Boldly bearded and shamelessly mustached

By Zach White

Thursday, March 12, 2009

I look around at my fellow revelers at the Replay Lounge. I see two bearded men sitting at the bar, laughing. In the corner, a man with a mustache smokes a cigarette. Two more mustached gentlemen sit along the wall and discuss favorite musicians. In fact, it appears that more than half of those able to grow facial hair in this establishment have done so.

These sightings are not mere isolated instances. Bewhiskered fellows can be seen all over Lawrence. They sell you tacos. They style your hair. They even serve on the Lawrence City Commission. Our town is run by the fuzzfaces.

photo

Photo by Chance Dibben

Facial hair comes in all kinds of styles and colors, from mustache-dominant patterns to full-on beards.

It seems that after 30 years of hibernation, the hair is back. It is so back.

Just how back is it? As the American Mustache Institute, a pro-mustache advocacy group, points out on their website, www.americanmustacheinstitute.org, the 2008 Academy Awards brought us the first mustached Best Actor winner since Paul Newman won in 1987, with Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Heck, facial hair has appeared in some form on People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive list—including Hugh Jackman to Matthew McConaughey—for the past four years. It doesn’t get any more official than that, does it?

In the world of motion pictures, the incubation of hair on the faces of famous people has also been sweeping the biz. Such immensely popular faces, such as those of George Clooney and Brad Pitt, have been covered. The anti-shaving movement has also been sweeping the world of music, with many notable indie acts sporting some distinctive styles, including Iron and Wine, The Flaming Lips and The New Pornographers. Even more mainstream acts have been jumping the ol’ wagon. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, Brandon Flowers of The Killers and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie have all been recently sporting some all-natural chin covers.

The 1970s were a golden era for facial hair of all colors. America filled its movie houses to sit in quiet appreciation of such legendary mustaches as Burt Reynolds’. They tuned in each night as the news came forth from underneath Walter Cronkite’s mustache, as if it were acting as a sieve, distilling the truth to its most reliable form. Where rock ‘n’ roll had its Ted Nugent and Frank Zappa, disco had ABBA and its bearded king Barry Gibb. The country had flown into face fur frenzy. And for those with the look, things were good.

Then, in 1981, “Uncle” Walter Cronkite left the CBS Evening News, and took his mustache with him. This was the first step in the fall of the follicles and the rise of the razor. At least that’s the way Aaron Perlut, chairman of the American Mustache Institute, sees it.

“Cronkite retired and it seemed like all of the mustached newsmen went away,” Perlut says. “And it just kind of steamrolled until mustaches were deemed uncool.”

The following two decades, the hair had a difficult time reaching outside the realm of blue collar labor and secondary math and science education. The men came back, or rather, the hair did, bursting out of the cheeks and chins of America’s men like the sprouts of a new spring, after a particularly harsh and trying winter.

Driven by the Internet and pride in their innate masculine abilities, men across the nation began participating in month-long celebrations of this hair, such as “No Shave November” and “March Mustache Madness.” In fact, nearly every month has established reasons to grow, so there is no excuse to shave. Ever.

Festivals have been established in honor of the hair and the men who grow it.

Since the late ’90s, an international competition, the World Beard and Mustache Championships, has been held biennially in locations across Europe and the United States. Started in Germany, the competition, divided into 17 categories, continues to be dominated by the Germans each time. The competition in 2007 featured the first competitors from the United States. And the next round is to be hosted this May in Anchorage, Alaska.

The American Mustache Institute hosts one such event, the annual ‘Stache Bash in St. Louis, Missouri. Not so much a competition, the event is more an excuse to get together and have some drinks with several hundred people who have a similar interest in the advancement of hairy faces. Aside from admiring masculinity, it is also a charity function. The money raised by the event goes to Challenger Baseball, a St. Louis baseball league for people with disabilities.

And it is not the first time that a man’s natural ability to yield hair with absolutely no effort has been used to help others. Since 1999, a group called Mustaches for Kids has been accepting monetary pledges from friends, family and well-wishers to donate to charities. In doing so, the group has raised more than $150,000 for various children’s groups.

During last year’s television writers’ strike, the chin-ful was once again utilized to aid a cause. Late night talk show hosts Conan O’Brien and David Letterman stopped shaving for the duration of the strike to show their sympathy for their staff’s cause.

Not everyone is so noble in their growings, though. Most people’s reasons for fostering their follicles fall between vanity and laziness. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Gavon Laessig, a writer for Lawrence.com and local purveyor of fine facial coverings, is rarely seen about town without some sort of decoration adorning the lower reaches of his face. Recently, he shaved his mustache in order to move in a more beardy direction. For him, facial hair is an accessory, a distinctive complement to one’s overall look. Whereas women have makeup, all manner of jewelry and a number of hair-oriented accessories, Laessig is of the mind that we must work with what our gods gave us.

Nick Kellerman, a Kansas City, Kansas, junior, studying Japanese, thinks similarly.

“People associate all of their clothing and things as ways to define yourself as a man, and what better way to do that than with facial hair,” says Kellerman, who has personally been growing sideburns since the age of 16, inspired by Elvis Presley, and braving some ridicule at the time.

And though the reception to his facial hair around here may have warmed recently, he actually just returned from a land of little appreciation for it. Kellerman spent a year abroad in Asia, where he was forced to bear the brunt of Eastern prejudices. Kellerman says in those exotic cultures, facial hair is considered dirty and suitable only for an old man, which coincidentally became his nickname among the company he kept. He also says most of the guys he met had a bit of difficulty growing facial hair. So this writer suspects a mere case of jealousy.

Aside from a completely logical idolatry of the King, Kellerman holds a few more reasons for his sported scruff.

“It keeps you warm in winter,” he says, “and if your relationship is going too good, it can give your girlfriend something to bitch about.”

Which brings up one of the pitfalls of a man’s pursuit of facial greatness. What will the ladies think?

Perlut of the American Mustache Institute says he believes that most women find the mustache objectionable and that men who wish to have something on their face will engage in what he calls the “spousal compromise” of a full beard. He also believes these men to be weaker-willed and at odds with the essential principles—for example, that the beard is weaker than the mustache—of the Institute.

Sarah Hicks, Bennington freshman, corroborated Dr. Perlut’s assessment.

“I don’t mind, I guess,” Hicks says. “I don’t think I’d be attracted to it.”

She did, however, express an interest in trading natural abilities.

“If guys would carry a baby for nine months and we’d get facial hair, I’d switch,” she says.

Joshua Anderson, Perry junior, says his wife possesses a similar kind of ambivalence toward his beard, with a hint of positivity. This works for Anderson, as he possesses one of the most popular styles of facial hair in the Lawrence area: the “laziness beard.”

The laziness beard is the official facial hair of those who prefer to ask not, “Why grow facial hair?”, but rather, “Why shave? Why go through the effort of scraping hairs from your face, day after day?”

The laziness beard can be recognized by its uniform length and complete lack of signs of grooming. This is because it is never groomed.

It would be very easy and possibly offensive to confuse an ordinary laziness beard with a beard that is grown as a religious practice. Certain Orthodox groups of Judaism do not allow shaving, as it is prohibited in the Talmud. Monks of Orthodox Christianity refuse to shave their facial hair as a demonstration of their lack of concern with the values of this world, and highlight their focus on the next.

The act of growing facial hair as an act of rebellion is not limited to those following some divine law. Such secular facial rebellion was quite popular in the ultra-rebellious 1960s, and has been carried on by both fans of the era, and those that see some similarities between our world and that one.

The American Mustache Institute has launched campaigns to fight this discrimination.

In one case, a high school student in Royse City, Texas, was forced to leave class to go shave his mustache. The student, Sebastian Pham, proceeded to approach the Institute to intercede on his behalf. The Institute sent an e-mail to the school board about how it felt the school’s actions were discrimination. The incident led to a comment on the Institute’s blog, allegedly from a school district employee, bringing up homosexual connotations of facial hair. There was no official policy change.

Another cause picked up by the Institute was that of a police officer from Sylvania, Ohio, being suspended for having too stupendous a mustache and refusing to do anything about it.

The Institute’s objection again led to no real change.

Because it is 2009, KU students, Lawrence city commissioners, our mustached U.S. attorney general and even this writer are all joining hands with millions of men across this country to let the world know we will not shave.

Comments

David_Traver (anonymous) says...

We have yet to have a competitor from the great state of Kansas! Are there no high caliber moustaches,goatee's or beards worthy of representing this fine parts of the United States? Missouri is at least sending one so far! Will you all let the Europeans run away with another world championships again! Well then get off your butt's and register at www.akbeardclub.com This event probably wont be back for at least eight years in the U.S.A.

David Traver
V.P Southcentral Alaska Beard and Moustache Club

March 13, 2009 at 9:40 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Advertisement