Althouse: The American Beard.

September 4, 2018

The American Beard.

my American beard is fraught with beer and pizza crumbshttps://t.co/PCy3FZDN2m
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 3, 2018

51 comments:

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: I saw this over the weekend and laughed long and well. IowaHawk is a national treasure.; 9/4/18, 7:02 AM
dbp said...: Next up from The Atlantic,. Basketball found to be fraught with height privilege.; 9/4/18, 7:16 AM
Ralph L said...: I grew one last fall after having patches frozen on my face. Toothpaste is hard to get off the soul patch, but the mustache is a lot more bothersome.

If I'd known my chin was a platinum blond, I'd have grown it much earlier.; 9/4/18, 7:19 AM
Danno said...: When beards turn white, it is time to shave them off.; 9/4/18, 7:21 AM
Ralph L said...: No, it's time to reach for the shoe polish.; 9/4/18, 7:23 AM
tim in vermont said...: Wow is that poorly argued. Sweeping statements, one after the other, each demolishes the last, but none supported. I am not arguing that the 19th century wasn't racist, but yeesh.; 9/4/18, 7:23 AM
tim in vermont said...: "When beards turn white, it is time to shave them off."

Whatever.; 9/4/18, 7:24 AM
MadisonMan said...: I've passed my meager beard-growing skills on to my son. Sorry kid!; 9/4/18, 7:25 AM
TrespassersW said...: When everything is racist, nothing is.; 9/4/18, 7:30 AM
mezzrow said...: Best use of fraught ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSCKVR_wzxE

RIP, Gamble. Our troubadour.; 9/4/18, 7:34 AM
Temujin said...: From where are these people, these 'thinkers', graduating before taking positions with media?

They should get their money back.; 9/4/18, 7:34 AM
Clyde said...: My beard is proudly white. Of course, that's because I'm getting old.; 9/4/18, 7:37 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Back in America's shameful slave days, a lot of white men wore pants. They also insisted their male slaves wear pants, often on pain of punishment or ridicule. Yet pants were forbidden to women, both free and slave. The whole business was truly awful.

We must recognize this garment for what it is, an offensive symbol of white supremacy and patriarchal privilege. Gentlemen, the time has come to drop our pants.; 9/4/18, 7:40 AM
Larry J said...: Danno said...

When beards turn white, it is time to shave them off.

Nope. I last fully shaved my face the day I was discharged from the Air Force 26 years ago. Shaving is an unnatural act, possibly punishable by God. He obviously wants me to have hair on my face. Shaving is denying His will. Nope. Not going to chance it. Wouldn't be prudent, as Pappa Bush used to say.

As for gray hair, I relocated from Colorado to Alabama for job purposes 6 years ago. When I went for my new driver's license, the nice lady was asking me the routine questions about the color of my eyes (green) and hair. I told her my hair was brown. She looked at me and said, "Honey, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your hair is not brown anymore." We both got a good laugh out of that. It made my day.; 9/4/18, 7:40 AM
Mary Beth said...: That was more about barbers than beards.; 9/4/18, 7:41 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "When beards turn white, it is time to shave them off."

Why do you hate Santa?; 9/4/18, 7:45 AM
Ralph L said...: Handsy Santa at a department store?; 9/4/18, 8:01 AM
Henry said...: Danno said...
When beards turn white, it is time to shave them off.

That's when I grew a beard. Before my beard turned white, my beard was almost the same color as my skin. From a distance It just looked like my face was scabby.; 9/4/18, 8:25 AM
Mr Wibble said...: "When beards turn white, it is time to shave them off."

Why do you hate Santa?

Mom says he's just like Steve Perry: all talk but nothing in the sack.; 9/4/18, 8:27 AM
Henry said...: We have two paragraphs in succession.

The first starts: "The most important explanation..."
The next starts "But the real problem ran deeper."

The whole essay is a weird adventure in time folding:

"By 1879, James Thomas, a former St. Louis barber who had become a real estate mogul, possessed an estate worth $400,000"

"[Barbers] accounted for 13 of 45 delegates to Ohio’s 1852 African-American state convention."

But then...

"White fears were further fed by a string of slave rebellions, from present-day Haiti to Nat Turner’s Virginia."

Haiti 1804
Nat Turner Rebellion 1831; 9/4/18, 8:35 AM
Henry said...: Mary Beth said...
That was more about barbers than beards.

Yes. There's a good article in there somewhere. Just not the one Mr. Trainor actually wrote.; 9/4/18, 8:36 AM
Wince said...: Come to think of it: The Atlantic was the ocean used to transport slaves to America, wasn’t it?; 9/4/18, 8:37 AM
robother said...: Ann tees up the December Atlantic lead article: the racially fraught history of Santa Claus.

Notice how people when they mount the SJW hobby horse adopt a very Victorian manner of speaking/writing? When was the last time any American non-ironically used the term "fraught."; 9/4/18, 8:47 AM
Big Mike said...: I grew my mustache while I was in the army back in 1969, and I shaved it off earlier this year after seeing how elderly it made me look in the proofs from my son’s wedding. Not quite a half century of facial hair.

One thing that most women and clean-shaven men don’t understand is that maintaining a well-trimmed mustache and/or beard takes a lot more daily effort than to maintain a clean shaven face.; 9/4/18, 8:47 AM
Roughcoat said...: For some reason I can't fathom, I'm interested in which ethnic groups in the ancient world sported facial hair. E.g., in the Bronze Age, Egyptians were clean-shaven although the pharaohs wore false beards for ceremonial purposes -- probably a throwback to a time that was ancient even by Bronze Age reckoning. The Hittites were also clean-shaven. Mycenaean Greeks were by turns clean-shaven and bearded, the fashion seemed to change back and forth; e.g., the Mycenaean Sea Peoples were clean shaven but the kings in Mycenaean tombs had beards and handlebar moustaches. Semitic peoples all had beards, some very thick and elaborately styled. Roman men during the time of the Republic and early empire were clean-shaven.

And so it goes. Sorry for taking up your time.; 9/4/18, 9:08 AM
Henry said...: Hopefully it's a series:

The Hawaiian Shirt: The Casual Pattern of Imperialism

The Handlebar Mustache: One More Thing Fish Don't Need

The Full Cleveland: A Whiter Shade of Income Disparity; 9/4/18, 9:27 AM
tcrosse said...: With grey hair, beard, and mustache, my ID photo looks like the Shroud of Turin.; 9/4/18, 9:31 AM
TrespassersW said...: "Gray hair is a crown of glory..." Proverbs 16:31a

My chin is crowned with glory. So are my the sides of my head. I'm good with that.; 9/4/18, 9:36 AM
SeanF said...: Big Mike: One thing that most women and clean-shaven men don’t understand is that maintaining a well-trimmed mustache and/or beard takes a lot more daily effort than to maintain a clean shaven face.

Most clean-shaven men don't understand that? That's one of the main reasons clean-shaven men are clean-shaven!

(FWIW, I tend to grow a beard in the fall and shave it in the spring, so I'm both throughout the year).; 9/4/18, 9:52 AM
Rick.T. said...: The beard is the padded bra of masculinity.; 9/4/18, 10:07 AM
Big Mike said...: Point to SeanF!; 9/4/18, 10:09 AM
buwaya said...: Rome expanded and conquered its empire while the fashion was to go clean-shaven.
It stopped expanding and became defensive when beards came back.

Its a very striking correlation.

Indeed, there is some indication that in every period of recovery shaving came back. Diocletian for instance showed himself shaven.

Cause? Effect? Both effects of similar underlying causes?; 9/4/18, 10:11 AM
Ralph L said...: padded bra of masculinity.

It certainly helps my weak chin and strong adam's apple.; 9/4/18, 10:11 AM
Achilles said...: The beard is great.

It is the neck hair that makes a mess and is uncomfortable to manage.; 9/4/18, 10:44 AM
n.n said...: Men in beards?; 9/4/18, 10:54 AM
William said...: The beard pictured looks labor intensive and the product of careful grooming. That defeats the whole purpose of a beard. It's meant to be a labor saving device.......When I was younger I had a red beard. Red beards are very cool. I was sorry to see mine turn white. So far as vices go, my laziness trumps vanity. I'll take my beard with me to the grave. I only comb my hair once a day. I'm not going to waste any of my few remaining moments on earth by shaving.; 9/4/18, 11:04 AM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: So if I don't go to a barber I'm not a racist. I'm still sexist, apparently.; 9/4/18, 11:04 AM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: The idea that I'm responsible for what people did in the past while wearing beards is insane.; 9/4/18, 11:17 AM
iowan2 said...: Shave it off when the beard goes white?
My wife begs to differ. That's to be expected. However, the girls that work with her, almost all have told her how alluring they find my whiteness (hair).; 9/4/18, 11:25 AM
Anthony said...: I shave twice a week and have the stubble look. I do, however, shave my neck daily because neck beards look awful.

Does that make me a half racist??

Or just ruggedly handsome?; 9/4/18, 11:30 AM
rhhardin said...: Beards are for cutting wind chill in the winter, by reducing on-skin wind speed to zero. This can be conveniently done by not shaving.; 9/4/18, 11:34 AM
rhhardin said...: I just shaved off a week of stubble, in honor of heat and humidity. Brand-x twin-blade, used dry. It makes me look less like a homeless person, for a time.; 9/4/18, 11:38 AM
Ralph L said...: It is the neck hair that makes a mess and is uncomfortable to manage.

You'd think they would be at least close to parallel, but no!
And it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out which side my bathroom windows are on.; 9/4/18, 11:41 AM
Howard said...: The clean shaven face, the high and tight haircut and the Hitlarian mustache came in vogue with the introduction of gas masks in WWI.

When I was in the military, Blacks didn't have to shave every day because skin issues; 9/4/18, 12:49 PM
tim in vermont said...: I wonder when they are going to bash high thread count cotton sheets as problematic. The sugar in their coffee and tea? Sorry, the unprocessed kind is just as “fraught,”; 9/4/18, 12:50 PM
buwaya said...: "The sugar in their coffee and tea?"

Sugar, coffee and tea are all commodities that were critical in the expansion of global trade and justified and financed the establishment of European colonial empires.

These (and tropical spices) were some of the first globally sourced commodities that were consumed by the general public, as opposed to luxuries.

Cotton, tobacco, tropical oils (for soap, etc.), silver and gold and various dyestuffs were some of the more important of the others.; 9/4/18, 12:57 PM
madAsHell said...: O/T....but one of your former students, Mario Barnes has just been named the dean of the law school at the OTHER UW.

From the article....."Later, he received his master of laws degree — an advanced certification in the law — at the University of Wisconsin at Madison."; 9/4/18, 1:10 PM
Trumpit said...: Why would anyone want facial hair? To avoid having to shave? Why would anyone want to shave? That must be a chore. Fortunately, you can have all your facial hair removed with laser treatments. Most men are pussies anyway. The beard or mustache doesn't make a man a man. Neither do his balls. Women are the fairer sex; men are the fucked up sex.; 9/4/18, 2:13 PM
tim in vermont said...: men are the fucked up sex.

Men are one of the fucked up sexes.; 9/4/18, 2:14 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: I skimmed through the article, but the gist of it seems to be, correct me if I'm wrong, that it's racist for a white man to grow a beard, or to pay a black man to shave it, or to deny a black man the job by hiring someone else, or by shaving it himself.

The solution is a no-brainer.; 9/4/18, 3:40 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: the 'Impossible Barber' of race relations?; 9/4/18, 9:18 PM