I'm sure the whole "shelter at home" thing has hit some of us harder than others. Personally, uh... it barely hit me at all. The main effect it's had on me was to get my employer to encourage me to work from home, so that's actually a win. But a side effect of that one major change is that I've had quite a bit more time to think about stupid things than usual.
Which kind of makes the suggestion that I didn't think about stupid things before. That simply isn't true. I think about stupid things all the time. But now I've got the time and the blessed silence to chase the stupid thoughts all the way down the rabbit hole, and that's why we're here today so I can share my thoughts on beards.
We'll tag this post as "esoteric", maybe?
There's been a bit of a beard-revolution, or beardvolution as I will not be calling it from here on, over the past uh, let's call it a decade. Because even though my brain says it's only been a few years it still also tells me it's 2015, so... with regards to dates let's ignore my brain. Go back a few decades and the standard, the expectation, was that grown men would be clean-shaven. That standard has shifted pretty heavily, seemingly as my generation has aged, and now it's not at all uncommon to walk into a board room or other similarly formal situation and see some guys with facial hair. So what changed?
Well, as a dude with a beard, I can tell you it's not really at all about "simplicity". That'd be like telling a woman with long hair that she doesn't have a pixie cut because "it's just easier not to cut your hair." Um... sure, there's probably fewer trips to the salon (assuming she doesn't do coloring or something, I'm obviously skipping a lot here). But I'm sure there's also a ridiculous increase in the amount of time spent in hair-related preparation every day. Like, even just with drying the stuff.
I'm maybe not thrilled to be bald, but I sure don't envy people with long hair.
And it's much the same with beards. Sure, I save time on having to shave every day. But the hassle of having a bunch of hair on my face causes other issues. It's a trade-off, and while yeah, I make it at least partially because I'm already shaving my head and I would rather cut down the amount of time spent in the bathroom every morning, the convenience of simply never having to shave just doesn't cover it. I mean, if nothing else, I use way more shampoo than your average bald guy would need do. Meaning, some. Any at all.
So what is it then? What is the driving force behind all these guys suddenly wanting to grow a beard? I think, and bear with me for a minute here, that you can really follow it all back to the rising prevalence of bubble bath as a child-focused product in the 60s.
Hey, no, I said bear with me here. Look, a picture of a bear. Hold it together, Laurence.
Probably anyone who grew up with bubble baths as a kid will recall the endless hours of fun involved in piling the bubbles onto your head and sticking them onto your face, creating more and stranger fictional hairstyles that, as a youth, could only be dreamed of otherwise. This was a promise, seemingly by nature itself, that someday we'd be able to pull that off. It was a promise emphasized by the grizzled action heroes of the 80's, and it still sees reinforcement in entertainment today. And while little girls were able, within a fairly short number of years, to match the hairstyles of their bubble bath whimsy and favorite heroes, little boys don't really have that option with beards until they're grown.
"But Spendlove," you're humming to the tune of Zeppelin's Kashmir, "If this is really about bubble bath, why the heck didn't we see this Beardpocalypse when the kids growing up in the 60's hit the workplace?"
It's pretty simple. Their bosses wouldn't let them. Now that they are the bosses, while their own habits of non-beard-ery have persisted from what was enforced when they were young, the bath times of their youth have lent a certain leniency toward those of us coming up now with beards. And because they do not enforce those restrictions, beards prevail. A million bath-hood fancies, finally within grasp, and no longer repressed by society.
So as you can see, there's a lot of sense to be made from something as simple as the development of a product like bubble bath. Popular trends among the children of today will likely color the future of our society. Which, if all us parents are doing our jobs currently, means we'll FINALLY HAVE A GENERATION OF ADULTS WHO ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO WASH THEIR DANG HANDS.
See, even my stupid lines of reasoning wind up somewhere topical.
Which kind of makes the suggestion that I didn't think about stupid things before. That simply isn't true. I think about stupid things all the time. But now I've got the time and the blessed silence to chase the stupid thoughts all the way down the rabbit hole, and that's why we're here today so I can share my thoughts on beards.
We'll tag this post as "esoteric", maybe?
There's been a bit of a beard-revolution, or beardvolution as I will not be calling it from here on, over the past uh, let's call it a decade. Because even though my brain says it's only been a few years it still also tells me it's 2015, so... with regards to dates let's ignore my brain. Go back a few decades and the standard, the expectation, was that grown men would be clean-shaven. That standard has shifted pretty heavily, seemingly as my generation has aged, and now it's not at all uncommon to walk into a board room or other similarly formal situation and see some guys with facial hair. So what changed?
Well, as a dude with a beard, I can tell you it's not really at all about "simplicity". That'd be like telling a woman with long hair that she doesn't have a pixie cut because "it's just easier not to cut your hair." Um... sure, there's probably fewer trips to the salon (assuming she doesn't do coloring or something, I'm obviously skipping a lot here). But I'm sure there's also a ridiculous increase in the amount of time spent in hair-related preparation every day. Like, even just with drying the stuff.
I'm maybe not thrilled to be bald, but I sure don't envy people with long hair.
And it's much the same with beards. Sure, I save time on having to shave every day. But the hassle of having a bunch of hair on my face causes other issues. It's a trade-off, and while yeah, I make it at least partially because I'm already shaving my head and I would rather cut down the amount of time spent in the bathroom every morning, the convenience of simply never having to shave just doesn't cover it. I mean, if nothing else, I use way more shampoo than your average bald guy would need do. Meaning, some. Any at all.
So what is it then? What is the driving force behind all these guys suddenly wanting to grow a beard? I think, and bear with me for a minute here, that you can really follow it all back to the rising prevalence of bubble bath as a child-focused product in the 60s.
Hey, no, I said bear with me here. Look, a picture of a bear. Hold it together, Laurence.
 |
| The bear is named Laurence. |
Probably anyone who grew up with bubble baths as a kid will recall the endless hours of fun involved in piling the bubbles onto your head and sticking them onto your face, creating more and stranger fictional hairstyles that, as a youth, could only be dreamed of otherwise. This was a promise, seemingly by nature itself, that someday we'd be able to pull that off. It was a promise emphasized by the grizzled action heroes of the 80's, and it still sees reinforcement in entertainment today. And while little girls were able, within a fairly short number of years, to match the hairstyles of their bubble bath whimsy and favorite heroes, little boys don't really have that option with beards until they're grown.
"But Spendlove," you're humming to the tune of Zeppelin's Kashmir, "If this is really about bubble bath, why the heck didn't we see this Beardpocalypse when the kids growing up in the 60's hit the workplace?"
It's pretty simple. Their bosses wouldn't let them. Now that they are the bosses, while their own habits of non-beard-ery have persisted from what was enforced when they were young, the bath times of their youth have lent a certain leniency toward those of us coming up now with beards. And because they do not enforce those restrictions, beards prevail. A million bath-hood fancies, finally within grasp, and no longer repressed by society.
So as you can see, there's a lot of sense to be made from something as simple as the development of a product like bubble bath. Popular trends among the children of today will likely color the future of our society. Which, if all us parents are doing our jobs currently, means we'll FINALLY HAVE A GENERATION OF ADULTS WHO ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO WASH THEIR DANG HANDS.
See, even my stupid lines of reasoning wind up somewhere topical.
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