National Post (National Edition)
Beard brotherhood grows impressively
EVERYONE CAN SPORT ONE AS EMPLOYERS RELAX RULES
Acouple years ago, media outlets around the world declared the beard trend had gone the way of manbuns, hoverboards and distressed jeans.
“Face it: Beard Trend is Finally Over According to Grooming Experts,” blared a headline in The (U.K.) Independent. “Beards Aren’t Cool Anymore,” opined Vice. Even the normally staid Wall Street Journal weighed in, asking its readers if “channelling a mountain man has overstayed its welcome.”
But a growing stable of beard-grooming products and guides, beard-related podcasts and beard competitions, plus an easing of beard restrictions in the workplace, suggest the beardculture-is-dead avowals may have been premature.
In fact, a just-published study in the journal Critical Studies, Critical Methodologies by a Canadian sociologist indicates there’s a thriving online beard brotherhood.
“There’s a flourishing culture there that’s not gone away and it seems to be growing,” says Christopher Schneider, a sociology professor at Brandon University in Manitoba. “Despite whatever media says or doesn’t say, the evidence online suggests otherwise.”
Far from pursuing bearding as a solitary endeavour, amateur beard enthusiasts are now coalescing around online forums where they support one another’s quests to grow one-year beards — or “yeards” — and share how-to advice on perfecting grooming techniques, says Schneider, who himself sports a full, seveninch beard — what he calls a “benign act of hairy defiance” after a divorce and an homage to his sociological forefathers, such as Marx and Weber, who wore long beards.
As part of his research, Schneider analyzed some 62,000 comments that viewers had left underneath videos posted on the Youtube channel of Beardbrand, an American men’s grooming company.
Whereas bearded men in the past typically operated outside of mainstream society — as motorcycle club members, artists and musicians — Schneider discovered bearded men today aren’t necessarily tied to a counter-culture.
Schneider says he was also hard-pressed to find much evidence of “toxic masculinity” in online beard clubs.
“It’s largely about embracing masculinity in spaces that are positive,” he said. “It’s not about promoting misogyny, it’s not antiwomen, it’s about, ‘Hey … let’s celebrate we can grow a beard.’ ”
In a podcast interview for the website, Art of Manliness, Allan Peterkin, a psychiatry professor at the University of Toronto and author of 1000 Beards: The Cultural History of Facial Hair, summed up contemporary beard culture as both an “act of rebellion and playfulness.”
“Part of what you are saying, I think, with facial hair is, ‘I’m no corporate slave. I can do this. My dad, my granddad had to shave to keep their jobs — I don’t have to do that, and I can be playful.’ And then there’s a whole notion of it being kind of … virile, masculine, sexy, that I can be unabashedly all those things as well with my facial hair.”
That said, Peterkin predicted it would still be a while yet before beards became ubiquitous among politicians or business executives. Because most leaders in the last century have been clean-shaven, the sudden appearance of facial hair still raises suspicions — “the whole notion is: what’s he hiding? You know, there must be something a little suspect, a little sinister.”
“There’s the notion of it being revolutionary, communist, you know, people always think of Fidel Castro, and then after 9/11, of course, there was this whole notion of … maybe he’s a terrorist.”
But more and more employers are beginning to relax their rules when it comes to facial hair. Among those who’ve OK’D a bit of scruff is the Canadian military, which announced in September it was easing restrictions to boost morale and attract younger people. Beards must, however, remain neatly trimmed and not exceed two centimetres in length.
That same month, Air Canada announced pilots would be able to sport beards, as long as they were tidy and no longer than 1.25 centimetres in length.
Another sign of beard culture’s staying power are the growing numbers of regional competitions that have sprung up that judge the appearance and “personality” of beards and moustaches — both au naturel and with the use of styling aids.
“It’s just going to keep getting better as people keep getting interested and having fun,” says Colin Geitzler, a.k.a Snidely Wildstache, who organizes an annual competition in Ottawa.
“I think there was a lot of misinformation about facial hair for a long time.”
Geitzler suggests the change in attitudes can be attributed to a number of things, including the annual “Movember” event when men grow moustaches in November to raise awareness about men’s health, the practice of athletes growing beards during playoff season, and the growing numbers of celebrities donning beards.
Even though some clubs seem geared more for heterosexual men (the Calgary Facial Hair Club boasts “we like beer and girls and bbq”), Geitzler says there’s been a real effort among beard clubs to be inclusive and that gay men now form a growing contingent.
Inafurtherefforttosoften their image, beard clubs hold a lot of charity fundraisers and other community events to put a “friendly face on the bearded face,” says Darrell Crawford, a retired IT worker in Newcastle, Ont., who sports a beard that reaches his sternum and is co-founder of the group Beard Team Canada, whose members participate in competitions around the world.
“A lot of the shame of wearing fur on your face has gone away.”
As with any trend, there’s the inevitable backlash. A columnist in the Tennessean newspaper a couple years ago wrote that he didn’t understand the big fuss over big fuzz, and declared that “beard culture is ruining beards.”
“Like any other form of personal expression or style, there is such a thing as trying too hard and ruining it for everyone. A beard should just be. Yes, trim it; yes, wrangle it to a form that best suits you; yes, grow it as long as you like, but please do not turn it into an art project or a ‘conversation piece,’” he wrote.
“By all means, rock the beard and keep it in shape the way you might a haircut. But beards don’t need entire podcasts dedicated to their ‘journeys.’”
EMBRACING MASCULINITY IN SPACES THAT ARE POSITIVE.