Tragically Beardless

Newsletter 2024-03-11

I recently did the worst thing imaginable: I shaved off my beard. Not all the way, but close enough. According to the measurement on my trimmer guard, I’m down to level one, which makes me look like I don’t have any facial hair but might have fallen face-first into a pile of dirt. With the way the kids gasped when they saw me, you’d think I killed a man. Their reaction confused me because they never said they liked my beard, even when I went fishing for compliments. Their standing policy is to never comment on my appearance, unless I change it, in which case they tell me it got worse. Clearly I’m in the wrong. I apologize to all those I hurt.

The lesson here is that, when I adjust how I look, I get uglier, but that doesn’t mean I looked good in the first place. It just means my family was used to my pre-existing level of ugly. Most men can relate. The goal of male beauty is to avoid reminding people that we have faces. If I make a sudden change that causes my children to notice me, I’ve failed as a guy and a human being. The good news is it won’t happen again. Modifications going forward will be slow enough to avoid causing additional trauma to my children. Within a few days, my stubble will be thick enough to qualify as a beard. That change will make me look worse, as all changes do, but at a gradual, predictable rate that won’t cause any jump scares. It’s the least terrible option in a future where all possible outcomes are worst case scenarios. In the world of beard grooming, every decision is the wrong one. The only winning move is not to play.

You might think I consulted my wife before any of this. Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s the last one who wants to look at me. That’s why she fell in love with me in the first place. I’m exactly a foot taller than her. She has to strain her neck to see anything above my shoulders. I’m not worth the effort. Instead, when we were dating, she mostly saw my torso clad in baggy race shirts and decided “that’s the man for me.” It was up to her imagination to speculate on what was underneath. She had to wait until we were married to be disappointed by the answer. That’s my strongest argument for premarital chastity. Men, wait to underwhelm her until that ring is on her finger. The key to a healthy marriage is the sunk cost fallacy. Sometimes it’s just not worth the trouble to escape.

Back in college when Lola and I were just dating, I was clean shaven. It was a holdover from my Catholic high school, where we were required to have smooth cheeks at all times. As Jesus said in the Sermon at the Mount, a five o’clock shadow offends the Lord. I waited to grow a beard until after we were married in accordance with Amish tradition. When I asked Lola for feedback, she refused to offer an opinion of any kind, which likely indicates said opinion would not have been kind. Being naive, I took her lack of response as a statement of neutrality and plowed ahead with lazily not shaving. When I finally got her to say anything about my beard, her only comment was, “It’s there.” There are a number of ways to interpret that statement. The most charitable one is that she’ll always love me no matter how I look. A less flattering take is it’s a good thing I have a sense of humor because, well, look at me. From a more conspiratorial angle, you could argue it’s in Lola’s interest to keep me from maxing out my visual appeal. If I looked too good, I could draw the attention of other women, but if I looked too bad, I would reflect poorly on her. It’s to her advantage to keep me decidedly mediocre. That’s where I spend the majority of my life. She chose her partner well.

I see great beards everywhere these days. That’s what motivated me to grow mine out in the first place. My most original ideas always involve copying somebody else. In my unscientific opinion, most guys look better with a beard than without. Men in general are ugly, so the less of our faces you can see, the more beautiful the world is. Consequently, if you ever want to start a conversation with a random dude, complement his beard. It will always go well—unless his face is completely smooth and he thinks you’re mocking his inability to grow a beard. Then your “compliment” will be his super villain origin story. My eight-year-old, Waffle, had a sleepover Saturday night. When I dropped her off, I met the other kid’s dad, who had one of the most impressive chin forests I’ve ever seen. I had to say something about it. Now we’re best friends for life. The moment was especially poignant since it came just minutes after I finished my own ill-advised beard massacre. In that other dad’s face, I saw what might have been. I mourned the beard that would never be.

Photo by ismail taibi on Unsplash

As I sit here typing with almost-smooth cheeks, I finally accept that I lack the patience to grow a truly impressive face scarf. I started my latest attempt after seeing my brother-in-law’s new neck yak at Christmas. I only made it a few months before I tinkered with it too much and had to shave the whole thing. The biggest problem is that my beard has a mind of its own. I wanted it to go straight down. Instead, it pointed in every direction except where gravity would suggest. As my beard gets longer, the lower half of my face looks like I stuck my finger in a power outlet. The only solution is to keep it short enough that the stubble can’t point anywhere but straight out. At least then the hair is semi-uniform. The key to fashion is consistency, even if it’s consistently bad. This newsletter is the exact opposite of a beauty magazine. Never take advice on your appearance from me.

Don’t take style advice from children, either, especially if those kids are related to me. They’re devastatingly honest, but that only helps them point out what’s wrong and not how to fix it. I have a family full of girls, so there’s not a lot of face shaving going on here. Only the dog can relate to my struggles. I recently had to shear him down after he got poop stuck in his butt hairs. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine the similarities between his rear end and my face. We both alarmed people when they first saw us after our respective trimming incidents. The moral of the story is, when I have clippers, I shouldn’t be allowed near man or beast. Consider yourself warned.

I had a thicker beard through most of my kids’ early childhoods. When they were younger, I made a video where I shaved it off to see their shock. Unlike their reactions this weekend, the kids back then were mildly disgusted but otherwise unmoved. They still recognized me. My inner ugly always shows through. Their understated responses were par for the course of their childhoods. The bigger the reveal, the smaller their reaction. That’s why they were unimpressed by the majesty of Mammoth Cave but blown away by going through the local car wash. If I were a smarter man, I’d get one of those membership packages that comes with unlimited washes and take our minivan through it three times a week. For that level of entertainment, I could cancel most of our streaming services and all future vacations. I’ll take the extra wax loyalty package, please.

Despite my past failures with growing a majestic beard, I’m tempted to try again. A deep, primal, and ultimately misguided part of my brain thinks I could pull off a long, thick mane worthy of Duck Dynasty or ZZ Top. To get there, all I have to do is literally nothing for years on end. Yet I can never resist pulling out a grooming implement and actively sabotaging myself. If I managed to grow a respectable beard, I’m not sure what it would prove. In theory, beards make you look manlier because growing them requires testosterone. They also require laziness, which is the manliest quality of all. Beyond that, the outline of a beard gives the illusion of a chin, the most perplexing body part. Scientists can’t explain why people have them. They don’t make you tougher or better at fighting. Based on every UFC pay-per-view I’ve ever seen, it’s the best place to hit someone if you want to knock them out. It’s a built-in weakness like the Death Star’s vent shaft. Perhaps that’s why a beard that creates the illusion of a chin is better than actually having a chin. If someone tries to punch you there, they’ll hit nothing but air, leaving you unharmed. That makes it all the more important that I successfully grow a beard on one of these attempts. I have an extremely punchable face and I know it.

The silver lining of my recent facial hair disaster is that it will all grow back. A week from now, I’ll have enough stubble to obscure my lower face. Only then will I be allowed to reenter polite society. Repairing the emotional damage I caused will take longer. Shaving when my kids were younger didn’t permanently scar them because they were too little to understand what was going on. Now, they’re old enough to appreciate the horror of what I’ve done. An apology tour and years of therapy lay ahead. A few weeks ago, when I got a haircut, the stylist asked me if I wanted them to cut my beard, too, for an extra fee. I arrogantly told them I could handle it myself. Clearly that was a lie. I would have been better off to pay the eight dollars for it then than to make my entire family pay for it now. I promise to grow as a person as my new beard grows on my face. In the meantime, I’ll be hiding in my house. Sorry to disappoint all the paparazzi waiting outside.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James