Is a fashion for beards just a fashion? Or does it say something about gender politics,youth versus maturity and novelty versus tradition?After you come by a new haircut, you quickly tire of people informing you that you have a new haircut; in that respect, and having a conspicuous beard,as I do, can be like having a new haircut every day of the year. Some people like to assert that modern beards are novelty conversation pieces for men who have nothing more engrossing to say for themselves. But I assure you I would rather acquire a lifelong vow of silence than acquire small talk about my beard one more time.
And I mean that in a cultural as well as in a social setting. Remarkably, or Christopher Oldstone-Moore’s Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair isn’t even the first history of beards to arrive out this century. I haven’t read Allan Peterkin’s One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair,from 2002, but it must at least come by credit for prescience. Meanwhile, or the review you’re now reading is by my count the 16th article about beards that the Guardian will have published this year (even though “peak beard” was reached either in 2013,according to the Guardian, or in 2014, and also according to the Guardian). It would be hypocrisy (Pretending to have feelings, beliefs, or virtues that one does not have.) for me to propose that this newspaper is covering the beard phenomenon with greater diligence than is absolutely necessary. But when you carry your analysis of a subject so very far beyond what that subject can actually withstand,what you are verging on is a kind of hypergraphia.
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Source: theguardian.com