Thursday 20 March 2014

Beards and Beardmen

As a chap grows older, the world becomes an ever more bewildering place - not least in the matter of bizarre fashion trends. I remember when I first saw (in trendy Kensington, of course) a fellow with hugely distended earlobes into which he had thrust half-crown-sized discs. In need of a little care in the community, I thought, and took no more notice - until, within months, this form of self-mutilation had become quite commonplace and was to be seen everywhere.
 The trend that is now in the ascendant in all fashionable parts of the metropolis is the sporting of huge, bushy, boxy beards, set off by a short-back-and-sides haircut, sometimes with another growth of hair perched atop the head. The standard dress that goes with this follicular exuberance is a jacket several sizes too small, tight trousers and sturdy boots. What does it all mean? Are these fashion victims aiming to look like Wild West old-timers, in the manner of Luke, bearded stooge of The Eagle's cowboy hero Jeff Arnold ('Goldurn it, Jeff, there's a galoot lyin' on the trail')? Fortyniners, men of the Yukon and the Klondike, where a man must grow a beard against the elements and buy whatever size of jacket is available at the frontier town's general stores? Is it part of a straining for authenticity, for seriousness? They certainly look very serious, peering out from behind their mighty beards. As these trend-setters probably work in such radically unserious, inauthentic areas as PR and the yartz, they perhaps feel the need more than most... It is all very mysterious. But then, I write as one incapable either of growing a convincing beard or taking himself seriously. When I once grew an experimental beard it was a sadly moth-eaten affair, giving me the air of a disgraced rabbi. Never again.

6 comments:

  1. Brit has a fine description of one such bearded twonk in this Diary piece...
    http://thedabbler.co.uk/2014/02/dabbler-diary-the-shoreditch-iago/

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  2. In the hipster precincts of the US, the tonsorial trend you describe is sometimes accented with a tinted monocle.

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  3. Now that sounds rather stylish, Waldonymous...

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  4. I have been waiting for the execrable tattoo fashion to pass for years, and now have to face the horrifying truth that it may not in my lifetime. I am reduced to curmudgeonly grumping about it and to having my children gang up on me and throw out the same smug shibboleths I used to direct at my father over long hair. They assure me covering one's body with permanent dark spidery messes says nothing---absolutely nothing--about the character beneath.

    Nige, those thick beards can be cool when they work. How about the utterly bizarre fashion of two or three days of facial hair combined with stylish business dress and ultra-thorough grooming that includes full body and even skull depilation?

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  5. Men are like women and women are like men and not a fag paper can be thrust between them but hey! I can grow a beard and you can't (prefer you not to) so once again men can assert their superiority, their difference and show it's not all about nurture but nature.

    I didn't like them, beards, till I realised it was all about this: distinction, men finding their feet again, their difference. Something about the Muslim an'all. Men learning to be boys again, men, after all that androgyny shi'ite.

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  6. Sorry to respond so late to this piece Nige. Have been out of the country. If so inclined see my short tableau on this subject at http://roseatetern.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-crisis-in-masculinity.html

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