until she was clawing at your leg and round off the evening by drinking hard liquor after having thrown the last ‘badguy’ off a train. At some stage however we began to realise that this particular version of masculinity wasn’t exactly feasible, given the harmful effect it has on women, on children, little puppies and I’m not wholly certain but it could have something to do with widening the hole in the ozone layer. Beards have become this generation’s innocuous answer to this crisis. We are once again hunter gatherers, well actually more like bar hoppers navigating the earth with Google maps, but at least we have adopted their style, without the implied violence or the sexism. That said it would be very naïve to believe we have totally escaped our long held notions of what it means to be a man. Dan Blizerian, a modern day playboy poker playing multi-millionaire and former navy seal, has managed to keep the torch lit for all things questionable about being a man. Blizerian’s Instagram account has some million plus followers where he flaunts his wealth, ‘his’ women and his beard, but is such an archaic version of ‘manliness’ more insidious than his fans would let on? His beard, while glorious in style (this I must concede) is stealing away from men the idea that having a beard is a safe way of asserting ones masculinity without having to fly a jet crammed with breast and stacks of dollars. It is of course impossible to understand a passing stranger’s hopes and dreams, but would it not be better to believe they are attempting to emulate the intellectual endeavours of Karl Marx, or Einstein, or even Harley Morenstein (Epic Meal Time) rather than feebly scrambling their whiskers together in the uncertain hope of becoming a ‘Blizerian’? Just as women and girls everywhere are constantly bludgeoned with idealistic images of flawless skin tones and inhumane perfection, so too are men with fantasies of violence and sexual conquest. A fantasy which most of us ‘bottom feeders’ (I include myself in this analogy) can never hope to fulfill. Beards are the great leveler. There is no need to attach to them the falsehoods of the Blizerian lifestyle, they are in and of themselves, and have always been the most basic physical embodiment of one’s masculinity. They should be worn with a sense of pride which stems from the basic human need to define oneself as a citizen of our gender, not in the futile and ultimately damaging belief that a beard will get you money, women or success. *NOTE* For those men who have yet the ability to grow a beard, wait patiently. The day will soon come.