This Bearded Life by Carles Sune

Author:Carles Sune
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2017-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

THE MAN BEHIND THE BEARD

Facial hair plays two distinct roles: a metaphysical one, and an aesthetic one

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WHAT’S GOING ON BEHIND THAT BEARD?

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Now that we’ve reached this point in the book – a book which does not purport to be any kind of philosophical or scientific paper on the subject of beards – I think we can say with assurance that facial hair plays two very distinct roles: a metaphysical one, and an aesthetic one.

We began to tackle the first role in the early chapters, looking at how the beard has had, continues to have and will go on having religious, cultural and social significance.

If we take a look at what’s been going on in the trendy neighbourhoods of cities across the world (or just flick back to chapter 2) it’s easy to see that a new social fabric is being woven with beards at its centre, its members – like hipsters and lumbersexuals – united by their shared taste and sense of style.

In addition to transforming society, however, beards also have the power to influence many other aspects of our everyday lives: fashion, art, photography, advertising, and so on. Which leads us to facial hair’s aesthetic role.

That beards fulfil a superficial function is undeniable; they are a physical attribute, after all. Sometimes people grow them because they want to, sometimes because it’s fashionable – and sometimes we men use them the way women use make-up: to hide the things we don’t want the world to see, and to make the rest look better.

And although there are accounts of so-called bearded ladies presumed to be sufferers of hypertrichosis – Julia Pastrana, or, more recently, Harnaam Kaur – the beard nevertheless remains an irrefutable hallmark of masculinity, something which several studies have illustrated as manifesting itself in many different ways.

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