confession #000076

... or, beards please

i have consciously excluded any punctuation marks from this post's subtitle 'beards please'.  punctuation is so crucial these days, especially in social media where something read not as the writer intended can easily be misconstrued.  anyway.  anyone who sat for intermediate philosophy back in my days will remember that quip "time flies!"/"i can't they're too fast" which haunted us with reflections on whether we should look at 'time' as the noun or the verb.

model josh dane

my pretentious "beards please" follows this line of thought, sort of.  you can choose your own way of reading this: "beards? please!" with a certain disgust laid on the "please" or alternately by placing some glee in the "please".  or you can read it as a statement - a fact - much as i do.  because yes, beards please me very very much, thank you.

now, now.  i'm not talking goatees or soul patches or those pencil-thin hairy lines marking the jawline. nor am i talking zz-top or gandalf kind of beards either.  i'm talking full, lumber-jack beards here.  and it doesn't seem i'm alone in this.

more and more male models featured in editorial campaigns are sporting the full-on fluff on their face. and i'm not complaining. i think i can date my personal fancy of hirsute lads to when french connection had launched the 'this is the man/woman' campaign a couple of years ago.  shall we say they were the fore-runners of the trend? i'm not sure. but either way, seeing a bearded and well dressed, oh and handsome, man looking back at me on my bus stop on a daily basis was something i started looking forward to every morning.  lucky me, my mister is also partial to this look, though not to that extreme.

but what is it that makes this look so appealing? just look at baby boy zac efron how grown up he looks in a beard.  or jake gyllenhaal looking all dark and mysterious behind his overgrown fuzz.  

i find it is somewhat of a rejection of the metrosexual, clean shaven, pretty boy look that dominated the first decade of the 21st century.  beard - and moustache keeping - takes a good amount of grooming nonetheless. take a quick look at gq's expert advice on this. the ultimate aim however is to have an end product which doesn't give evidence to the time spent trimming and shaping and moisturising the facial foliage.  moreover, it's not a feature that goes only with a more casual attire.  men in suits and beards have a certain refined je ne sais quoi about them ... another plus is that there's no real age limit as to when a man should stop keeping a beard - as long as it's well kept, it doesn't matter at all if it starts getting all salt-and-pepper ... 

model kyle @ so management; photographed by kris micallef

maybe not all those following this blog will agree with me on this beard-loving thing that i've got going on.  it's true.  sometimes we can get a rash or unsightly pimples from rubbing cheeks with our fleecy fellows, so their beauty regime might be taking a toll on ours.  but personally, i'm of the same line of thought as county comedienne minnie pearl (b. 1912; d. 1996) who once said:

kissing a man with a beard is a lot like going to a picnic. you don't mind going through a little bush to get there!

if i haven't quite convinced you on getting your man to grow a beard (or to grow one yourself if you're a guy reading this), have a look at photographer jonathan daniel pryce's tumblr project turned publication 100 beards, 100 days for some inspiration:

no. 114 Ewan: East Bath Lane, Glasgow

no. 98 Patrick: Saville Row, London