Comments

1
Just get some opinions from friends and a good stylist regarding what looks good ON YOU (which will change with time) and don't just copy your favorite sportsball star, cinema idol, revolutionary, or arch-villain. I kept a Van Dyke for way too long in the nineties and early aughts, though it was seasonal—on in the fall, off in the spring. And learn how to maintain it yourself in between haircuts.
2
I grew a champeen beard in 2012/2013. I had nothing left to prove, so I shaved it. The beard era is over.
3
I must say, the beard fad is a lot less annoying than the designer-stubble fad of the 90s.
4
Civilized crappy white men sculpt their facial hair with electric razors and such. Be natural and grow it out, even if it's just some small pubic hairs like your face Paul.
5
Beards are fine when you're young, but when you're older and getting white/gray hair, it's time to give it up for an attempt to grow one makes you look like something between Santa Claus and a Skidrow bum.
6
I am excited for the inevitable rise of the unibrow.
7
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
8
Like Paul, I've always been unable to grow facial hair, so it's sort of a fetish with me. Coming of age in the 60;s & 70;s didn't help! Now, Forty-some years later, thanks to a brain tumor, I'm on testosterone supplement--and I now have body hair (light) and a nice moustache. No beard in sight, But I love my mustache. It's a fair trade for brain surgery.
9
@8
That's pretty fascinating. I know two people who have had brain surgery. For better or worse, it's not the subject I like to press in order to get more information. But I still want to know. Maybe you could talk further on your brain surgery, considering that blog writing usually has less inhibitions than speech.
10
I have a beard and I am alarmed at the proliferation of beards.
11
Beards rule, nancy boy. Go back to shaving your little balls and leave us men alone!
12
@11
Are you kidding? I thought you were a woman the entire past two years we've been trading jabs.
13
Peak beard? Have we so quickly forgotten the late 90's/early 2000's war on body hair? I'm never going back to that plucked chicken nightmare.
14
Don't care either way about beards, but the schmucks sporting handlebar mustaches need to be rounded up and gassed.
15
My wife likes my beard, so your opinion is invalid.
16
No one insisted that you get a facial hair transplant to look like a "real man," did they Paul?

So, stop trying to bring back the post-WWII "doughboy" look that has plagued the visual landscape for decades.

If you like men who look like boys, you'll find plenty of them at college campuses, military bases, conservative churches and right-wing political groups...fashion shows and gay dance clubs on Friday nights.

Men have enough body issues and obsessions being forced on them these days without you trying to add another coerced conformity back to the list.

Leave the happy, handsome and hursuit alone, Ms. Letourneau.

Some of us love our fuzzy men just the way they are.
17
@12 And I thought you were an illiterate troll. Well, at least one of us is right.
18
What is really awful are full beards on men with shaved heads.
19
The latest beard fad and Movember gave me cover to stop shaving for a while a couple of years ago. I looked scraggly and awful for a while, and then I had a beard. I look so much better with a beard, it is undeniable. Since growing the beard, I have a better job, a boyfriend, and a confidence in my face that I never had bare-faced.

You can pry my beard from my cold, dead face.
20
@18

You have every right not to be attracted to someone.

You don't have the right to tell an entire gender to conform to your idea of what is attractive.

Haven't women and gay men suffered enough demands on their appearance to know better than to add more to this world of unhealthy obsessions?
21
Can we talk about moustaches, too? Moustaches on cars, posters, t-shirts, phone cases. That shit isn't cute anymore.
22
You can always tell what's happening by watching baseball. When baseball players adopt a grooming trend, it's just about over. It was true with shoulder-length hair in the 70s, goatees in the 90s, and gigantic mountain-man beards today. Half the players today have 'em; even Felix Hernandez has grown as much as he can, even if it's a scruff on the tip of his chin. The cool dudes are going to be beardless very soon.
23
So, how much is Gillette paying you, Paul?

Traitor.
24
It isn't beards, per se, that I hate. It's the fact that only a small percentage of beards actually look good on the guy in question. The ratio is terrible. For every guy I see that rocks a great beard, there seems to be a dozen guys with shitty, scraggly, wanna-be beards that look completely wrong for their face.

Even worse is the faux 3-day growth of facial hair that is meant to look rugged, I guess. It looks ridiculously silly on any guy, and as a bonus it feels like sandpaper to kiss. Either grow a beard or do not grow a beard, but for fucks sake don't do the faux 3-day thing. Just don't.

25
@22

Sad, but likely true. Few men have the testicular fortitude just to be themselves, comfortable in their own skin.
26
@24 My husband does the faux 3-day thing, and yes, it feels like sandpaper to kiss. And I love it!
27
Wearing a beard isn't a problem, but the current trend to really ugly beards is.
28
FWIW, being lazy I do the real 3-day growth thing, and then a couple more days, and then a couple more, and then a bad job of mowing it all off, and then a day or two of plausibly clean shaven, and then lazy again.
29
Dare to dream. But I've been waiting like 10 years for flip flops to go back out of fashion as regular street wear with no luck.
30
The only thing worse than a beard is a walrus mustache. Those just scream "redneck". But then so do Duck Dynasty beards.
31
@24: my complaint isn't the wispy, scraggly beards; it's the over-sculpted, I-don't-understand-where-the-bottom-edge-of-a-beard-should-sit-on-my-neck douche beards. or those where the bearer doesn't understand that combing and trimming are good things.
32
I've had a beard since 1982. I had no idea there were rules.
33
@30

Before "Duck Dynasty" grew manly beards for their pseudo-reality show every one of them were clean-shaven, short-haired right-wing Republicans living in their upper middle-class gated suburb and dressed in Gap-like clothes.

They are desperately trying to look like the men that they are not, but their clean-shaven, right wing selves keep showing from beneath those beards.

Not everything that looks like a duck is a duck.
34
@32

For real men, there aren't.

A man who shapes himself to the critique of popular, public opinion is quickly whittled away to nothing.
35
Thankfully, I'm lucky to be pretty enough I dont need "enhancing" with a face full of stanky pubes. Fuck looking like Eddie Rabbit.
36
My beard gets me so laid so often that any suggestion to remove it is never seriously considered. Even if it's a trend about to go into decline, the massive beard has been good to me.

I grew up in the 70s/80s when the prevailing thought was "a man with a beard is hiding something". In my aged wisdom I realize that the dick who said that probably couldn't grow a beard, and was compensating for his own shit.

We won't have hit peak beard until we've got some Rutherford B. Hayes beard action going on in the White House again.
37
@22 Fnarf I came here to make exactly that comment; well done. Don't forget how long the Van Dykes held on in baseball though. Expect the neck-beards to last in baseball for the next 10 years.
38
@35

Eddie Rabbit?

Wow, The Stranger has a staff member whose eligible for retirement.

Don't be hating on what you don't have, grandpa.
39
The BBC? Really, Paul?

Londoners don't sport beards because they can't grow a proper one.

Burly Englishmen with broad shoulders, full beards and hairy arses may visit London, but they're not from there. But, it is a blessed sight when they're about town.
40
I just grew a beard for the first time two months ago (I'm 39); not because of any fashion sense, but because I had a bunch of oral surgery and it fucking hurt to shave. Surprisingly, my wife really liked the beard so I think I'm gonna keep it. I dig the extra five minutes of sleep not shaving gives me in the morning, and I've sort of gotten over the initial itchiness. I will not be growing it out long though, I don't know how girls (and guys) could put up with that bushy feel. Short and trim suits me.
41
@5: I've had some sort of facial hair almost continually since I was a high school kid in 1979. It's gray/white, of course, now but that's OK. I'm happy with it and my family and friends either approve or are too polite to say so if they don't, and that's all that matters.
42
@18- Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
43
I grew a beard this weekend because my body finally let me. Don't take this away from me. Please.
44
I grow a creepy Christian-cultist neck beard. It sucks. I want a mountain man beard.
45
I've had a beard since 1980. Yeah, and now it's gray. Fuck style.
46
Will Self On (Seattle) Beards: http://lineout.thestranger.com/lineout/a…
47
Personally, I hope Tyroshi or Ghiscari fashions start to take over, and we start seeing flamboyantly colored and shaped facial hair.
48
I usually don't notice beards all too much unless they're REALLY unruly or crazy-looking. Even then, I'm not offended by them. Live and let live.
49
you think it's bad in seattle? have you been to portland lately?
50
@9 The growth in question crushed my pituitary gland. We found it only because I had no T and my breasts were growing and feeling like I was about to lactate. I had asked the Dr. if I should adopt a puppy so as not to waste the milk. He ran for the phone and started ordering tests. So, after all that I have a moustache. And boobs. You know what T and all the other drugs I get have as a side effect? "May cause breast enlargement." Oh, well. I've never been a beach boy, anyway, and I'm not about to sign up for more surgery. I take my drugs, comb my 'stache and wonder when things will get bad enough to require a bra. The good news--everybody likes boobs, including gay men, so....
51
I thought all the people with beards in Seattle were lesbians?!?
52
bear hair is important for men for not shaved becouse of you health bear hair protect prain cancer and skin cancer islam they practice long time ago you 2 ask who told them dat

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