Let it beard

Who started the whole beard thing?

When did facial hair become the new hipster male fashion?

You see it everywhere nowadays (though admittedly not in the Philippines, where bodily hair is in short supply), but I think it started popping up en masse a few years back, on the American TV talk show circuit. Suddenly, it seemed male Hollywood had rediscovered its own facial hair. Call it the “in-between shooting” look. When Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Shia LaBeouf started doing it? Not so bad. When Joaquin Phoenix, with sunglasses and monosyllabic answers, did it? Not so good.

So who’s responsible for the beard boom?

A lot of likely suspects turn up:

• Maybe it’s what researchers call the Zach Effect. No, not Zac Efron — I mean the imposing facial forest sported by comedian Zach Galafianakis in all of his movies. The Hangover was a huge box office hit in 2009. That male comedy validated our desire to let things slide, to just not give a damn, including your facial growth. So perhaps we can lay the blame on The Hangover. Or Hangover II. Or Hangover III…

• Or Duck Dynasty. This US reality show about wealthy Louisiana entrepreneurs and part-time homophobes has supposedly created a groundswell of support for lengthy facial growth. After all, ZZ Top has to retire someday…

• And let’s recall the evil  — yet well groomed — goatee worn by Mr. White (i.e. Bryan Cranston) in the AMC show Breaking Bad. It’s a look, along with the shaved dome, that definitely got a lot of attention among fans.

• And notice, if you will, the recent, mysterious increase of Amish people on television sporting old-style beard length. They turn up as gangsters in the action show Banshee; they run rampant on the TLC reality show, Breaking Amish. What’s up with that?

• And heck, if you want to get Biblical about it, why not start with Jesus? His is an impressive facial legacy that has stood the test of time.

In the interests of anthropological accuracy, I’ve tried to pinpoint the beard’s resurgence in recent years, and my efforts have centered around two key areas: major league baseball, and Brooklyn hipsters.

Turn back the clock to October 2013: the Red Sox were heading into the World Series. Something was different, though: they were all growing “playoff beards.” (A playoff beard is one of the superstitious talismans of baseball and sometimes hockey players, like carrying around a lucky rabbit’s foot or shooting steroids.)

Red Sox first baseman Mike Napoli started the trend, vowing to let his shag grow through the series — something about not jinxing the team’s winning streak. Before you knew it, the whole crew had their own impressive ZZ Tops, and by the end of the series — which the Sox took handily — thousands of fans across the world were going for the same look. True, there was never exactly a shortage of bearded athletes before that: Brian Wilson of the LA Dodgers comes to mind; also NBA’s James Harden (a.k.a. “The Beard”) from the Houston Rockets, who will only shave for “the right charity.” But something about the entire Sox team going full pelt made it more of a communal experience.

(You will notice there were few beards on display in the World Cup. Sports bearding might just be another American trend that doesn’t translate to other cultures.)

In the case of sports, you will observe that the beard is rarely a fashion statement. It’s a display of determination, or sense of purpose. This goes back to an interesting function of the beard throughout history: to piss people off. Or simply to make a point.

And sometimes, to promote a good cause. Every 11th month of the year, for instance, thousands of men throughout the US go unshaven for a good cause: they call it “No Shave November” (or “Movember” for those who just sport mustaches), and it’s meant to raise awareness of prostate cancer. (What beards have to do with prostate cancer is anybody’s guess.) Thus, in the language of facial hair, sometimes you have to defy convention to make your point.

And sometimes you just have to be stubborn. Take the Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up. Seth Rogen and his pals engage in “The Dirty Man Competition,” mercilessly shaming their unshaven roommate Martin with tags like “Unabomber,” “Taliban” and “Manson” until he caves in and cuts his gestating beard. A stronger man would have withstood the pressure.

A man like Joseph Palmer, for instance. My father, who has sported a beard most of his life, used to tell us the story of this farmer and war veteran from his hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who stubbornly refused to cut his beard in the early 1900s, despite public outcry and even armed attackers bearing scissors. A prominent local minister once accosted him: “Palmer, why don’t you shave and not go around looking like the devil?” To which he replied, “Mr. Trask, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulfurous regions with much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not unlike mine.”

The beard question grows more impenetrable the more one examines it. It turns out trying to pinpoint who or what exactly made beards “hip” again is like looking for a needle buried in Joaquin Phoenix’s rapper scruff. Antecedents are everywhere.

In truth, beards are nothing new, but if you measured beards per capita, you’d probably find a thicket of them in Williamsburg (“Billyburg,” to hipsters), Brooklyn, where my wife claims taking the subway line is like crossing over into a different world: one where every young, skinny dude sports major facial growth, the requisite structured T-shirt (or flannel) and optional hipster eyewear. With so many alt or indie bands migrating to Brooklyn for its music scene, yuppified lofts and clubs, the chances of running into a hipster beard there are pretty good.

But it goes deeper. And thicker. You’d have to go back to The Band, the American folk-rock quintet who backed Bob Dylan in the mid to late ’60s, for the first full-frontal shag look in male fashion: check out their 1969 eponymous album cover, and you’ll see why John Lennon and George Harrison — big Band fans — decided to “let it beard.”

(Those who point to recent British “revival” band Mumford & Sons as the start of it all just aren’t looking deep enough. I mean, come on: that look’s been around in indie music forever.)

Nowadays, you can’t say “Americana” without running into a tangled mass of bearded bands — groups with names like Band of Horses, Kings of Leon, Iron and Wine, My Morning Jacket, The Black Keys, Bon Iver — all direct descendants, in some way or another, of The Band. Some of these performers, like Bon Iver (my wife points out) hail from cold climates such as Wisconsin, where facial hair might be a legitimate way to keep warm in the winter months. But I honestly think it’s more of a hipster thing. After all, if wearing a beard were an authentic badge of musical credibility, these guys would all have degrees from Juilliard.

What they have instead is beards. So we come back to the big, hairy question: Why the beards?

In truth, cultivating a beard can be a prickly business. Beard hair is often itchy, it’s abrasive to others, it takes a lot of daily pruning and care (more than other parts of the male anatomy that sprout hair), and you can get food caught in it. And that is not a good look for anybody, George Clooney included.

But beards are — let’s face it — kind of cool. Whenever I sprout a vacation beard, I feel a little more casual, more down to earth, somewhat wiser. There’s something very soothing about stroking your own facial hair thoughtfully. It puts you in touch with your manhood, as corny as it may sound. It’s existential. You kind of feel like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

And the beard also makes you — temporarily, at least — more interesting. Like a body piercing or a tattoo, you suddenly have some new talking points. But unlike a nose stud or a tat, it’s so much easier to shed a beard.

Just make sure, when it comes time to cut the damn thing off, that you have better shaving equipment at your disposal than Tom Hanks did.

* * *

Thanks to Igan D’Bayan for title of this article.