Beards

There was a time (let's call it the 80s, 90s, and 00s) when most people did not have facial hair. During that time, I frequently had some form of whiskerage. Most of my adult life, I've had a goatee, or a full beard, or sideburns, or at least an on-going five o'clock shadow (which I actually take about 2 days to really produce).

And I like my facial hair, and I like that Christopher has a beard, too. I think it looks really good on him. And, for quite a while, we were the only two people in our social group who had any whiskers to speak of.

But, lately, I've been noticing more and more people with full beards. And, oddly enough, it seems to be mainly guys in their 20s. Lots of them with painstakingly mussed hair and full beards. On some of them it looks pretty good. But, on some of them... well...

You know how some people really shouldn't try to follow fashion? Like the woman with the great curves who tries to wear skinny jeans. Or the guy with just the start of a beer gut who wants to wear an "athletic cut" shirt and it pulls taut in all the wrong places? A decent number of these recent beard aficionados seem to fall into that same type of category.

Face it, there are a lot of guys with patchy facial hair. And some of those beards look kind of mangy (in the worst sense). But, still, they're doing it for "the fashion." Do they not realize that even Brad Pitt looked pretty horrible in his latest beard-carnation?

But, in the meantime, I'm going to keep my goatee and my three-day-old five o'clock shadow. And I'll hope that one day these 20-somethings will look in the mirror and decide it's time to thin the herd. Or, in some cases, shave it.

(On the other hand, don't get me started about shaving below the neck... that's a whole different topic...)