Some people love them.
Some people hate them.
Beards have, throughout time immemorial, been used to convey social status, marital status, have had religious significance, and have been appropriated by counter-cultures and subcultures alike as fashion statements.
The fullness and extent to which American men will grow out their beards waxes and wanes based on the capricious whims of the industries and factors that determine fads. Regardless of what you want to say about Hipsters, they did bring the beard back in a big way. Beard styles have inventive and sometimes silly names, like Garibaldi, Van Dyke, Donegal and Hulihee. They range from very short and tidy to long and unkempt, and there are also the half-beards for the fellows who can't fully commit like goatees and the ridiculous soul patches. Many famous men have sported impressive chin coifs, such notables as Abraham Lincoln, Grizzly Addams, Walt Whitman, Jeffrey Lebowski and Henry David Thoreau.
And some people take it even further still, to the frontiers of competitive eventing.
People like Austin Buchanan, who is featured in a story in my local paper.
First, I love that he named his facial follicles after one of my very favorite Elder Gods, and the fact that he might go around looking like this as an every day occurrence makes me think he has serious moxie.
Photo: Tampa Bay Times
I mean, look at that thing! It's a glorious testament to self-grooming and the powers of moustache wax.
Second, there's a National Beard and Moustache Championship (check out the photo gallery - some of those entries are beyond words). And November, as it so happens, is National Beard Month. Crazy, right?
Which leads me to mention my current favorite character on my current favorite show: Kyle Schmid plays Robert Morehouse on BBC America's Copper, which is a period drama set in New York during the Civil War. The show is gritty and engaging and sometimes utterly bleak, and although the biggest plot point of the show during the first season was frustratingly predictable to the point of being unnecessary, for the most part the writing and acting have been top-notch.
Here he is, out of character on the left, and as Morehouse with mutton chops on display on the right:
To which I say, loud and proud "BTFO, gents!"
2 comments:
That IS quite the statement. And if someone still loves him, he can't be all that weird, right? I like the fact that he styled it. Most hipsters don't take the time to wash themselves properly, or grow up long enough, to style anything. Kudos! The man featured at the bottom of the post is one HOT Caucasian. I'd take that either way, honestly. Chops included!!
Big Statement Beards are like the pithy quote t-shirt of 2012. Or something.
Yeah, my male attractiveness metric begins and ends with dimples, so that gets a big ol' RAWR from me. I appreciate the muttonchops in a finely dressed gentleman of a certain era. The character he plays is very devil-may-care rogue with a certain sense of strongly developed personal ethics but with a certain kind of fluid morality. I find the combination quite charming, at it has progressed in the process of the character's development in the initial season. I hatehatehate the current love interest, and I hope she gets killed off or otherwise marginalized in season two.
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