Facial Hair Revisited

Feb 24, 2015
Over a year ago I was enough puzzled by men’s beards that I wrote about them, wondering why men would want facial hair and why women would be attracted to bearded men. A year later and I’m still confused. I realize that back at mankind’s dawning, body hair probably served as protection from cold weather, and shaving wouldn’t be necessary or practical at a time well before the advent of razors. But today we have clothes to keep us warm, and we have really fine razors. Yet men continue to grow hair on their faces in a wide variety of styles. I’m not a pogonologist (from the Greek pogonos for beard) nor would I want to be, but this present trend in men’s fashions still has me stumped. In golf, I see Gary McCord’s truly silly handlebar mustache

and wonder what that says about him. Wouldn’t anyone with whom he conversed be more fixated on the ‘stash than on what he was saying? The Canadian golfer Graham DeLaet

sports maybe the ugliest full beard of all bearded athletes, with Boo Weekley’s a close second. Last year, the Colts’ quarterback, Andrew Luck, grew a really ugly neck beard and kept it for the entire season. He has since come to his senses and shaved it off. Howie Mandel (America’s Got Talent) has no hair on his head but has a soul patch to make up for it. Golf analyst David Feherty

wears a goatee that’s well-groomed and attractive, as does Leo DiCaprio and George Clooney, but all three would look just as good without it. Johnny Depp’s goatee is an on-again, off-again thing, all depending on how he feels at the time (and he most often feels pretty strange). Tom Selleck’s full-brush mustache

has always been there and most of us probably wouldn’t recognize him without it. But how does he manage to keep it food-free? Harry Connick, Jr. (American Idol) typifies that three-day thing

that so many young men are wearing. It looks grubby, it looks uncomfortable, it looks like it would burn the hide off any woman he kissed. I wonder when this facial-hair trend will pass. Soon, I hope. I'll revisit this in another year. Meanwhile, I may have to comment on men's dreadlocks and ponytails.