Beards are the new Normal
It can just be a carefree attitude, or sheer laziness or even a fashion statement, but covid times are seeing more men grow their beards, perhaps because of the forced confinements at home as a fallout of WFH and nonavailability of hair-cutting shops and salons. But the stubble is gaining wider adoption. More and more celebrities from Hollywood to Bollywood to Kollywood to Tollywood, senior bureaucrats and CXOs of private firms and bankers, usually in their pinstripes and clean-shaven faces, are now sporting dishevelled beards and hairs. Facial hair has become trendy.
There is one view that growing a beard today is an act of amusement as there are no social events or get-togethers for people to relax. Bollywood stars like Akshay Kumar, Kartik Aaryan and Vicky Kaushal, among others, are growing their beards as they stay at homes.
Elsewhere, like in Hollywood, there are celebrities like Will Smith and Jim Carrey, who have decided to have beards and even announce the plan on social media.
While beards may get you an awesome look, there are alerts from the medical fraternity that they may get dirty and could potentially carry germs, maybe even corona virus. However, there is no evidence that people with beards are more at risk of contracting or passing along an infection more easily than their clean-shaven brethren.
There is a flip side as well. In normal times, a bearded executive was a person to get noticed in a banking firm, like for example the high-profile managers in banking companies like Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan. Now that more and more are getting on to the bandwagon, beards are becoming less of a differentiator and there are instances where some who have been growing beards for years have actually shaved them off. And these worthies are even publicising it on social media.
Here are pictures of men who have made a name resorting to growing a beard.