The Story "Of Beards and Men" and How They Define Masculinity in Culture

On this episode of Our American Stories, professor Christopher Oldstone-Moore makes the case that today’s bearded renaissance is part of a centuries-long cycle in which facial hairstyles have varied in response to changing ideals of masculinity.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people up next a story about beards. They're all the
rage these days. Take a look around, from hip urbanite's
to rustic outdoorsmen, facial hair is everywhere. Christopher Oldston Moore

(00:32):
makes the case that today's bearded renaissance is part of
a centuries long cycle in which facial hair styles have
varied in response to changing ideals of masculinity. He's the
author of of Beards and Men, The Revealing History of
Facial Hair. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I think we all have a curiosity about it and
have always won in the back of my mind what
is going on? And when I got serious about researching
this matter for the courses I teach, I was unable
to find anything solid, So I decided, Gee, I'd better
do some work on this. One of the things I

(01:16):
discovered in my research is that shaving is as old
as civilization itself, maybe even older. We can't be sure.
Men have been altering their facial hair for a very
long time for a number of reasons. Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians,
the founders of our western civilization shaved their faces, and
the evidence shows that this is because of an association

(01:38):
with cleanliness and holiness. This would be elite men shaving
to show their superiority to the ordinary run of men.
There were also times and empires in the ancient world
when men contrastingly grew magnificent style of beards, and this
was particularly true when the ruling class promoted a warrior

(01:58):
image of strength, such as in Babylon and Persia and
ancient Greece. But the Greeks changed course under the influence
of Alexander the Great in the three hundreds BC. He
thought of himself as a new godlike hero, so he
shaved himself to imitate how the artists of the day
portrayed the gods, that is to say, eternally youthful and beardless.

(02:23):
Greek men imitated this heroic style and passed it on
to the Romans, so shaving prevailed for the next four
hundred years. First there was a return to beards in
the later Roman Empire, but after the fall of Rome,
the Church in Western Europe promoted shaving from men of
the cloth as a sign of order, piety, goodness. After

(02:46):
thirteen hundred this style was adopted overall by the lady
as well, and when with the Renaissance at the end
of the fourteen hundreds, there was also a renaissance of beards,
reaction against this churchly and spiritual association of shaven men.
At this time, even many of the clergy wanted to

(03:08):
assert a more natural and worldly masculinity in contrast with
the more retiring and spiritual medieval ideal. There was a
new emphasis at that time on orderliness and discipline, this
time not controlled by the Church but the courts, the

(03:28):
royal courts. One should look especially at the Court of
Louis the fourteenth in France in the late sixteen hundreds,
where they promoted a very stylized, very elaborate, and urbane
style of dress, including silk stockings, ribbons, lace, big wigs,
and a clean shaven face. And by the way, to

(03:49):
wear a big wig, you had to shave your head
also out. It was all very disciplined and orderly, indicating
that a true gentleman was refined rather than natural. That
style was copied everywhere, including in America. If you look
at our founding fathers, you will see that they also

(04:11):
sported the stockings, the whigs the shaven faces according to
the style of the European courts. The French Revolution helped
to bring beards back. Men were interested in the idea
of freedom and feeling less inclined to be orderly and disciplined,
but there were also excesses in revolution, so many feared

(04:36):
too much democracy and lawlessness. As a result, most respectable
men in the early nineteenth century avoided beards and its
association with radicalism, whereas naturally the radicals like Karl Marx
proudly embraced facial hair as a sign of freedom and
opposition to bourgeois respectability. There is a noticeable obsurge in

(05:00):
beards in all kinds of places, especially Hollywood, sports and
the streets and the cities. I think that for the
younger generation there's a need to rebalance the masculine presentation
and put forward a more physical masculinity, and a beard
is one of the ways to do that. When I

(05:22):
look over time, I see a pattern. You can think
of masculinity in all times of places as a sort
of balance, and at certain times culture tries to shift
that balance one way or the other. There has to
be some kind of mix of cultural discipline and conformity
to authority and the norm on the one hand, and

(05:43):
on the other hand, a push towards independence and individualism.
When culture demands order and conformity, we see the emergence
of a shaven order. Facial hair is always associated with
the inverse, that is, independence and individualism against the norm.
Take the sixties, for example, when facial hair was an

(06:04):
emblem of youthful rebellion against the establishment, while the establishment,
that is governments and corporations like McDonald's and Disney, for example,
fought back with strict regulations against facial hair. I think
today facial hair is appealing for similar reasons, though perhaps
not so much against the establishment as such, as it

(06:27):
is to present a stronger, better defined masculinity at a
time when gender is contested and ill defined, and individual
men are feeling increasingly uncertain in their identity as individuals
and as men.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Christopher
Oldstone Moore whose book is of Beards and Men, the
revealing history of facial hair, and my goodness, we can
just look at us presidents, they had facial hair. Lincoln
on down and then all of a sudden, they didn't
have facial hair. It's been a long time since we've

(07:05):
had a president with a beard, but maybe soon. The
story of beards, the rich, complicated and amusing history. Here
on our American Stories. Here are our American Stories. We

(07:32):
bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith and love.
Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to
be told that we can't do it without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love our stories in America like
we do, please go to our American Stories dot com
and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot,

(07:53):
help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our
American Stories dot com.