The Good Life - January/February 2014

To Beard,
or not to beard
facial hair can be
good, bad and ugly
By: meghan feir | Photos: Urban toad Media
acial hair. I like
it – on men,
I mean. It’s
extraordinary
how random
patches of hair
on a man’s face
can evoke such
entirely different
messages. For
example, a
handlebar mustache makes a man
look like he’s no longer a cowboy in
training, and mutton chops are best
saved for the dinner plate.
As a native Minnesotan who’s
usually freezing October through
April (sometimes through July) and
who couldn’t grow a beard if she
tried, I can imagine how men could
want to have some sort of facial
covering during the colder months
in the Midwest. After all, animals are
allowed to grow their winter coats, so
why shouldn’t men? (An argument
and a solution to that would be to
just buy a scarf.)
Facial hair can be hot; it can
look cunning; it can make a man
seem mysterious and virile; it can
make a 15-year-old boy look like a
15-year-old who’s trying really hard
not to look 12, however scraggly and
saddening it may appear. Facial hair
is a powerful thing, and as everyone
knows, “With great power comes
great responsibility.” (Thanks, Uncle
Ben.)
To beard, or not to beard: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind of women to suffer
The slings and arrows of itchy, outrageous unkemptness,
Or to take arms with a slew of razors,
And by opposing end them? To die: to shave;
No more; and by a shave to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural locks
That flesh is to hair, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.
— William Shavesbeard, from his play “Hairlet” (I ran this by an English
professor with a beard, and it was approved.)