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To beard or not to beard

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15:39 / 20.04.04

I was contemplating growing a beard, and I thought I'd carry out some research. Do any 'lithers have beards, and how do they care for and manage them? What do the distaff members think of beards? Thoughts on beards in general really. The other thing I really want to know is when growing a beard, when does it reach the point of not iching, 'cos stubble itchs like a son of a bitch.

16:03 / 20.04.04

Like all good closet homosexuals, I flirt with beards. I tend to let it grow for a bit, shave it off, let it grow, and so on. Personally, I enjoy wearing one. It gives me something to hide behind, obviates the need to scrape a razor across my face every day, and takes the edge off my distracting good looks.
The opinion of others varies. Importantly, my partner likes it. Some other people don't. One esteemed Barbeloid said that it looks like I grew it in a bid to get served in pubs. A fair point really, given that I look about fifteen without it.
To answer your question, the itching stops after a couple of weeks, in my experience, as does any significant abrasiveness.

My advice, Phyrphox, is to go for it. You can always chop it off.

16:07 / 20.04.04

Go for the beard.

Beards mean business, and the taking care thereof.

Beards are rock.

PROPER beards that is - there's nothing worse than one of those half-arsed non-metal weiner beards. Make sure you go for a PROPER one, that's the main thing.

For advice and inspiration: World Beard and Moustache Championships

16:27 / 20.04.04

Men with beards are quite the most delectable thing on the planet. That's what I think.

16:28 / 20.04.04

I go from goatee to fully unshaven (what I refer to as my winter plummage) and back again.

The one trick with growing beards is don't expect the "full monty" in your first attempt. Silly as it sounds you need to rid yourself of it after awhile and the next beard will be more magnificent.

I know this as when I first grew the goatee the mustoch and chin where seperate. Baby pink skin seperated the dark, manly short hair. Now 10 years on there is a connection between north and south of my lips.

Just a little warning, be aware just how sensative skin is when you've removed hair from it. That way you'll be prepared when you step out the door after removing the face furniture.

16:30 / 20.04.04

Or into a hot bath. Ow ow, and thrice ow.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

16:59 / 20.04.04

I flirted with the goatee for a while several years ago. I liked it, my girlfriend didn't but the clincher that made me shave it off was that, whenever I went clubbing I was constantly approached by people asking me to sell them drugs.

Quite how facial hair can make a person appear that they're selling ecstacy I have yet to define, but that's the effect it had.

17:10 / 20.04.04

I think mustaches are where the real problems are. A lot of people have big problems with mustaches, almost like mullet sized problems. This offends me, because my dad has a mustache and it works for him.

Seriously, does a beard work for you?

Will it make you look old?

If you answered YES and NO...do it!

17:13 / 20.04.04

Or into a hot bath. Ow ow, and thrice ow.

Ganesh my old friend, anyone who goes head first into a hot bath gets no sympathy from me.

Or were you being smutty?

17:27 / 20.04.04

Erm, no. One lowers oneself into the bath. Unless one adopts a 'woman in swimming pool trying not to get hair wet' posture, one's clean-scraped neck (as opposed to one's head) becomes exposed to heated water. Et voila. Ow, etc.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:47 / 20.04.04

Ganesh, why would you shave and then have a bath? I tend to have the bath and then shave on exiting...

17:51 / 20.04.04

I use a beard-trimmer and dry-shaver - which actually give a better result if you shave before bathing.

19:47 / 20.04.04

From experience:

first, I'd recommend shaving the proposed beard area regularly for a while if you don't already - ie, daily. Don't let a day slip. It just helps cultivate it, really, I've found, even though this has no medicinal proof.

Then, you need a beard trimmer, or to be handy with comb/scissors. Beard trimmers - or fine hair clippers - just help you grade the hairs down and keep it trim. Between a cheap (thank you Lidl) rechargable beard trimmer and Gillette Mach 3, this keeps things looking pretty trim.

Beards are fine as long as they're tidy. Untidy beards - or beards where you don't shave regularly around them, meaning the beard/nonbeard distinction is really muddy - look crap. They also look halfhearted. If your beard is crisp and trim, it shows you've made an effort at it, rather than merely "not shaving".

In general, on the right people, beards are good. Am I the right person? Not sure, but when I grew it, it certainly made me feel more me and not less. That's got to be a good thing, I guess. It really is horses for courses - you'll only know when you've grown it. Give it a shot, I say, but be prepared to acknowledge it might be shit.

20:35 / 20.04.04

Oooh, yes, hang on. I forgot a word. Men with GOOD beards are quite the most delectable thing on the planet. Not the horrid wispy ones you see around now and then. I like a whole full beard myself but any good strong facial hair makes me happy indeed.

23:20 / 20.04.04

Well I've had a couple of goattees, over the years. This is maybe just me, but I never had the feeling they had my best intentions at heart, as t'were. So as for growing the full set - I'd be careful, man. I'd err on the side of cuation, for sure

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

23:28 / 20.04.04

I usually sport a goatee. It keeps me from looking so damn androgynous. The downside is that the long hair and bloodshot eyes, combined with a goatee, is reason enough for Customs and Immigration to check every piece of luggage I've even stood near at the airport.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:31 / 20.04.04

I look like a tramp with a beard. I just look very scruffy without. And much younger.

00:59 / 21.04.04

I'd just like to add, although my beards have generally been shit: identify the parts of your face on which proper beard does not grow, and you just get a few isolated straggly bits. Shave those parts daily.

If this encompasses your entire face, you are not cut out for the beard thing.

01:48 / 21.04.04

" A fair point, given that I look about fifteen without it. "

Is this just one of those " old school " threads ?

04:01 / 21.04.04

Beards work magic with the ladies, because now it's easier to convince them that I'm not in junior high. I keep a very well maintained goatee. If I appeared as latin as I actually AM, I would be able to get away with the ol' "Spanish Harlem" thin sideburn --> chin wraparound thang, which is really ruggedly sharp.

08:52 / 21.04.04

Thank you one and all, for your advice and comments. I'm detecting a definite pro-beard trend on this board, which I find runs against the generally anti-beard nature of todays society. I may now go for the beard, though I am still worried it will take:
a)too long to grow, trapping me in a stubbly limbo with which I shall get annoyed with and shave it all off
b)make me look like my dad, who though now clean-shaven had a beard for the majority of his adult life.

No star here laces

09:44 / 21.04.04

No. No fucking beards. Don't do it.

The connotations are all bad.

Beatniks, college professors, nu metal, poetry, white rap.

Leave it alone.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:14 / 21.04.04

You forgot tramps.

I thought mine'd have a kind of Manson-like appeal... draw many willing laydeez into my circle of influence (not that I'd ever have wanted anything as crass as them to go out and kill for me... well... actually... AHEM! Moving swiftly on...)

Then I remembered. Manson looked like a tramp. Me walking around the park first thing in the morning with a beer also looked like a tramp. Never mind that I'd just finished a nightshift and, as Kevin Spacey would have said, "my doggie had to go"... I looked like a tramp.

Also after a while it tickled my nostrils too much. A constant irritant which, I was assured by other beardoes, would eventually go away. But it was driving me nuts. So nuts I wanted people to kill for me.

But they wouldn't.

Because my beard was shit.

10:23 / 21.04.04

It's a scientific fact that all men look more attractive with goatees.

Full beards are much harder to get right but look damn sexy.

Yay beards.

10:31 / 21.04.04

To avoid the tramp trap with regard to beards, I heard that your beard style must be in contrast to your actual style. So if you are naturally scruffy, your beard must be a neatly trimmed marvel of barbering, and conversely if you are very neat your beard should be more unkempt. I assume this is to act as a counterpoint to your style as opposed to over-emphasising your style.

11:27 / 21.04.04

Personally, i prefer just to have a couple of days growth on my stunning visage. this can be difficult though, cos once it gets to being about a week long, you have to shave it off and start again. As far as i'm aware, there isn't any sort of device out there designed to trim your beard to the sort of 0.5-0.75mm length i like it at. I've toyed with sideburns a few times, ranging from something that extends to my jawline, to something that looks more like the latino side mentioned earlier. That is, coming down just a little below the ear, and then a sharp and well-defined point towards the corner of the mouth.

One of the problems with the whole stubble thing is that - particularly before i cut all my beautiful long hair off - a hell of a lot of people would come up to me, and ask me how much i was charging for a quarter. I don't just mean in clubs, i mean all over the place. At university, in the street, in Tesco. It was a bit mad, but at the same time, i kind of enjoyed it. I used to play games with them, like asking them to name the exact drug that they wanted a quarter of, instead of using streetnames, as is the usual procedure. This made a lot of people think that i was some sort of undercover police officer or with the SDEA or something. That's the great thing about other people taking too much dope (rather than me, for a change). They tend to get a bit more paranoid, a bit more quickly than normal.

One of my friends tried to grow a beard (actually, he just ran out of razors, and couldn't be arsed going all the way downstairs to the university shop to buy more), and it all went rather horrible. He didn't appear to have any growth whatsoever on his face, but more than an inch of growth underneath his jawline. It looked really wierd, and didn't suit him. I don't suppose it would really suit anyone.

If you think you'd look better with a beard, then go for it. It's only hair, after all, so if ou don't like it, you can always shave it off and try something else.

foot long subbacultcha

11:56 / 21.04.04

I just really hate to shave. And I'm a hairy bugger, too. I get lots of annoying fluff round the back of my neck which just stands out more when I do shave. Sometimes I don't bother to shave at all and that seems to really put off members of the opposite sex. I've had girls ask me in worried tones if I'm letting the stubble grow to impress them, and I have to reassure them that I'm simply lazy.

Summer music festivals are a saving grace. I start off clean shaven, and then transform into a ball of fur by the end. And it DOESN'T MATTER. Phew!

13:04 / 21.04.04

If you're not sure, why not do both? Grow a beard on one side of your chin and stay clean-shaven on the other. That way you've got at least half a face for every occassion. Bloody obvious if you ask me...

13:20 / 21.04.04

13:23 / 21.04.04

Saveloy, that was what the Greek orator Demosthenes used to do when he had work to do. His thinking was that if he shaved off half his beard he would look such a twat that he wouldn't want to leave the house and he would be forced to do some work.

On a side note, I was wondering the other day why it was that head and facial hair just carries on growing whereas eyelashes, underarm hair, pubes etc doesn't. Come to think of it you never see anyone with shoulder length eyebrows either. Anyone know why that is?

lonely as a cloud...

13:32 / 21.04.04

I have a moustache myself, which I am very pleased with; it's a handlebar 'tache, which has drawn comparisons to the likes of James Hetfield and Lemmy from Motorhead. I have had a goatee on occasion, and once a full beard (kept neatly trimmed - a bit like Riker from ST:TNG), but I think I like my current 'tache the best.
Funny thing about it is lesbians seem to absolutely love it...

13:33 / 21.04.04

Cash - it's not so much that eyelashes, pubes etc. stop growing once they've reaches a certain length. They just die younger, and fall out. Poor little mayflies that they are.

foot long subbacultcha

13:52 / 21.04.04

I wish my eyebrows would stop growing. Tweezers really hurt..

14:44 / 21.04.04

Never trust a man with a beard -like what's he trying to hide?-no chin perhaps? Or does he think it makes him look distinguished?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:50 / 21.04.04

Saveloy, that was what the Greek orator Demosthenes used to do when he had work to do. His thinking was that if he shaved off half his beard he would look such a twat that he wouldn't want to leave the house and he would be forced to do some work.

Is that true? If so, I'd like you to apologise now to all the people I'm gonna be boring senseless with that particular anecdote for the next few days. That's brilliant.

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