I’ve worn a beard for 50 years—first a full-black “classic,” then a salt-and-pepper goatee, and now grayish-white semi-full whiskers. I had all sorts of reasons for originally growing it after I left high school in the late 1960s. First, there was fashion: Hippies wore exaggerated sideburns and long scraggly facial hair, and head hair mostly in opposition to our parents’ generational emphasis on being well-groomed. Another reason: a misguided attempt to look older than a teenager (which left many of us with faint pubescent shadows of sparse fuzz). For me, though, concealment was probably the strongest rationale. My mom routinely pestered me about having an abnormally “small chin”—which was a genetic problem she had passed on to me. The beard covered it up.
At the time, beards were also identified with certain socio-cultural groups. In the late 1950s, goatees and van dykes defined beatniks (at least in movies). In the ’60s, bushy and “chin strap” beards were indications of hippies and the anti-establishment. Intellectuals (grad students, college professors and scholars) wore a variety of facial growths, which looked fine as they puffed on their requisite pipes. Then, there were uncommitted folk who’d temporarily grow beards to see how they looked. Motorcycle gang members adopted beards that were sometimes braided to match their menacingly unkempt hair or offset their shaved heads.
The long and the short of it? Beards were social status accessories with political implications and cultural connotations that were tacitly accepted by society as anomalous norms of the era. A stranger could profile another stranger through facial hair identification.
Today, beards are a fashion accessory, one that has been curiously co-opted by politicians (and others) who would never have fit into the progressive left wing culture. While watching the opening and closing minutes of the RNC convention, there appeared to be more beards than at Woodstock. Fashion?!
I was inspired by this phenomenological observation to create the following quiz: Identify the bearded gents below by name, party affiliation and current job (hint: they all have or had skin in the political game) and you will win … nothing. All I can afford to give you is the personal satisfaction that you have basic facial recognition skills. Remember, it’s not what you win—it’s the act of passing time that counts.
Answers will be published Monday.