"Across the country, the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men."

"They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity. Echoing some of the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere, new waves of young converts say Orthodoxy offers them hard truths and affirms their masculinity.... Many of the young Americans new to the pews have been introduced to Orthodoxy by hard-edge influencers on YouTube and other social media platforms.... Orthodoxy 'appeals to the masculine soul,' said Josh Elkins, a student at North Carolina State University who was chatting with other young men.'The Orthodox Church is the only church that really coaches men hard, and says, "This is what you need to do,"' said Mr. Elkins, 20.... Some converts report approvingly that Orthodoxy has a more masculine feel than other traditions. Priests, who must be male and can marry, often have large beards and big families. Orthodoxy asks practitioners to make sacrifices like fasting, rather than offering them emotional contemporary music and therapeutic sermons, which critics describe as the typical evangelical megachurch experience...."

From "Orthodox Church Pews Are Overflowing With Converts/'In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen,' a priest said about the surge of young men drawn to the demanding practice of Christianity'" (NYT)(gift link, because there's much more to the article, many photographs, and a torrent of negativity in the comments section).

Typical comments over there: "Wearing gilded robes and kissing gilded books is masculine? Having an imaginary friend that you follow rules for is masculine? These guys are desperate for meaning and will bend over backwards and forwards for it. Anything but actual self reflection and growth." And: "What a sad spectacle. Real Orthodoxy is rooted in actual cultures, like Serbia or Georgia or Armenia, and for good or bad you can find an authentic culture there. What this article describes is a ridiculous Youtube phenomenon."

10 things I've asked Grok in the last 2 or 3 days.

1. Is it honest for me to say: I have no idea whether Trump has any idea whether Mitch McConnell had polio?

2. What poet had a beard, round glasses and wore a "poet’s hat"?

3. What is the origin of the phrase "take up the mantle"?

4. What have smart people had to say about the tendency to see images in words, including things that are not really relevant to the etymology of the word? For example, one might imagine that "ostracize" is connected to "ostrich" or "marginalize" relates to "margarine."

5. What is the argument that the crows in "Dumbo" are not a racist stereotype?

6. Does RFK Jr. speak of himself in terms of "Camelot"?

7. What is that famous saying about remaining silent because I was not X, Y, etc.?

8. Why do some people say you shouldn't use "impact" as a verb?

9. What is the episode of "Leave it to Beaver" where June and Ward Cleaver are turning over a mattress and Ward asks if it's mattress-turning day?

10. What if you had to argue that "The fog comes /on little cat feet" is actually very depressing and pessimistic?

"Many women start struggling with new facial hair growth later in life.... Some said they had made friends or relatives promise to pluck their hairs for them..."

"... if they ever ended up in a hospital or a care facility. 'We made a pact: When we were old and maybe unable to care for ourselves, each of us would make sure that hairy ugliness wasn’t noticeable on the other,' said Debbie Russell, 68. But there is the possibility of finding peace with age, too. 'To me, my facial hair feels like a part of my gender identity, and since menopause I have a little goatee now, which I shave,' said Mitzi Cowell, 60, 'but I dream of the day when I can just grow it out, braid it.'"

From "Is Facial Hair the Last Taboo in Women’s Beauty? Millions of women regularly remove it. Does it have to be that way?" (NYT).

Also: "Women with facial hair have been documented throughout history, often in ways that make current attitudes seem modest. (Take, for example, Annie Jones, P.T. Barnum’s bearded lady, who was billed in his circus as a 'freak' — a term Jones protested.)"

From that link about Annie Jones: "Annie Jones was born in Virginia in 1865, reportedly exiting her mother’s womb with her chin already covered in hair.... Jones was not even a year old when her parents first pushed her into P.T. Barnum’s exhibition in New York City. The tiny girl was billed as 'The Infant Esau'.... As time went on, the 'Infant Esau' grew into the 'Esau Lady' and, eventually, the 'Bearded Lady.'"

"Can I touch your beard?"

"The bronze sheen on our presidential candidates... used to be organic: the result of hours spent in the sun rallying crowds and shaking hands..."

"But even if the campaigning is done in the confines of a television studio, you’ll still see sun-kissed skin, glowing just the right amount for the HD cameras.... Makeup telegraphs the way politicians see themselves — or how they want others to see them. The men on Harris’s short list for vice president have portrayed themselves as middle-of-the-road, no-nonsense everymen, an image complemented by their polished but natural makeup looks. The Republican National Convention in July brought forward a different kind of male face: Kardashian-bronze, a look favored by party standard-bearer Donald Trump.... This parade of copper-colored men were a united front of Trump aesthetics: highlighting the strange cocktail of masculinity favored by Trump himself — a mix of swashbuckling American masculinity and Hollywood sensibilities, expressed in deep tans and bandaged ears, a kind of gilded populism."

From "Color theory for male politicians: Am I a gold, copper or bronze? The 2024 presidential election season has given us an eyeful of the glorious highs and perilous lows of men’s makeup" (WaPo).

Are the 2 parties really doing different colors? Here's Josh Shapiro as he appeared last week:

Is he not orange? Seems to me all the men have adopted the ridiculous color Trump has used all these years — to endless mockery. 

"Trump hasn’t raised the beard issue with Vance, insiders say, but like a number of ladies of MAGAville, Trump has repeatedly commented favorably..."

"... on his 'beautiful' blue eyes and long eyelashes (just Google 'J.D. Vance eye' and links galore auto populate on speculation he wears eyeliner—which his team denies). Such are the considerations of Trump. The ex-president has a certain—shall we say, unique—set of specifications when it comes to charting out his political course. 'Central casting' is crucial...."

From "J.D. Vance Has a Problem on His Face/Can a VP aspirant with a beard find acceptance from a candidate who hates facial hair?" (The Bulwark).

It will be Vance, I think, and Trump's distaste for beards will be just one more thing he can talk about. It's a good random topic to riff on. I can practically hear him: J.D. Vance, I love this guy. Imagine how much I would love him if he didn't have a beard. Shave off that beard! No! I would love him too much. I see a beard, I think: Abraham Lincoln. You know, I like to say I can be more presidential than any president in history except for Honest Abe Lincoln but when he’s wearing that hat. And that beard! Should I grow a beard? I can't be more presidential than any president in history when there's Abraham Lincoln and he’s wearing that hat and that beard. J.D. Vance! He has a beard! He's very vice presidential with that beard....

"We think it may be to reduce competition and intimidation in the kinds of close-cooperation, within and between sexes, that’s required to make our complex, highly cooperative societies function."

Said University of New South Wales professor Rob Brooks, puzzling out why men shave given that facial hair is a "sign of dominance."

He's quoted in "This is the reason why men with facial hair are hotter — could this explain the Mark Zuckerberg ‘beard’ appeal?" (NY Post).

"It’s absolutely ludicrous that you have an officer with pink hair and nails longer than their fingers."

"We’re a police department not a hip hop department. Let’s go back to being police officers."

Said one Manhattan police officer, quoted in "NYPD to go ‘old school’ by banning facial hair and changing uniforms, new video reveals: ‘Bring back some traditions’" (NY Post).

Retired NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said: "I was against all the beards.... It’s about a sense of pride.... This is absolutely a necessary aspect about showing a good front to the community because I think once the cops look good that comes with a modicum of respect because people perceive if you look like a slob they treat you like one."

The named person speaks in terms of looking "good" and the unnamed person speaks in terms of "hip hop" characteristics.

"I had to say something/To strike him very weird/So I yelled out/'I like Fidel Castro and his beard'..."

Sings Bob Dylan in "Motorpsycho Nightmare." 

That was just my first thought on reading a headline this morning: "Prince Harry is upset his brother didn’t like his beard." 

That's a Guardian piece by Bridie Jabour. She muses about sibling strife within her own family, with her younger sister and then as a mother:

[H]aving my own children has only transported me right back to the intense outrage that dogged me whenever I perceived a sibling to be getting different treatment to me. Never mind that you have to treat your children differently, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Oh! As they say on Reddit: unexpected communism.  Embarking on this blog post, I wasn't expecting a double dose of unexpected communism.

"May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

That's the oldest message that we have today that is written in alphabet letters. It's inscribed on an ivory comb.

Quoted in "An Ancient People’s Oldest Message: Get Rid of Beard Lice. Archaeologists in Israel unearthed a tiny ivory comb inscribed with the oldest known sentence written in an alphabet that evolved into one we use today" (NYT).

The NYT tells us the comb is from "around 1,700 B.C., " and I'm interested to see the survival not just of the comb but of "B.C." — rather than "B.C.E." — in the NYT.

I do a little research and dig up — not quite archeologically — something from 1997 A.D. (or should it be C.E.?), and I'm telling you about it because it's written by long — but not that long — gone William Safire, "B.C./A.D. or B.C.E./C.E.?":

Visual misreading.

This beard!

Freaking out over J.D. Vance's beard.

This is a bit strange — by Simon van Zuylen-Wood in the Washington Post — "The Radicalization of J.D. Vance/As he runs for the Senate, the ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author has gone from media darling to establishment pariah. Is his new, fiery, right-wing persona an act? Or is something more interesting going on?"

It begins: "Let’s start with the beard." Okaaaay.

J.D. Vance didn’t used [sic] to have one. 

Pretty much true of everyone with a beard, but he didn't have one when the elite first encountered him... and adored him:

The Vance who in 2016 achieved incandescent literary fame with his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” was all baby fat and rounded edges.

Back when he was right where you wanted him, you loved his fat face. Or so you say.

Twin to twin.

In a lighter moment, Rep. Joaquin Castro, referring to his brother Julian Castro, speaks to Lt. Col. Vindman: “It’s great to talk to a fellow identical twin. I hope that your brother is nicer to you than mine is to me. And doesn’t make you grow a beard.” pic.twitter.com/N3g1pYvsAM

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) November 19, 2019

"Since I can't grow a beard, I actually have to say, 'Hello, I'm not a female' to everyone I meet."

Since I can't grow a beard, I actually have to say, "Hello, I'm not a female" to everyone I meet. https://t.co/Hf92rHl8Zl

— Jack Craver (@JackCraver) October 11, 2019

ADDED: Craver misses (comically misses?) the fact that wearing a beard as a way to say "Hello, I'm not a female" would only be done by someone who is not secure in his masculinity. But Craver didn't come up with the salutation, which is funny because why introduce yourself by saying what you are not? It's going to raise suspicion, like Nixon saying "I am not a crook." And it raise the un-P.C. inference that the thing you're denying is bad — that being female is bad.

"Today should have been my funeral. I was preparing to give my sermon Shabbat morning, Saturday..."

"... which was also the last day of Passover, the festival of our freedom, when I heard a loud bang in the lobby of my synagogue. I thought a table had fallen down or maybe even that, God forbid, my dear friend Lori Gilbert Kaye had tripped and fallen.... I saw Lori bleeding on the ground. And I saw the terrorist who murdered her. This terrorist was a teenager. He was standing there with a big rifle in his hands. And he was now aiming it at me. For one reason: I am a Jew. He started shooting. My right index finger got blown off. Another bullet hit my left index finger, which started gushing blood.... Then an amazing miracle occurred: The terrorist’s gun jammed.... I am a religious man. I believe everything happens for a reason. I do not know why God spared my life.... I don’t know why a part of my body was taken away from me. I don’t know why I had to see my good friend [Lori], a woman who embodied the Jewish value of hesed (kindness), hunted in her house of worship.... I do not know God’s plan. All I can do is try to find meaning in what has happened. And to use this borrowed time to make my life matter more.... I pray that my missing finger serves as a constant reminder to me. A reminder that every single human being is created in the image of God; a reminder that I am part of a people that has survived the worst destruction and will always endure; a reminder that my ancestors gave their lives so that I can live in freedom in America; and a reminder, most of all, to never, ever, not ever be afraid to be Jewish. From here on in I am going to be more brazen... And I’m going to use my voice until I am hoarse to urge my fellow Jews to do Jewish. To light candles before Shabbat. To put up mezuzas on their doorposts. To do acts of kindness. And to show up in synagogue — especially this coming Shabbat.  I am a proud emissary of Chabad-Lubavitch.... we are obviously Jewish, identifiable by our black hats and beards...."

From "A Terrorist Tried to Kill Me Because I Am a Jew. I Will Never Back Down. I do not know why God spared my life in my Poway synagogue. All I can do is make this borrowed time matter" by Yisroel Goldstein (NYT).

A dramatic, beautiful essay. Incredibly (though not surprisingly) the top-rated comment at the NYT is:

The terrorist's gun jamming was a miracle? No, a REAL miracle would have been Congress passing common-sense laws so that the terrorist couldn't have gotten such weapons in the first place.

"It takes courage to admit that people hate your face, and it’s both sad and heartening to see Cruz do so after years of taunts to that effect."

"Stephen Colbert has called the senator a 'half-melted G.I. Joe.' The Kid Mero told him he looks like he eats mice. USA Today, the most boring and benign newspaper on the planet, once headlined a piece, 'Why You May Not like Ted Cruz’s Face, According to Science.' Cruz seemed impervious to such criticism, what with his nonstop grandstanding and that unrelenting dumb smirk. But apparently he took the feedback to heart, because now the dumb smirk is ever so slightly obscured by a moustache."

From "I’m So Sorry to Report that Ted Cruz’s New Beard Looks Great/Thoughts on the unwelcome semi-hotness of the Texas senator’s facial hair" (Slate).

The beard does look good, but what's more interesting here is how free people have felt to insult Ted Cruz for his looks. Generally, there seems to be a rule against disparaging people for looking bad. No looks shaming. I don't really like that rule, because the visual dimension of is so important, and we should talk about it, describe things, react emotionally. And a person's character, emotion, and inner life shows through the face. That's important to observe and bring to light. I'd say the rule should be to be tactful about the aspects of a person's looks that they were born with or cannot control, but go ahead and talk about things have to do with what kind of person lies behind that face.

As for beards, growing a beard is behavior, and one does it for a reason. Go ahead and speculate about the reason. Whether the reason is to affect our reaction to the man or not, go ahead and share your reaction.

The American Beard.

my American beard is fraught with beer and pizza crumbshttps://t.co/PCy3FZDN2m

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 3, 2018

The importance of spectator sports and facial hair.

Iranian woman taking off the fake beard she used to sneak into stadium.The world media wrote about Iranian women dressing up as men to gain entry to stadium but they want to enter stadiums as women.
This video was sent to me by a man supporting women to enter stadium.
من یک زنم pic.twitter.com/q69sf9V9Qr

— masih alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) May 3, 2018

"When I looked back to the ancient world about this, Romans in particular were always saying that women, in some way, are fake."

"The problem about a woman is that she’s always made up, she’s never what she seems. Reading your book, what was so interesting was that women in public life – and I’m happily removed from that – you’ve got to look the part and you’ve got to be authentic. And that’s impossible."

Said Mary Beard (whose book "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" I've paused in the middle of reading). That quote is in the middle of an interview with Hillary Clinton, who responds: "Well, that is the core dilemma. Like, today, I have makeup on. You don’t. But that is just part of the uniform that one wears in public life and politics, at least in my experience."

Beard says: "If I started to wear makeup now, I would get so abused on Twitter. I’m actually as trapped as you are, Hillary!"

And Hillary Clinton says: "Men can get a haircut; it doesn’t change their authenticity. They can grow a beard; they are still who they are. Whereas we are constantly held to that good old double standard, which is so complex and deep and charged with historical and mythological and cultural totems."

Totems, eh? I know I don't really have to try to understand bullshit. In one sentence she claims everything is simple and obvious and everything is exquisitely complicated.

"Totem" is a word that's only appeared maybe 6 times in the 50,000+ posts on this blog, so it hit me hard when it appeared the second time in a single day. The other time was in the post about about Emma Cline and Chaz Reetz-Laiol. I was quoting something from "Can the Plagiarism Charges Against Emma Cline Hold Up in Court?"  Emma Cline had written: “My mother spoke to Sal about body brushing, of the movement of energies around meridian points. The charts.” Reetz-Laiolo had written: “Laurel in the morning brushing her body on the patio with a body brush, slowly combing it up her legs towards her heart, up her arms towards her heart. Circling her belly. There was something totemic about her out there in the sun.”

What are we talking about here? Wikipedia says:

While the term totem is Ojibwe, belief in tutelary spirits and deities is not limited to indigenous peoples of the Americas but common to a number of cultures worldwide. However, the traditional people of those cultures have words for their guardian spirits in their own languages, and do not call these spirits or symbols "totems."

Contemporary neoshamanic, New Age and mythopoetic men's movements not otherwise involved in the practice of a tribal religion have been seen to use "totem" terminology for the personal identification with a tutelary spirit or guide....

So what, if anything, was Hillary Clinton trying to say? I did a search in her book, "What Happened," to see if she delved into the complex and deep topic of totems, but the word does not appear. I tried "makeup" and got 15 hits, including:

Once Bill entered politics, the spotlight on me was glaring and often unkind.... When he lost, and I heard over and over that my name—my name!—had played a part.... So I added “Clinton” to Hillary Rodham. I asked my friends for hair, makeup, and clothing advice. That’s never come easily to me, and until then, I didn’t care. But if wearing contact lenses or changing my wardrobe would make people feel more comfortable around me, I’d try it.

Later, when Bill was running for President for the first time, I stumbled again. I now had the right name, wore makeup, styled my hair. But I hadn’t tamed my tongue....

But we never did get comfortable around you, did we, Hillary? I don't see why we should be comfortable around any politician, and I appreciate that you admit you adopted phony devices in an effort to trick us into letting down our guard, but it's kind of funny that you turn around and lambaste us for not accepting your "authenticity."

"What we wear should not matter: Ideas, arguments, theories, and thought are the stuff in which academics trade."

"But our institutions are riven by power, and teaching and research are themselves underwritten by claims to authority and expertise. No matter how much we know, we still feel the need to show that we know it to solidify our status as bona fide intellectuals, deserving of deference and respect. One of the ways we demonstrate our possession of knowledge is in what we wear — an age-old tradition beginning with Plato orating in a toga. Only now we stroke manicured beards in thought, carry bulging book bags to demonstrate commitment, and wield Moleskine notebooks when inspiration strikes."

From "What We Wear in the Underfunded University," by Shahidha Bari in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

My first question is: Plato orated in a toga?

The toga is the distinctive garment of ancient Rome (not Greece). And here's something interesting about it, from "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" (by Mary Beard*):

Everyday Roman clothing – tunics, cloaks and even occasionally trousers – was much more varied and colourful than this.** Togas, however, were the formal, national dress: Romans could define themselves as the gens togata, ‘the race that wears the toga’, while some contemporary outsiders occasionally laughed at this strange, cumbersome garment. And togas were white, with the addition of a purple border for anyone who held public office. In fact, the modern word ‘candidate’ derives from the Latin candidatus, which means ‘whitened’ and refers to the specially whitened togas that Romans wore during election campaigns, to impress the voters. In a world where status needed to be on show, the niceties of dress went even further: there was also a broad purple stripe on senators’ tunics, worn beneath the toga, and a slightly narrower one if you were the next rank down in Roman society, an ‘equestrian’ or ‘knight’, and special shoes for both ranks.

So the modern word ‘candidate’ derives from the Latin candidatus, which means ‘whitened’.... Perhaps we should eschew the whiteness-infected word "candidate."
___________________

* Speaking of "beards in thought."

** "This" refers to Cesare Maccari's 1888 painting of something that happened in 63 BC (Cicero denounced Catiline to the Roman Senate):