Beards

Number6

What do people here think of beards, men and women's opinnions please. I am thinking about growning a beard, Ginger(any ginger jokes and I will kill ya ). What are peoples oppinions on beards, are they passé or "in" and how hard are they to maintain.

Thanks,
6

simu

i think they're horrible!

blondie83

Don't do it, beards are not attractive on guys Bit of stubble can be nice, but thats as far as it should be allowed go!

Aurther Hugh

Ooooh nooo, I love a beard on the right man, admitedly if they make you look like you have personal hygiene issues that's not attractive. But they can be so sexy as they are really manly, think Aragorn !

Jim

I have a red beard, or the beginings of one. Don't plan to grow a full one, just haven't bothered shaving since I finished working.

Tbh I wouldn't worry about if there in or not. If you like them, then grow one. Don't worry about what other people think. Watch out a bit though as your apperance can spiral out of control. Atm I have blue / purple hair, the start of a red beard, wearing jeans and a hawaiian shirt.

/me shakes head. How did I get here?

gobby

What about a goate?

[edit] I'm a ginger too and I have a small goate. Its kept very short and tidy. I dont really care what anybody thinks about it tbh. I've had it for years and its basically a part of me now.

[edit2] Its not hard to look after either. I have a hair shaver and I just run over the beard with a bare blade. Keeps it well short.

Doc

Are you talking about some sort of goatee beard that you will have to trim or are you just letting it all grow. On me I don’t like anything more then stubble length facial hair anything longer looks dirty and itches.

I can see the appeal of growing a beard purely from the lazy mans view but goatees and the like where you still have to shave? May as well take all of it off.

If you do grow one buy a neck brace too you’ll look the cheese, but people might want to bum you and spray you with there sex piss.

Thank you, please

ixoy

Ugh, big no to beards here. Bristly things that just make guys look older and, inevitably, less attractive. They tend to dominate the face too much as well, drawing the eye away from other characteristics, such as nose, mouth, and eyes. I don't think goatees look great either - too much reminsecent of an artisté waving around his paintbrush, sponging off the State....
Stubble is a different matter. Certain guys can pull that off, although it generally works better on a darker skin tone. Pale guys shouldn't try generally, unless they've got a decent jawline...
All this is, of course, my opinion and therefore 100% correct.

Number6

I was thinking about a full blown out beard... but I don't know now tbh. I'll definetly reconcider it.

What about having a beard with a bald (top only, not sides and back) head? Is that too "passé"?

Seraphina

err, correctly cultivated facial hair can be VERRRRRRRRY (please roll your 'r' when saying that) sexy, however a full beard definately doesn't suit everyone. try growing the full beard, seeing how it looks, then maybe trimming and shaving parts of it to a style you like?

Lady^Jane

well..i dont quite fancy guys with beards but i do look twice on guys with goatee..

superconor

Sure you could grow a goatee , but why not grow a goatse ?

Ill show myself out......

simu

An excerpt from Cryptomicon by Neal Stephenson with discussion on beards (it's a píss-take but it might be of interest all the same!)

One evening when Avi and his family had been over for dinner, Randy had said, "I?m the beard, Avi?s the suit," as a way of explaining their business relationship, and from that point Charlene had been off and running. Charlene has recently finished a scholarly article, deconstructing beards. In particular, she was aiming at beard culture in the Northern California high-tech community?Randy?s crowd. Her paper began by demolishing, somehow, the assumption that beards were more "natural" or easier to maintain than clean-shavenness?she actually published statistics from Gillette?s research department comparing the amount of time that bearded and beardless men spent in the bathroom each day, proving that the difference was not statistically significant. Randy had any number of objections to the way in which these statistics were gathered, but Charlene was having none of it. "It is counterintuitive," she said.

She was in a big hurry to move on to the meat of her argument. She went up to San Francisco and bought a few hundred dollars? worth of pornography at a boîte that catered to shaving fetishists. For a couple of weeks, Randy couldn?t come home in the evening without finding Charlene sacked out in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn and a Dictaphone, watching a video of a straight razor being drawn along wet, soapy flesh. She taped a few lengthy interviews with some actual shaving fetishists who described in great detail the feeling of nakedness and vulnerability shaving gave them, and how erotic that was, especially when freshly shaved areas were slapped or spanked. She worked up a detailed comparison of the iconography of shaving-fetishist porn and that of shaving-product commercials shown on national TV during football games, and proved that they were basically indistinguishable (you could actually buy videotapes of bootleg shaving-cream and razor ads in the same places that sold the out-and-out pornography).

She pulled down statistics on racial variation in beard growth. American Indians didn?t grow beards, Asians hardly did, Africans were a special case because daily shaving gave them a painful skin condition. "The ability to grow heavy, full beards as a matter of choice appears to be a privilege accorded by nature solely to white males," she wrote.

Alarm bells, red lights, and screaming klaxons went off in Randy?s mind when he happened across that phrase.

"But this assertion buys into a specious subsumption. ?Nature? is a socially constructed discourse, not an objective reality [many footnotes here]. That is doubly true in the case of the ?nature? that accords full beards to the specific minority population of northern European males. Homo sapiens evolved in climatic zones where facial hair was of little practical use. The development of an offshoot of the species characterized by densely bearded males is an adaptive response to cold climates. These climates did not ?naturally? invade the habitats of early humans?rather, the humans invaded geographical regions where such climates prevailed. This geographical transgression was strictly a sociocultural event and so all physical adaptations to it must be placed in the same category?including the development of dense facial hair."

Charlene published the results of a survey she had organized, in which a few hundred women were asked for their opinions. Essentially all of them said that they preferred clean-shaven men to those who were either stubbly or bearded. In short order, Charlene proved that having a beard was just one element of a syndrome strongly correlated to racist and sexist attitudes, and to the pattern of emotional unavailability so often bemoaned by the female partners of white males, especially ones who were technologically oriented.

"The boundary between Self and Environment is a social con[struct]. In Western cultures this boundary is supposed to be sharp and distinct. The beard is an outward symbol of that boundary, a distancing technique. To shave off the beard (or any body hair) is to symbolically annihilate the (essentially specious) boundary separating Self from Other . . ."

And so on. The paper was rapturously received by the peer reviewers and immediately accepted for publication in a major international journal. Charlene is presenting some related work at the War as Text conference:

"Unshavenness as Signifier in World War II Movies." On the strength of her beard work, three different Ivy League schools are fighting over who will get to hire her.

Jim

Shaved today, in comparision I definatly prefer my shaven self.

Dammit. I wanted to use the beard mainly for storage.

gobby

Doc wrote:

Are you talking about some sort of goatee beard that you will have to trim or are you just letting it all grow. On me I don’t like anything more then stubble length facial hair anything longer looks dirty and itches.

I can see the appeal of growing a beard purely from the lazy mans view but goatees and the like where you still have to shave? May as well take all of it off.

If you do grow one buy a neck brace too you’ll look the cheese, but people might want to bum you and spray you with there sex piss.

Thank you, please

Have to trim it. But like I said, its no hassle really. I just use a hair razor (bare blade). Your right about the itchyness. Anytime it does get long it gets a bit annoying.

CathyMoran

It really does depend on the guy - but I have no problem with them if they suit the person...the only thing is that when you are kissing someone with a beard it can really hurt your face, it can feel like sand paper (still wincing from remembering the pain of kissing a guy with a beard)...

golden gal

i dont think beards suit women...(you asked for mens and womens opinions!!)

MidnightQueen

Number6 wrote:

What do people here think of beards

Think about em, and i will kill ya! Beards turn me off! Yuk!

Sarky

Number6 wrote:

What do people here think of beards, men and women's opinnions please. I am thinking about growning a beard, Ginger(any ginger jokes and I will kill ya ). What are peoples oppinions on beards, are they passé or "in" and how hard are they to maintain.

Thanks,
6

Go for it, lad. You'll never know until you try, and if it doesn't work, 5 minutes with a razor will erase everything.

And even if your hair was naturally purple, even if you're only slightly Irish, chances are your beard would be red anyway.

Personally, I think beards are nice to see on guys. Makes you look more mature, sensible, and, well, they're just nifty. I love my beard and refuse to get rid of it, ever.

MidnightQueen

Well i suppose your right. You'll never know until you try! I still dont like beards though!!

Sarky

Your loss...

MidnightQueen

Well what have i got to lose?

Karl Hungus

I really don't like how I look without at least a bit of stubble going on, but I also like to let it grow because shaving every day will give you that 5 O'clock shadow consderably earlier than 5. I know some people and they've nothing but coarse stubble by the evening, and those lads are still in their 20's!

echomadman

the old beards debate, good to see sarky fighting our corner

i have my beard because i like it, i dont give a fúck what other people think of it, if you're worried about if beards are "in" or "passe" then you are of teh wrong mindset, go and be like everyone else

simu, in quoting that piece from cryptonimicon you ignore the fact that it was written by one of the most unsympathetic characters in the book, randys ex, whose general philosophy is in direct opposition to the rest of the book (neal stephenson has a mighty beard ).
Basically it was an exercise in showing the vapidity of her "intellectual" clique.

Beards are a way of life, i mock goatee sporters, they're just as much slaves to the axis of gilette/wilkinson sword/bic clean shaven evil

*Sassy*

Not liking the whole beard thing much either. Deffo think a day or two's worth of stubble can look dead sexy on SOME guys. Its really a personal preference thing as far as girls are concerned. But if you're single and on the lookout, you're definitely narrowing your market of interested girls by at least half.

climaxer

Some men can be really sexy with beards - grow it and see if it suits you and as someone already said you can easily shave it off again if you don't like it.

George Clooney looks great with or without a beard.

BaZmO*

Beards are never particulary "in" or "out" it really depends on the person. Some people can look well with a beard and some can look scruffy which is fine if that's what you're after.

However, Moustaches are always a NO NO!!!



B.

climaxer

BaZmO* wrote:

Beards are never particulary "in" or "out" it really depends on the person. Some people can look well with a beard and some can look scruffy which is fine if that's what you're after.

However, Moustaches are always a NO NO!!!



B.

Thanks for giving me a laugh with the little smilie with a moustache - I agree moustaches are a big NO NO in my opinion.

Also I think some guys can carry the scruffy look and can be very sexy.

Mewzel

i love guys with facial hair. i think as far as women are concerned its down to personal preference, i like beards as do many of my friends, but i also know people who dont like them.
give it a go and see what reaction it gets from your friends, they should be able to tell you honestly if it suits you or not

ecksor

Mewzel wrote:

i think as far as women are concerned its down to personal preference,

I'd imagine this to be the case with just about anything that's likely to be discussed on this forum.

Sarky

echomadman wrote:

the old beards debate, good to see sarky fighting our corner

*SNIP*

Beards are a way of life, i mock goatee sporters, they're just as much slaves to the axis of gilette/wilkinson sword/bic clean shaven evil

Um, I have a goatee... Technically...

MidnightQueen

BaZmO* wrote:

However, Moustaches are always a NO NO!!!



B.

Even though they look great on smilies!

Number6

Me, I couldnt resist the temptation of a goatee

Sarky

I once plaited my beard into 3 strands and glued googly eyes on the ends. That was a great weekend...