A compelling examination of history, one whisker at a time
In the millennia since Socrates (allegedly) asserted that “the unexamined life is not worth living” ( just prior to swallowing the hemlock), we have, as a culture, become converts to the ongoing process of examination.
In the last hundred years or so, that examination has come to include the inner life, the minutiae of our personal existences explored along with the workings of science, culture and philosophy.
No detail is too small to escape rigorous attention.
Not even, according to Ohio-based academic Christopher Oldstone-Moore, the significance of human facial hair. Facial hair? Even mine? In his new book Of Beards and Men, Oldstone-Moore creates an epoch-spanning history of the humble (and not so humble) beard, beginning from the premise that “changes in facial hair are never simply a matter of fashion.”
In fact, Oldstone-Moore largely ignores fashion, instead tracing “slower, seismic shifts dictated by deeper social forces,” including the role of religion, politics, psychology and cultural heroes in shaping notions of manliness and respectability.
Of Beards and Menis a fascinating, occasionally dizzying depiction of the oscillation between acceptance and prohibition of facial hair. The shift, for example, between the cultural norm of a full beard for Greek men prior to the time of the smooth-cheeked Alexander the Great mirrors the recurring shifts of the acceptance of facial hair in the Christian faith.
The church fathers “promoted a positive view of facial hair as part of their assertion of a male-dominated gender order.” By the 11th century, shaving “was mandated for all churchmen.”
As compelling as Oldstone-Moore’s sweeping history is, Of Beards and Men is at its strongest when it zooms in to focus on individuals, including poet Walt Whitman, 19th-century cricketer William Gilbert Grace and, perhaps most delightful- ly, 11-year-old Grace Bedell, who in 1860, wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, suggesting “whiskers” would help Lincoln “look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president.” The rest, as they say, is history.
And it is as history that Of Beards and Men succeeds. Oldstone-Moore gives attention, but short shrift, to the current state of the beard, mired as it is in fashion and the moment.
Which leaves me still somewhat confused as to the true significance of the hair on my face, but time will tell.