Sorry, don’t have time now, maybe later, to watch. However, I have a Beard, not one of those nambe pambe half —— ones. Full. I have had a beard since about 1971. Ask me why, and all I can say is that I like it.
When I was young, I had a beard to look older. When I got older, I shaved to look younger. There were other factors, mainly that keeping twigs and leaves out of my hair and beard when working under a car was a pain. Older women cut their hair short because it is practical and they are no longer in the marriage market, shaving has the same advantages.
Some men look good with beards. To do so, though, one has to be prepared to spend substantial amounts of time and effort grooming it, an unkempt beard most definitely does not look good. The time and effort of grooming is one reason many men don’t bother with them.
Another reason is color. Some men have beards that are a different color than the hair on top of their heads, and they either have to dye one or the other or let them not match, which doesn’t always look good.
I’ve had a full beard since around ’74. I worked up to it by growing a porn star ‘stache (which is what my wife called it) moving on to a Van Dyke, and finally letting it all hang out.
I have very coarse facial hair, and sensitive skin on my neck – very prone to irritation (razor rash). I’d be willing to go back to shaving, if I could just leave about a 1.5″ unshaved strip on my neck. Then the kid’s insult of “neckbeard” might be appropriate.
Some may find this potential breakthrough helpful:
N.B. You can read the two-page Kerouac story at the link Selfy provided. It’s a touching vignette starring Dean Moriarity of On the Road fame, with a cameo by Allen Ginsberg, AKA Carlo Marx.
I had a beard in my hippie days.
When I tried again in the 2000s the itching drove me crazy as it grew in, so I shaved it off.
Huxley, I had a similar problem.
… lol!
Not being up on all of the latest social memes, but it seemed to me in the last year or three men began growing these wispy short scraggly beards, and not usually letting it grow out even to a full 1/2 inch plus length. It seems to me that they need to be grown to 1″ to 3″ to be “full” but not over blown, for most men. And the less hairy parts of the cheek or neck still need to be shaved for the cleanest appearance.
Some stylize partial face coverage (side burns, chops, slots, etc.), which does not look attractive to me, in general, although a wide full (vs. thin narrow) VanDyke chin beard can work with clean shaven cheeks, etc.
Can we presume that JD Vance grew his beard to look older than his clean shaven boyish appearance? With a substantial fraction of gray, his beard now looks pretty decent, but I think he still needs to let it grow another 1/2 to 1″.
Plus, every photo of Trump’s face close up seems to show him very closely shaved — all of the time. Which makes me wonder if he did or did not have laser or other depilatory treatments. Could also be a result of his reported germophobe stage. Or a genetic situation?
Nobody really wants to know THAT badly.
Marlene:
LOL!
Can we presume that JD Vance grew his beard to look older than his clean shaven boyish appearance? With a substantial fraction of gray, his beard now looks pretty decent, but I think he still needs to let it grow another 1/2 to 1?.
R2L:
Hard to say.
I think Ted Cruz looks friendlier with a beard. Before he looked a little too intense, like a really keen college debater who was able and willing to slit your throat at a moment’s notice.
AesopSpouse’s facial hair comes and goes (used to come in after a week at Scout Camp, hang around for awhile, then go away again if he need to be clean-shaven for some reason). His beard really isn’t one of the good kind, but several of our boys have very nice ones.
I did feel a bit ancient the first time I saw our oldest grandson with a full beard.
Sigh.
PS the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.
PS the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.
— AesopFan
Oddly enough, this is widely seen as being a sexual signal, a way to project masculinity to women. Whether or not it works on any significant number of women I have no idea.
PS the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.
==
No it isn’t. Every aspect of men’s fashion in the 1970s was worse than that. The only males photographed in that era who avoid embarrassment are those who ignored what was going on around them and kept their brush cuts and browline eyeglasses.
Looks like the Obama—he of the extraordinary creased trousers—has decided to fundamentally transform Brutalism into Hideous-ism.
Absolutely amazing!
sdferr on October 14, 2025 at 10:50 pm said:
“Abe’s was an improvement, no?”
But this from your link was a very LOL”
“When opponent Stephen Douglas called him “two-faced” during a debate in 1858, Lincoln is said to have answered, “If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?” ”
AesopFan: “the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.” It may not be the ugliest, as some stubbles are longer but scragglier. But it is part of what I was talking about above. It makes the man seem tentative about his masculinity – an actor playing at being male??
Barry Meislin, yes the Obama library looks very sad and unhappy in that locale, separated from its peer buildings in the distance. But that sort of false “standing out” is typical of what me might expect from Obama, is it not? Also, as a mausoleum type structure, it appears to be intended to hide secrets, rather than a library open to current and future scholars to plumb the depths and breadths of Obama’s oeuvre.
PS: and given the horizontal emphasis of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style (and Usonian style) buildings to hug the ground and plains of the mid-west and the horizon, it is decidedly un-American.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Sorry, don’t have time now, maybe later, to watch. However, I have a Beard, not one of those nambe pambe half —— ones. Full. I have had a beard since about 1971. Ask me why, and all I can say is that I like it.
When I was young, I had a beard to look older. When I got older, I shaved to look younger. There were other factors, mainly that keeping twigs and leaves out of my hair and beard when working under a car was a pain. Older women cut their hair short because it is practical and they are no longer in the marriage market, shaving has the same advantages.
Unpublished Jack Kerouac manuscript discovered in dead mob boss’ property:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/10/very-significant-jack-kerouac-story-discovered-after-mafia-boss-auction
Some men look good with beards. To do so, though, one has to be prepared to spend substantial amounts of time and effort grooming it, an unkempt beard most definitely does not look good. The time and effort of grooming is one reason many men don’t bother with them.
Another reason is color. Some men have beards that are a different color than the hair on top of their heads, and they either have to dye one or the other or let them not match, which doesn’t always look good.
I’ve had a full beard since around ’74. I worked up to it by growing a porn star ‘stache (which is what my wife called it) moving on to a Van Dyke, and finally letting it all hang out.
I have very coarse facial hair, and sensitive skin on my neck – very prone to irritation (razor rash). I’d be willing to go back to shaving, if I could just leave about a 1.5″ unshaved strip on my neck. Then the kid’s insult of “neckbeard” might be appropriate.
Some may find this potential breakthrough helpful:
“My nonverbal autistic son began speaking at age 8 after taking wonder drug — he’d understood everything for years and had complaints”—
https://nypost.com/2025/10/14/health/my-nonverbal-autistic-son-began-speaking-at-8-with-leucovorin/
N.B. You can read the two-page Kerouac story at the link Selfy provided. It’s a touching vignette starring Dean Moriarity of On the Road fame, with a cameo by Allen Ginsberg, AKA Carlo Marx.
I had a beard in my hippie days.
When I tried again in the 2000s the itching drove me crazy as it grew in, so I shaved it off.
Huxley, I had a similar problem.
… lol!
Not being up on all of the latest social memes, but it seemed to me in the last year or three men began growing these wispy short scraggly beards, and not usually letting it grow out even to a full 1/2 inch plus length. It seems to me that they need to be grown to 1″ to 3″ to be “full” but not over blown, for most men. And the less hairy parts of the cheek or neck still need to be shaved for the cleanest appearance.
Some stylize partial face coverage (side burns, chops, slots, etc.), which does not look attractive to me, in general, although a wide full (vs. thin narrow) VanDyke chin beard can work with clean shaven cheeks, etc.
Can we presume that JD Vance grew his beard to look older than his clean shaven boyish appearance? With a substantial fraction of gray, his beard now looks pretty decent, but I think he still needs to let it grow another 1/2 to 1″.
Plus, every photo of Trump’s face close up seems to show him very closely shaved — all of the time. Which makes me wonder if he did or did not have laser or other depilatory treatments. Could also be a result of his reported germophobe stage. Or a genetic situation?
Nobody really wants to know THAT badly.
Marlene:
LOL!
Can we presume that JD Vance grew his beard to look older than his clean shaven boyish appearance? With a substantial fraction of gray, his beard now looks pretty decent, but I think he still needs to let it grow another 1/2 to 1?.
R2L:
Hard to say.
I think Ted Cruz looks friendlier with a beard. Before he looked a little too intense, like a really keen college debater who was able and willing to slit your throat at a moment’s notice.
He still can.
Abe’s was an improvement, no?
https://www.biography.com/political-figures/abraham-lincoln-beard
AesopSpouse’s facial hair comes and goes (used to come in after a week at Scout Camp, hang around for awhile, then go away again if he need to be clean-shaven for some reason). His beard really isn’t one of the good kind, but several of our boys have very nice ones.
I did feel a bit ancient the first time I saw our oldest grandson with a full beard.
Sigh.
PS the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.
— AesopFan
Oddly enough, this is widely seen as being a sexual signal, a way to project masculinity to women. Whether or not it works on any significant number of women I have no idea.
PS the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.
==
No it isn’t. Every aspect of men’s fashion in the 1970s was worse than that. The only males photographed in that era who avoid embarrassment are those who ignored what was going on around them and kept their brush cuts and browline eyeglasses.
Looks like the Obama—he of the extraordinary creased trousers—has decided to fundamentally transform Brutalism into Hideous-ism.
Absolutely amazing!
https://instapundit.com/750830/
sdferr on October 14, 2025 at 10:50 pm said:
“Abe’s was an improvement, no?”
But this from your link was a very LOL”
“When opponent Stephen Douglas called him “two-faced” during a debate in 1858, Lincoln is said to have answered, “If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?” ”
AesopFan: “the contemporary male fashion of having just enough stubble to look like you slept on the office floor overnight is the ugliest thing that men have ever latched onto, IMO.” It may not be the ugliest, as some stubbles are longer but scragglier. But it is part of what I was talking about above. It makes the man seem tentative about his masculinity – an actor playing at being male??
Barry Meislin, yes the Obama library looks very sad and unhappy in that locale, separated from its peer buildings in the distance. But that sort of false “standing out” is typical of what me might expect from Obama, is it not? Also, as a mausoleum type structure, it appears to be intended to hide secrets, rather than a library open to current and future scholars to plumb the depths and breadths of Obama’s oeuvre.
PS: and given the horizontal emphasis of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style (and Usonian style) buildings to hug the ground and plains of the mid-west and the horizon, it is decidedly un-American.