大象传媒

In the space of a few short years the beard has made a striking return to British life. Footballers, actors and fashionable hipsters are far more likely to wear some form of facial hair than they were in the recent past. The wearing of a well-barbered, blow-dried and oiled beard is unlikely to raise any eyebrows. and has come up with some beard-strokingingly intriguing facts.

We are currently seeing a similar pattern emerging to what happened in the Victorian era when beards became all the rage. In the 1850s, women agitated for more power. There were national concerns that British men were becoming more weak. These concerns resulted in a focus on the male body. The beard became almost the emblem of manliness, upheld as a symbol of natural male strength. Today, in an era where the campaign for gender equality sees more women recognised in positions of power than ever before, men are growing strong beards and stroking them for added measure.

The beard revival is very much to do with the idea of a nostalgic version of masculinity. The recession has led to this very nostalgic, backward-looking attitude to fashion. It’s almost as if things seem to be going so wrong on a world-scale at the moment that we are afraid collectively to look into the future. We’re not sure what the future is going to bring us, so we take great comfort in looking at the past because it’s already gone. Vintage has been incredibly popular as a fashion trend. Men are looking backwards to the beard because for them it represents a manliness, it looks back to a time when men were men. The beard is something tangible – it’s something men have to literally hold on to in times of stress.

We live in the era of automation. The workplace has changed dramatically, the idea that masculine jobs are suited with physicality has disappeared. Men somehow feel that they need to survive, be strong and capable, and use their bodies. Because many men aren’t using their bodies in everyday work sitting in meetings or in offices, they’re demonstrating their capability and strength through fashion. When you look around in the U.K. you’ll see many men wearing huge boots, jeans, shooting jackets, plaid shirts – they look as if they should be in a mountain cabin in Oregon about to go out and shoot a moose, but instead they’re just nipping out to Londis. The beard is very much part of this – it’s a symbolic way of showing that you can survive any crisis, including the overwhelming lack of trees to chop.

There is an underlying idea that it’s more authentic to have a beard. The return to the hairy man after the carefully coiffured hair and fake tan trends was an inevitable change in fashion. There is a fascinating ambivalence towards hair in culture. Some people fear it when it grows in armpits, some find it disgusting, yet some men can grow an epic amount of it on their faces and that can be acceptable. We fear it - even though it’s a sign of sexual maturity, people laser their body hair off so it will never grow again. At the same time some people have huge abundances of fake hair on their heads. The beard is somehow symptomatic of that – it’s ok now, but possibly in 20 years time will people look at it with a certain amount of distaste? The cycle of fashion may eventually push beards out of popularity again. Fashion has been extremely gendered up until now – women have had long hair, short skirts and high heels, whilst men have had big beards, working clothes and boots. Logically there’s going to be a movement in fashion towards meeting in the middle and gender fluidity.

Twice in the past where we’ve had long beard trends - the Tudor period and then again in the Victorian period. But rather than disappearing completely, the trend then changed to moustaches. So are we soon going to see the return of the moustache or perhaps some elaborately shaped whiskers? Watch this face- ...erm, space.