They say there are only two things men can do that women can’t, and only one that can be seen in public. Yet demonstrating masculine solidarity through follicular development has been remarkably unpopular for years, leaving men with nothing to show off. Why should men need a special month to identify with our lumberjack forebears? What could convince us to give up our manly manes?
The shortest answer is this: we like women. And most women do not like facial hair. One woman said to me just last night that if her husband does not shave, she refuses to kiss him. “It’s like sand paper,” she said. That’s motivation, friends.
Women have not always thought this way, though. Despite our current assumption that members of the gentler sex were daintier back when it was kosher to call them the gentler sex, the repressed women of the middle ages found a beard to be attractive, a sign that they were dealing with a grown man with testosterone to spare.
Why did women change there minds so thoroughly? Maybe it is related to the feminist movement, since now women finally have the chance to turn the tables on men. Women can now work in almost any job a man can and get paid nearly as much as a man, even vote for a different guy than their husbands do, so maybe they are trying to take away the one manly thing we can do in public. Women love sticking it to the man.
But I doubt that is the reason for it. It seems just as possible that Clive Staples was right in the first place. The Screwtape Letters makes a lot of profound points amidst Uncle Screwtape’s devilish rants, mentioning that the forces of darkness have made secondary characteristics like the beard more important to the human search for companionship than whether we actually make good companions. You may not believe in demons, but I do, and this could easily be something Satan might do in a desperate, meaningless attempt to stick it to the real Man.
Not that he is. I am not sure what the devil does for kicks these days, but I cannot imagine the dark denizens of the deep staging an anti-stubble demonstration. Prohibition did not work for whiskey, so why would it work for whiskers? I think in the end it comes back to the middle ages. Back then, women were raised to be attracted to men instead of boys, and men were raised to be attracted to women, not girls. But that is no longer the case. Women are trained to like men who are boyish—emotionally unsure, constant risk takers as long as there is a perfect safety net, and smooth-faced. Men are just as bad, desiring women to perpetually retain girlish youth in looks and needs; children are easy to keep happy.
We need to let ourselves grow up. When I was young I could not grow a beard, and when I am old I will not be able to grow hair on top of my head. For now, I intended to enjoy both. Maybe this means a lot of women won’t be stopping to admire my obviously fantastic physical condition. But then, wanting to be the hottest dude around and the constant center of attention is something of a middle-school hang-up, too.
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