Ryan Rastok rarely has a clean-shaven face. He’s embraced his facial hair, letting his beard grow until it is so long it gets caught in his coat’s zipper. Then he’ll shave it into a handlebar mustache, or a fu man chu. He’ll have big sideburns or a skinny, pointed, Salvador Dali-esque mustache. Then he’ll grow out his beard three or four inches again before shaving it into a long, skinny beard. This cycle has continued for the past decade.

Rastok, Lawrence senior, says he shaves his facial hair because he gets bored with a regular beard and likes to do something interesting. Plus, he says shaving every day is painful and irritates his skin. He also says handlebar mustaches look pretty silly and always get a few laughs.

However, the shock value of his impressive and creative facial hair doesn’t faze his mother anymore. “We’ll be talking and three minutes later I’ll come back with a mustache,” Rastok says. “She just rolls her eyes.”

We’re in a wave of fuzziness, says Allan Peterkin, author of One Thousand Beards and The Bearded Gentleman: The Style Guide to Shaving Face. Peterkin is also a pogonologist, a person who studies beards. He says men of all sexual orientations and ethnicities have embraced this “wave.” But these men, unlike the sea captains and Santa Clauses of the world, like to play with different facial hair styles both as a way to change their look and to express themselves. “It’s a way of saying, ‘I’m no corporate slave. I’m free to express myself as I see fit,’” Peterkin says.

Every man encounters facial hair with different experiences, role models, film, sport and music stars, Peterkin says. “These days, men wear facial hair playfully, with irony,” he says. “It’s masculine, but not overly serious or macho.”

However, not everyone thinks of facial hair as a joke. Gavon Laessig, 2002 graduate, was inspired to grow his distinctive thick handlebar mustache after seeing the HBO series Deadwood. The series is a western set after the civil war, and impressive beards and intricate mustaches decorate most of the male cast’s faces. “I’m a fan of Lawrence’s history and the Civil War era,” he says. “Growing this mustache is my way of getting touch with history.”

In our society, making the choice to keep facial hair is like making a statement about being an individual, says Christopher Oldstone-Moore, pogonologist and professor of history focusing on masculinity at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Individualism is associated with facial hair because everyone’s facial hair is unique and grows differently.

Because facial hair varies on every face, Oldstone-Moore says most men try to grow facial hair at least once not only to see what it looks like, but to see if they can even grow decent facial hair.

“Nine out of 10 compliments I get are from men,” Laessig says about his mustache. “It’s not easy for all men to grow facial hair. It comes in blonde or patchy, or they’re afraid to do it for jobs. It’s a little admiration and a little envy.” And of all of his styles of facial hair, Rastok says his mountain man beard gets the most compliments, probably because some guys can’t grow their own.

The wave of fuzziness shows no signs of slowing down, Peterkin says. Though men seem to appreciate facial hair of all shapes and styles, women’s opinions vary. Younger women experienced this facial hair boom — from the grunge and goatee of the 90s to the mountain men and throw-back mustaches of the millennium. Peterkin says these women like facial hair much more than their mothers and grandmothers, who preferred the all-American, clean shaven look.

However, Oldstone-Moore says recent research shows that women look for two different things. “They indicate their ideal is a man who can have a beard, who is clearly mature and manly in someway,” he says. “But he doesn’t actually have a beard.”

Rastok’s fiancé has dealt with his facial hair from the beginning. He says she’s learned to deal with the ridiculous styles, but kissing with both a long beard and a clean shaven face can be complicated. Long beards get in the way, and stubbled faces lead to scraping. “She likes it long enough where it won’t scratch her but short enough that I don’t look homeless.”

Bearded faces say a lot about a person: not only that they’re independent, but also as masculine and tough. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, particularly when looking for work. “You don’t see beards in banks or politics,” Peterkin says. “There are still some negative associations, like a bearded man must have something to hide.”

Experiments done by The Beard Liberation Front in London show that men with beards were disfavored in job interviews. Peterkin suggests trimming and tidying a beard before a job interview.

Or you might get lucky, like Laessig, whose employer did not include facial hair when they wrote the dress code. “It’s tolerated. I’m lucky I don’t have to shave it off,” he says.