More than half of men now sport facial furniture, but are they on trend? Photo / Supplied
This was one of the most read stories of 2023 on nzherald.co.nz.
Opinion:
There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure...but it is never safe to make an assumption about how the different generations feel about anything, from vegans to scented candles.
This week Christopher Howse and Guy Kelly stroke their chins and ponder the merits of a beard.
I was shocked to read that the majority of men now wear a beard, even though I’ve had a beard for a long time and grown rather attached to it, or it to me.
I seem to remember that my mother had a dilemma in arranging the blanket in my pram: should it be with my little beard inside or outside?
Perhaps this memory was implanted later. But the one expectation of being a lifelong beard-wearer, or pogonotrophist to use a simpler term, is that beards would never be fashionable.
So it was surprising to see many men wandering about behind beards as this century grew older. In 2013 peak beard was declared. It was in 2013 that Prince Harry grew one. He later described it as ‘like a shield to my anxiety’.
It proved more like a sprat to sealions, attracting loud, excitable honks from old buffers who denounced its incompatibility with military uniform. Harry insisted on wearing both at his wedding, but as a compromise Meghan Markle wore neither.
Then came the pandemic, when many people stopped doing anything: getting dressed, putting the cork back in the wine, going out except to bang a saucepan. It was widely believed that coronavirus regulations prohibited shaving. Perhaps they did.
We are now left with badly behaved lockdown dogs and a majority of men with facial hair. This apparently debars them from high office. No one in the UK Cabinet has a beard, except James Cleverly.
Labour even defines itself as beardless, in contrast to its previous leader, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Obviously in a rational world anyone called Keir would by law be required to wear a beard, or they’d get the glory without the effort.
Keir Hardie, the Labour Party hero, led with his beard and was not ashamed to wear a funny little deerstalker too. But today, Sir Keir would melt with embarrassment at wearing beard or hat, and Keir Mather MP is too young for either.
As the current beardies age, I’ll be washed up by the receding tide of fashion, as though I insisted on a mullet. Survival makes for strange beardfellows.
Well well, well, who’s the hipster now? I knew the day would arrive eventually – beards becoming the mainstream; clean-shaven the mark of a maverick.
Christopher’s chin duster may be so famous as to make him recognisable even in Matt cartoons, but the recent YouGov poll proves it also makes him, as the kids say, basic AF.
My satiny, is-that-not-Dewey-from-Malcolm-in-the-Middle look, on the other hand? In 2023, it’s subversive.
I don’t have a huge amount of choice – I’m fairly certain I could no sooner grow a new, resplendent beard using my actual, existing face than I could grow a new, resplendent Mary Beard using imagined, yet-to-be invented cloning technology. And I know which one society would prefer.
I did try once. About a decade ago, travelling in India, laden with a sense the experience would not count unless I returned looking ready for duty in ZZ Top, I threw the razor away. The result? Charred and fluffy, imagine a pork scratching bound in beaded necklaces.
Growing up, this wasn’t an issue. The most prominent facial hair-wearers in public life were Noel Edmonds, Gerry Adams, Captain Pugwash and Saddam Hussein.
Pugwash aside, these were neither role models nor pin-ups. Closer to home, my dad was (and is) as bearded as a warlock. I have seen him without it only once, and for a terrifyingly short time. It reminded me of that scene in The Simpsons when Homer shaves: the entire thing sprang back in seconds, like a time-lapse of bread rising.
Then came the bearded hipster years and I floundered. I was blacklisted from whole areas of east London between 2011 and 2017. Every autumn, alpha males all around me would commit to ‘Movember’, a month-long peacocking exercise disguised as a fundraising challenge.
I would make excuses: ‘I can’t this year, lads, I’m in rehearsals to play Viola in Twelfth Night at Stratford…’ ‘Ah, no thank you, I’m actually pro prostate cancer…’
And now here I am. A minority figure. A silken rebel.
‘Nice beard,’ I can say to everybody, but especially to Christopher, ‘bit common, though, isn’t it?’
And it will feel fantastic. Just like a close shave.
The new free open-air saltwater pool is already proving popular.