A Close Shave — Facial Hair Musings
Have you ever noticed that there are some men who never grow their facial hair? I'm not talking about men who can't grow any, but those who can but never choose to grow a beard or mustache or sideburns or anything of that nature. In the most extreme example, you've got guys who are meticulously clean shaven and don't even let their stubble grow in for a day or two between shavings or on the weekend.I think these guys are missing out on a major perk of being male. The facial hair option is one thing that is basically all ours. We don't have many, cosmetically. Females can wear make-up, grow their hair, and—unlike we men who choose to grow our hair out anyway despite societal conventions—can get through unruly stages of growth by using barrettes and clips. As men, we don't have much we can do, but we can grow our facial hair. I think we should all take advantage of it.
Not surprisingly, I've had a beard, by far, for most of my adult life. Last week, I did something I do every so often, but very rarely: I shaved it off. The last time I did this was over five years ago.
The strangest reaction I usually get is the question, "Why did you shave?" It's not the question itself, so much, as it is the tone that accompanies it. It's as if I did something very odd and very weird--like cutting off my eye lashes or something. I suppose it's because these people see the beard as such a fixture on me, that they can't quite understand it. It's akin to if I pulled off my ears or something that wasn't grown as a voluntary option.
It's kind of understandable, because it really has been more-or-less a constant over the last decade. And a lot of us fall into that trap. But it doesn't start that way. We don't start out thinking, "I will have this for years and years and years."
Consider, most of us go our first 16 or 17 or 18 years without any facial hair. We may start shaving a bit at 15, but it's often years before we can grow something respectable. Then, when we get to the point where we are growing something of substance, we tend to grow for short runs of time. We measure in months, at first. In those early days, my friends and I would grow a beard for, perhaps, about a semester or so and think that we had it for a very long time...and then we'd decided it "had to come off" and that it was time to see our faces again. So we'd get out the razor.
Back then, it was common to go six months on, six months off on a good long run, perhaps.
But then, little by little, the "on" period grows at the price of the "off" period. One day you turn around and realize it's been years since your last shave.
I know not everyone fits that description—but a lot of us do. I know you know people who you've never seen clean shaven.
I used to discuss beards back in college with another bearded brethren, and we used to agree that it was important to wipe your faced clean every now and then—mustache included.
"A lot of guys will go back and forth taking the beard off," he told me back in the early 1990s, "But they NEVER remove the mustache."
He was right. I know a lot of guys in my father's generation like that. Like my father, himself, since about 1973.
The reason why these people go 20, 30 years without cleaning up? I'm certain of the answer. FEAR! Have you ever gotten a drastic hair cut and were nervous about showing up at work or school the next day? That's NOTHING compared to the severity of removing hair on your face, around your mouth. You can really, really freak people out. And that is scary.
But, I don't want to be one of those people who is afraid to shave anymore than I already am—which I am to a degree. So once in a while, I've got to bite the bullet and take it all off. And you've got to remind all your friends and co-workers who see you a certain way that you—like your adolescent self—are a person that doesn't need to be hiding behind whiskers if he doesn't want to.
But when I do get around to shaving it off, I also do it because I want to shave it off. Mostly because I miss not shaving.
People get confused by that last line, saying, "Wait! Isn't it the other way around? You grow it because you miss not shaving, right?" Absolutely not!
The truth is, I like letting the scruff grow in. I like getting to not shave and have the sandpaper thing happening. You can't do that with a beard, and you actually have to do more (despite popular opinion) to maintain it than the clean shaven person does. Because, unless you're just going completely natural, you've got to keep it trimmed to length, shaped properly, evenly symmetrical, etc. When not raising a beard, I used to shave without my glasses or contacts. But with a beard, it's way to risky to groom yourself "blindly."
So I take it off because I like to not shave. And also because I like playing around and growing different things in and out—like sideburns of varying lengths, long mustaches, etc. After all, we've come full circle to the original point: what fun is it to be male and never take advantage of the facial hair privilege??
The beard will be back, though. Maybe in weeks, maybe in months...I don't know when. But we'll do the cycle over and over again.
Thanks for reading.
posted by Steve @ 10:21 PM
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