Is there anything in the air? Tommy Robinson comes out of prison, sporting a beard, reminding Charles Moore in the Spectator of his own recent attempt to grow a beard (“it makes one feel permanently dirty”). On the Right, beards seem to be coming into favour: at least, on the dirty Right. But on the Left, figures like Owen Jones and Aaron Bastani suggest that the Karl Marx tradition of beards is over. The Left is clean, bleached, plucked. And a few women in the Guardian are now polemicising about 'shoes off at the door' with such aggression that I expect before too long that the cry on the Left will be 'beard off at the door' on the grounds that beards are as dirty as shoes and carpets.
Anyhow, let us reflect on this wonderful historical reversal.
Fundamentally, the shaven chin is Roman. Consider Julius Caesar or Augustus. But the bearded face is Greek. Consider Socrates, Herodotus or, indeed, anyone.
Beards were always associated with vita contemplativa, while clean faces were associated with ruthlessness and vita activa. Our history shows much shifting back and forth in fashions: the great beards of the dark ages, the clean visages of medieval high kings, the tufts of moustache and beard that adorned Charles I, Thomas Hobbes and Oliver Cromwell, and, later, the whiskers of Gladstone, the sideburns of John Stuart Mill and the goatish Egyptian rootstock of Disraeli. Kings had beards for a while: Edward VII and George V, because they were
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I hate shaving and a white growth hasn’t changed my mind. Dry or wet shaving irritates my skin and my wife likes the look. The threat of sacking was present in my workplace back in the 1960s, 70s and so on. But as I was studying at university where all hair flourished, I got away with refusing the blade/clippers on the face, love a short haircut and declared war on the Establishment’s other diktats – wearing a tie. A skivvy or roll neck did not hinder my ascending the ladder as I managed to convince people that the wetware between the ears was more important.
An opportunity to say something meaningful about Tommy Robinson….but sadly, beards took centre stage.
Unfortunately growing a beard is beyond me, what can you say about hair? My new look is inspired by the Merovingians- any chance of this becoming a thing?
Asking for a friend.
You have raised a vitally important topic. People who sneer at long hair on men & boys are forgetting that humans are the only creature with the ability to grow extremely long hair on the heads of both males and females. Some can grow their hair even down to the ground. It must have some kind of biological or spiritual survival advantage.
Not only does long hair make even the ugliest man & woman look more handsome/beautiful and interesting, but it keeps their heads warm in winter. If God didn’t want men to have long hair, he wouldn’t have given them the ability to grow it, so they should grow it as long as they want!
There have even been historical accounts of Native American “Indians”, hired by the US Army for their uncannily brilliant “tracking” abilities as scouts, whose abilities were ruined by having their extremely long hair cut short to military standards. The idea was that their long hair gave them some kind of electromagnetic sensory information. It’s interesting that the Sikh men are taught never to cut their hair at all, but to keep it out of the way beneath their turbans. And Royal Navy seamen had… Read more »
The other thing that I don’t understand is why would a moustache if left to grow straight cover a man’s mouth and then chin? What could be the use in having a man’s mouth covered by a curtain of hair? Like a fringe I suppose it can be parted but it is still a strange phenomenon.
Good point, but long head hair does the same thing if you just let it hang down to completely cover your face.
Maybe this and the long moustaches provided protection from extreme cold in the days before wooly hats & scarves: Ice Age weather.
I forgot to add in the comment above that the long hair grown by Sikh men doesn’t give them special extra-sensory abilities like the American native “trackers”, because the hair needs to flow freely, not tightly bound beneath a turban.
All the men in the Oriental kung fu films about ancient legends also have long flowing hair.
I don’t know how long Ethnic Africans can grow their hair without binding it into dreadlocks.
Long long ago women were the social networkers and home builders whilst men did the out-n-about stuff, you know, like gutting mammoths and living generally in a flea infested hedge.
When this grubby stinker showed-up in the settlement his welcome was limited, even if there was, for example, some appetite for his gifts of meat and jobs abound of shifting rocks and stuff.
Fred Stinkstone would meanwhile see the male youths, fresh faced and wholesome, get lavish treatment and he would slowly conclude that sitting by the fire eating lice picked from his neither regions was not an optimal strategy for winning a dinner, a snug bed for the night and a bit of ‘slap-n-tickle. So he quickly learnt to at least take a good wash.
Fred understood that youthfulness in appearance curries favour and (right after he invented the wheel) the flint razor went into production.
Many years ago, I decided that it was ridiculous to comply with the fashionable fad of scraping emergent hairs from my face every morning. So I became a ‘beardie’ – indeed, an an ecologist the beard was an essential part of the ‘job description’! But others failed to recognise the importance of this integral part of the ‘uniform’ of the naturalist.
One day, as an ‘officer’ in a local government organization, I was taken aside by the manager and informed that “The chairman does not like to see men in beards in the office!” Since much of my work was out in the countryside, I politely suggested to him that he might like to ask the Chairman to kindly let me know when he planned to visit the office. Then, to protect his delicate sensibilities, I would arrange not to be there when he came. From then on, I was a marked bearded man, and an excuse for me to resign was quickly manufactured.
And that was far from a calamity, as in fact it gave me the opportunity to move forward to an astoundingly interesting professional career. So for any men of hirsute ambition, I can soundly recommend this… Read more »
Wow! Hard to believe but it reminded me of a lady who was sent home to change because she was wearing trousers!
I grew a full beard for a ‘Seventies Evening’. At my age it grew in totally white and I looked like Grandad from Only Fools and Horses. People were much nicer to me in the street though…
Can anybody explain how sometimes a man rocks a different coloured beard to his hair? I don’t think this is a hair dye thing either. I’ve seen men with ginger beards but brown hair.🧐
Genetics? My husband had dark brown hair but if he didn’t shave for a day or two the stubble would be reddish. Both our sons have blonde hair but their beards have a reddish tinge. My Mother had auburn hair and my mother-in-law was red haired in her early years while her other son was a real ginger.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
What about the 5 day old grey grizzled stubble that so many men now sport? Recently in Portugal I noticed that all the politicians on the bill boards campaigning in their recent election had the grizzled stubble look and a smile. What is it supposed to indicate – don’t fear me, I am too scruffy to be a bad person?
I just had to Google you to check the beard, James. I found a couple of pictures, one more hirsute than the other.
It may be as you say, although an article in the DT suggests it may also be down to women currently changing their preference from “Rodent to Alpha.”
Goodbye rodent men, hello alpha males: Brad Pitt’s GQ cover marks a new masculinity era
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/bf23f850a70e046e
A lot of women have beards these days.
Not sure how ‘political’ this is? There are women in all the parties who would definitely be improved by having a full beard, but on balance probably more on the Labour benches (Cooper, Rayner, Phillipson, Reeves, Nandy)
Sorry, I forgot to include Heidi Alexander, the Face that Lunched on a Thousand Chips. I hope she wasn’t offended by my omission
And ‘Lady Nugee’ (aka Emily Thornberry), with her spherical visage spouting forth bile
Speaking as a bearded one for most of my adult life, this piece is rather spoiled by the fact that Tommy Robinson shaved his beard and reverted to his short haircut on the day he was released from prison.
Perhaps he grew it to mark the time in solitary confinement, and make a clean end to it.
Perhaps, like St Paul, he made a vow.
But political or philosophical marker it was not.
Apparently, the reason he had a beard upon his departure from prison was because he was denied access to clippers and razors.