I mentioned when reporting on the movie Safe that every couple of years, I decide to grow some facial hair. I mean, it’s the fashion. The same people who mocked Duck Dynasty ten years ago for the long beards have grown them out, followed by the tech trend setters like Jack Dorsey. As I’ve said before, I would believe that the elites were not angling for another Civil War again if only they were not growing their beards out for it.
As I said on June 17, I was growing it out.
By then I had three days’ growth which was invisible:
I have grown facial hair on occasion in the past. I mean, I do come from Wisconsin, where facial hair has been fashionable forever because it keeps your face warm in the winter. My father would shave down to a moustache in the spring, but come September or so, he was growing the full beard for duck and deer season.
I never grew facial hair out as a young man, so I never suffered from abortive attempts wishing it would grow in. My nephew and godson, who is getting to be almost thirty now, tried for years to fill out a beard and only recently has gotten enough to look like Hank Williams, Junior; I don’t know if that was his intent, but it’s the result.
The first time I really grew it out, aside from not shaving for a couple of days, was in 2009, when my mother was ill. I grew out a beard, then I shaved it to a Fu Manchu, then I cut it down to a moustache. My mother said I looked good in a beard, so I grew it back out. I shaved it all off after looking at myself in the mirror of a bathroom at the St. Anthony’s ICU and thinking that a bearded man crying was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen.
Still, every couple of years, I’ve grown it out. When my youngest was in pre-kindergarten, I wore a Van Dyke for a couple of months–I have a couple of pictures of me wearing it, including a car selfie with the urchin in a car seat and a picture that the school took on Spirit Week because I had tie-dyed a white collared shirt–the school stood me between the first grade teacher and the principal dressed in outdated fashions; I have my hands clasped in front of me, and I’m not smiling, so I look like I’ve just been arrested for killing a cartoon. As I said, I wore that for a long time, long enough to get my picture on my driver’s license taken with it.
I grew one out three or four years ago, briefly, but again long enough for me to get it onto my government contractor ID when I went to Leavenworth to get it, but I cut it off when I mistakenly set the my trimmer too low. I didn’t have it for very long at that time, either.
Generally, the cycle is this:
- For laziness, whether it’s because I don’t shave for a couple of days or because I want to speed up my shaving in the morning by a minute or so, I decide to grow it out. Or I watch a Jason Statham movie.
- It takes a week to actually be noticeable.
- When the facial hair becomes visible, I imagine women smile at me differently, with more of a sparkle in their eyes, as perhaps I better fit the mold of the modern manly, which is mostly facial hair. I have not tried the look with one of my flannel shirts that I sometimes wear around the house in winter; perhaps I should next time. Which will probably be when facial hair is out of fashion again.
- About two weeks in, I start to think, “What is this thing on my face?” Even when I trim it, I can feel the hair on my lips at the corners, and it annoys me. This time, I trimmed it pretty short instead of letting it get long enough to fold over, which also meant that my poor wife suffered a couple of weeks of prickly kisses.
- I shave it off.
So, gentle reader, we have reached the end of Brian’s Beard Adventure 2021. How did it look at the end? Well, less like Rutherford B. Hayes and Phil Robertson than Jason Statham.
Actually, it’s not even that noticeable after two weeks in certain lights.
This iteration also featured a new twist: Wow, that’s a lot of white. I don’t have a lot of white in my hair–I don’t sport a lot of hair to see white in–but the beard has a bunch of distinguishing looking.
At any rate, it’s back to smooth face for me. I think I look younger without the beard after having done the A/B testing.
And I’ve always been more influenced by Rome than Greece anyway.
