To Beard or Not To Beard

People with beards have something to hide, or so the saying goes. I will not deny this for myself, but I might argue that some of them are actually revealing an essential truth about themselves rather than covering something up. In America, 1 in 10 men have beards, an ornamental preference that is often popularly associated with “letting yourself go” – think Al Gore after the 2000 election. I've heard it said that one doesn't choose to have a beard, one chooses not to. There are some men that don't have beard-growing in their genotype, but if they do, simply living creates one. It is not having one that requires action. Hence, perhaps, another common perception of the bearded – we're just lazy.

I've had a beard for most of my adult life. Allowing it to grow out started as a kind of internal psychological experiment combating my sense of vanity. (Then, as now, most people think I look better - more attractive, younger, and with more visible emotional affect - without hair on my face.) I was 22 at the time, single, and living in Portland. There were, and still are, lots of bearded men in Oregon. So, even though it was spring – a time when many winter beards were being shaved, trimmed, or cropped into stylish Van Dykes, burly goatees, slick “soul patches,” or mustaches (ironic and otherwise) – I didn't stand out very much spending a few months growing facial hair. One of the first things I noticed was that all the other men sporting beards stood out to me as if highlighted. I was somewhat dismayed that the majority of these men seemed either hopelessly geeky, unkempt and homeless, or mentally unstable. “Crazy” is another quality commonly associated with the bearded. This can pertain to the bushy-faced, living-in-a-shack-in-the-wilderness-Unibomber type, or the well-groomed-but-devious-looking-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad type; either way, the cultural default is definitely the clean-shaven look and growing a beard typically puts one outside the mainstream.

The 20th century Armenian mystic philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff, maintained that there exist certain beneficial cosmic vibrations, the influences of which can only be absorbed either by the hair on a man's face, or the hair on the top of the head when it is exceptionally long – the thicker gauge, specialized cilium of a beard acting like a fibrous antenna array for receiving these frequencies. In anatomy, the anterior-most area of the chin is called the mental point. Perhaps this is why stroking one’s beard is so helpful during active mentation, the manual tweaking of the array serving to fine-tune the signal as though adjusting the dial on a radio. Looking at a picture of Rasputin doing this, with his piercing gaze, black frock, and fingers encrusted with occult-symbol-emblazoned rings, hand entwined in his goaty mane, it does indeed seem he is receiving some esoteric, galactic transmission.

After living with a beard for some months, I observed another notable phenomenon. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the length of my whiskers and the amount of attention I received from the opposite sex. The longer my beard, the less flirting I enjoyed, until eventually there were no more interested glances, no more unsolicited compliments, no more coy smiles. I may as well have been invisible. Well, not completely invisible, of course. The crazy-looking guys with the woolly, Grizzly Adams facial fuzz would still talk to me about their pet conspiracy theories, but that was not a trade I had intended to make. My burgeoning bristles did seem to mirror, however, an increasingly self-reflective phase I was entering.

That summer, I quit my job, moved into my rust red, '83 Honda Civic Wagon, and migrated a few hours south to work as a wildland firefighter. Surfing the couches of friends and family while I waited for an emergency page, I spent a lot of time walking in the woods, communing with the trees – they seem to accept beards. In fact, trees seem to accept everything: wind, rain, sun, fire, treehouses, chainsaws. I had few responsibilities and was able to simply hang out at my friend's cabin in rural Oregon, reading books and contemplating my navel. As the course hair on my face lengthened, it seemed I was watching human dramas unfold as a dispassionate observer, as though the beard were exponentially distancing me from the realm of human affairs with each increment of its wily, determined growth.

After spending a few months out on forest fires with nary a woman in site, however, my contentment with the stoic company of trees and gruff firefighters gave way to a desire for more intellectual and emotional interpersonal engagement. Thus, when fire season ended, and I returned to civilization, I showered, shaved the year-long Brillo pad off my face, and headed to the grocery store. As I moseyed through the produce section, appreciating the lush selection of kales, chards, and beets, a voice asked, “What's for dinner?” It belonged to a young woman with chocolate tresses and bright green eyes picking through the apples, Honeycrisp in hand. Her tone was warm and casual, as though we were two friends seeing each other in the produce isle by chance.

“Soup,” I replied.

Believing us to be strangers, I moved on. Perhaps she had me confused with someone else?

In the bulk isle, I located the roasted, salted cashews and spooned a few cups into a plastic bag. A redhead scooping dried Bing cherries into a small, brown bag next to me asked: “You like the salty ones I see?”

“I blend them in soup,” I said. “I don't have to add salt that way.”

At that, she simply performed a slow nod before putting the bag of cherries in her grocery basket and moving away from me towards the boxed cereals.

“Why are these women behaving so strangely towards me?” I wondered. Needless to say, I felt like a complete jackass when it finally hit me what was going on. In my defense, I had spent the better part of the last year being utterly ignored by the opposite sex – not to mention communing with trees, and they don't flirt much.

After experiencing the consequences of my self imposed isolation, the relative merits of looking one's sharpest, if for no other reason than for the purpose of attracting a mate, seemed perfectly clear. But how is it, exactly, that a beard can be an obstacle to this? Certainly, there are women that find beards attractive. They must have historically been a relatively small minority because, though the trends of fashion ebb and flow with the tides of history, men have been shaving for a long, long time – the oldest razors discovered by archaeologists date to 30,000 B.C.E. This is not to say that impressing women is the only reason men started shaving.

In ancient India long beards were venerated and associated with virility and potency; a common punishment for adultery was to publicly cut them off. Full, bushy beards were a symbol of wisdom and health in ancient Greece until Alexander the Great began requiring his soldiers to shave, believing that a beard compromised a soldier's defense in hand to hand combat. Then it was necessary that all the slaves, who were previously made to shave, grow out their stubble lest they be mistaken for their masters. Thus, a sea change in facial fashion was initiated among not only the Greeks but all the conquered lands of Alexander's empire. Some centuries later, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, and Peter I of Russia, all laid a penalty for wearing a beard. Men wishing to keep their facial hair had to pay an annual tax for the privilege. Ultimately, however, when it comes to that perennial existential question - To beard or not to beard? - the most compelling logic seems to revolve around the multifarious dynamics of the human mating ritual.

Amish men maintain a clean shave until they marry, at which point their iconic facial ornamentation begins to take shape. I took a page out of the Amish play book in meeting my wife, Megan. Having been convinced of the necessity of shaving in order to attract a lady, I kept my face relatively free of stubble throughout the courting process. Once I was sure she wouldn't run away though, I started growing it out post-haste. When she was still my girlfriend, Megan nannied a two year-old named Ketchum. She came to visit me once in the store where I worked, and brought Ketchy along to introduce us. He took one look at me and started backing away, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” – glistening snot running down his pink, cherubic face, already turning scarlet. He was inconsolable and Megan had to take him back to the car in order to calm him down. The same or a similar scene occurred whenever he saw me after that, even from afar. What did I do?

Ketchy was somewhat of a late bloomer with regard to oral communication. He didn't talk much and it was difficult to parse the meaning of what little he did say. When Megan asked why he felt so terrified of me, he would just answer, “No!” Megan had some hypotheses that revolved around his having an attachment to her that I somehow threatened because she loved me and I took attention away from him when the three of us were together. I was never convinced by these postulations, however, and it remained an enigma that haunted me for a long time. Why was he so terrified of me? What was my principle concern, anyway – his trauma, or something more self-absorbed? When I looked at the situation honestly, I had to admit it was my injured ego.

Small children and domesticated animals almost always like me; at worst, they pay no attention to me. Other people may think I’m weird, arrogant, mean, stupid, crude, or rude – all of which are true at times – but I can usually count on little kids and pets to see beyond my appearance and occasional egoistic outbursts to my essential character. Perhaps this is why I was so upset by Ketchy’s response – was he seeing my essence and reeling back in horror? Several years later, Megan called Ketchy's mother to get a reference for job. His mother said that when Ketchy started talking more, she asked him why he was so afraid of me. His reply?

The beard.

That was it? The beard? No creepy uncle with a similar appearance? No red-bearded bogey men that stalked his dreams?

Nope, he was just scared of the beard. There is actually a psychological condition in which people suffer from a pathological fear of beards called pogonophobia – Pogon meaning beard in ancient Greek – perhaps Ketchy was thusly afflicted.

I like having a beard, and I think most men that can grow them look better wearing one. I prefer to have a beard, but it doesn't bother me to shave it. In fact, I rather enjoy the cognitive dissonance and disorientation it causes my wife and some of our friends when I do shave. Without first telling my wife that I was going to, I completely shaved my face one Halloween. She walked into the bathroom, lost in thought, just as I finished the last stroke of the razor across my chin. I turned my head towards her right as she looked up. Barely stifling a scream, she jumped back, startled, arms jerking to her chest with instinctive protection. As her shock gave way to amazement, the look on her face became one of unbridled attraction – she thinks I look much cuter without facial hair.

It can be fun to play with masks and different identities – Megan says I look so different with a naked face that it feels like she's cheating when we kiss. A problem arises, however, when we believe we are these masks and cannot see ourselves apart from them. Considering one's appearance may be a necessary evil for the purpose of achieving certain strategic ends - getting a job, attracting a mate, etc. - and enjoying inhabiting a certain look can be healthy and fun. But is it ever appropriate to become fully identified with it? Is it wise to invest ourselves so completely in some identity that it becomes the basis upon which our emotional well-being and sense of self-esteem depend?

Perhaps people with beards really are hiding something – the same thing everyone is hiding: a deep down fear that who we really are is somehow not good or whole or complete enough and needs to be disguised. But good enough for whom? Why do so many of us feel like we have to shave or cake on make-up or behave a certain way to be accepted? What are we looking for or trying to achieve through all this manipulation? And why do we feel like we need the security of an authority figure outside of ourselves to tell us what's what? The answers to these questions go way beyond the simple explanations that often take the place of meaningful resolutions to our existential dilemmas – the unsatisfied-need-for-approval-from-mommy-and-daddy, faux-Freudian pop-psychologizing that gets bandied about so casually and erroneously, or the immature projections of such dynamics onto an anthropomorphized god, to name just a few.

What if there are no easy answers to fundamental questions – questions that often require a lifetime of experience, introspection and relationships to even begin to understand. Direct, intuitive, experiential knowledge, what the ancient Greeks called gnosis, the quality from which true authority flows, is the only security I know of; it can actually be felt when in the presence of someone possessing a high degree of it. When combined with genuine humility, this kind of authority spontaneously inspires trust and deference. Assumed authority, on the other hand – the kind that most of us are used to encountering – incites fear, resentment, and rebellion, even if only unconsciously. Many of us spend our whole lives chasing after some measure of the second kind, often without ever having experienced or even known about the first.

Gnosis cannot be bought, borrowed, or lost, and can only be achieved through actual experience. Because it transcends rational thinking, it simply cannot be communicated through words in normal discourse; it can only be hinted at, alluded to, or transmitted, through mediums such as art, music, and poetry, possibly even a touch, a look, a smile.

Or sometimes, a beard.

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