What’s the hair hiding, bearded one?
There are a few options open to the middle-aged man faced with a state of bodily decline. If we rule out exercise and an improved diet as altogether too arduous and a challenge to habits of a life time, these narrow to the likes of the truss, the male girdle, the toupee and the dye bottle.
A new pair of dentures could well turn heads too, depending on one’s capacity to house them.
I have yet to embrace any of these.
However, recent photographs and that sinking feeling felt whenever the wife handed me her mobile phone still in selfie mode, flashing unwanted close-ups of double chins and pasty complexion, suggested something needed to be done.
Vanity is a cruel mistress.
The answer was stumbled upon.
Returning to a rainswept Hamilton of wintery temperature after a time elsewhere and succumbing to a mild dose of influenza, a fortnight was spent dodging the razor blade, fearful of a draughty bathroom.
Thus, five weeks shy of clocking up 52 years, there was an aesthetic breakthrough.
Against all odds and past experience, I grew a beard.
Whether out of sheer shock or a desperate need to register the point of difference, people have been kind and complimentary.
I have been told that ‘‘there is colour back in your cheeks’’.
The less hirsute have feigned envy.
Best of all: comparisons made with my prime cultural hero, possessor of one of last century’s most iconic facial growths, Orson Welles.
Welles, of course, grew a beard for the same reason most men of a certain girth do: to mask the jowls.
It is perhaps the reason that beards can be associated with the solid and the substantial. Biblical connotations, even in the postChristian era, also have on-going relevance. Abraham and Moses cast a long shadows.
Then there’s the undeniable impact of the Islamic faith.
In March of last year a chance encounter may well have had a longer term influence on me than I first thought.
Waiting for a kebab in a certain Ward St eatery, I suddenly realised the identity of the man sitting at an adjacent table.
It was unusual enough to see a woman in full burqa in a Hamilton restaurant, even more so when her husband was Hashim Amla, ground-breaking South African cricketer and possessor of one of the most powerful beards on the planet.
Considerable effort was required not to just stare in awe and amazement.
He was eating amongst us, effortlessly negotiating that famous facial hair.
In Orson Welles’ case, the beard and the voice only took him so far.
The master illusionist could never entirely distract his public from the excesses of the midriff. Kenny Everett, no respecter of geniuses, once made the ultimate Welles fat joke, padding himself up to a gargantuan size, assuming a false beard and walking onto a set lit like the Vienna of The Third Man.
With the Harry Lime theme playing on the zither, Everett addressed the camera in an appropriate stentorian manner, declaring ‘‘hello, I’m Orson Welles and you’re not. Thus, nature balances itself’’.
So, beards cannot achieve miracles.
Whatever their grativas, there’s always that sneaking suspicion that the bearded man is hiding something.
Consider their political track record. Abraham Lincoln had the good sense to leave the face relatively open, the Amish, sans moustache aesthetic striking an acceptable balance. He still seemed honest.
Compare that to the unkept fire brand look of Fidel Castro, the highly suspicious goatee of a Lenin or the arrogance of an Osama Bin-Laden.
In New Zealand history, the Liberal party essentially retired the beard.
After Richard John Seddon only one national leader, also a Liberal, dared attempt full facial hair and he only lasted a matter of months. Seddon managed the ultimate political trick, staying in the job so long that he became a trusted icon, despite his duplicity.
How amusing to be credited for the female franchise when he opposed it all along. Still, a lot of bearded old men thanked him for the pension, the genesis of our social welfare system.