Aside from one intensely unhappy week back around 1995 or thereabouts, I have proudly worn a full beard for two decades now. That’s not an easy thing when you live in a community that places a high value on conformity, and where the local ideal of how a respectable male is supposed to look hasn’t changed significantly since the Eisenhower Administration.
I’ve had girls tell me they wouldn’t go out with me because I have a beard.
I once had an interviewer ask me to shave it off in exchange for a minimum-wage job working essentially alone in a warehouse, where nobody would ever see me. I’ve had other interviewers who haven’t said a word, but who’ve visibly lost interest in me as soon as they got a good look at my face. On one memorable occasion, I was told not to even bother filling out an application until I came back “presentable.” (I told that doughy-faced spud-nugget what he could do with his discriminatory and frankly chickenshit application process.)
And I’ve put up with sidelong glances and silent disapproval from countless fellow Utahns, who can’t say why, exactly, but just know that there’s something wrong with men who have beards.
The irony, of course, is that many of this state’s founders were impressively bearded themselves. No less a figure than Brigham Young sported a mustache-less Quaker-style beard in his latter days (forgive me, I couldn’t resist). Presidents of the Mormon Church Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith — not to be confused with his uncle, the Joseph Smith who founded the Church — were both approaching ZZ Top territory with their lengthy neckwarmers. And Brother Brigham’s righthand man, the infamous gunfighter Porter Rockwell, would’ve fit right in with the Allman Brothers Band. But I guess that kind of glorious hirsuteness went out with polygamy and the coming of statehood.
If I sound bitter, well, it’s sometimes hard not to be. After all, I’m a nice guy, and I’ve always kept my facial fuzz neat and clean. My beard is a symbol of my individuality and masculinity, and also kind of a family tradition to boot — my father has worn a beard most of my life, as did my uncle Louie, the one who died from ALS. And damn it, I just like how I look with it better than the way I do without it.
I’ve long comforted myself by rationalizing that the rampant beardism I so often encounter is just a parochial Utah thing, that things are surely different out there beyond the Zion Curtain. And you know what? I was right:
A recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that men with beards were deemed more credible than those who were clean-shaven. … The researchers say the implications of their findings could extend far beyond advertisements. For instance, male politicians might want to consider not shaving because the “presence of a beard on the face of candidates could boost their charisma, reliability, and above all their expertise as perceived by voters, with positive effects on voting intention.”
More credible? Charisma, reliability, and expertise? Now that’s more like it! But perhaps you’re not yet convinced. In that case, consider this chart:
You’ll have to click on it to blow it up large enough to read; be prepared to scroll, it’s pretty big. And after you’ve clicked and pondered, then tell me you don’t have a new-found respect for my beard. Go on, just tell me. Because charts prove everything, right?
