#311： The Meaning of Beards
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Summary
In his new book, "Beards and Men," Christopher Oldstone Moore takes readers on a tour through the history of facial hair, starting with cavemen and going all the way to the hipster beard of the 21st century.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast where the ability
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to grow a beard is what separates boys from men and except for a few rare instances of bearded
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ladies, men from women. Because it's a uniquely masculine feature, facial hair has played an
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important role in forming our ideas about manhood. Today on the show I talk to a cultural historian
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who specializes in the history of facial hair to discuss the cultural, political, and religious
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implications of the beard. His name is Christopher Oldstone Moore in his book of Beards and Men. He
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takes readers on a tour through the history of facial hair starting with cavemen and going all
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the way to the hipster beard of the 21st century. We begin our conversation talking about why male
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humans grow beards in the first place and then take a look at the spiritual and political significance
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of beards and shaving beginning with the ancient Sumerians and going all the way through medieval
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Europeans. We then discuss why the Greeks were big on beards until Alexander the Great and why
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the ancient Romans were barefaced into the days of the early empire. We also discuss Jesus's beard
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and why many early Christians actually depicted him as being clean shaven. We end our conversation
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talking about the great beard of the 19th century, why clean shavenists took precedence in the 20th
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century, and no, it's not because of the military's use of gas masks and the cultural meanings of facial
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hair today. Whether you're bearded or barefaced, this podcast is going to leave you with lots of insights
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about the hair that grows on your masculine mug. After the show is over, check out the show notes
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Christopher Oldstone Moore, welcome to the show.
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So you recently published a book of Beards and Men, The Revealing History of Facial Hair.
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You're a professor of Western Civilization, and it says in your CV that you have a focus on
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facial hair and its intersection with the changing ideas of masculinity. I'm curious,
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how does a professor of Western Civilization end up specializing in the history of facial hair?
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Well, the short answer to that question is that I'm looking for fun things to put into my lecture,
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social history. Actually, it started out with the question of why did men shave? That's the
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original question. And I was looking about the Romans in the classical period of Julius Caesar
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and so forth, and all their busts of well-shaven men. And I thought, when did that start? How did
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that get going? And is that a Roman thing? And so I started looking around, trying to find some
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information. And it was pretty surprised to find that we, that is to say, academia, knew almost
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nothing about the history of shaving facial hair. And it was just completely overlooked. And so I
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got more and more interested in it. And then I fell completely into the rabbit hole.
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Here we are today. Do you yourself have a beard or do you shave?
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You know, I go back and forth. Right now, I do have a beard. I often have a beard during the
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summertime when I'm, you know, camping and so forth and so on. And sometimes I shave it off. I guess
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I'm indecisive. In my book, I have a picture of both me, bearded and not bearded, but it also
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reflects history. That's the way history has worked too. So let's talk about the question, why do humans
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have beards in the first place? Because you point out other primates don't have copious amounts of
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facial hair like we do. Do biologists have an idea why humans evolved to have facial hair?
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Well, that's a great conundrum. And it's been debated for decades. And there are a lot of good
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reasons, but we can't be dead sure because it's impossible to recreate the conditions of about 50,000
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years ago or so when these things evolved. I think that the predominant theory is still Darwin's idea
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that beards are an ornament. That is to say, they're meant to demonstrate a man's maturity,
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health, strength, those kinds of qualities that would make him a good sexual partner.
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And therefore, as an ornament, a signal to sexual partners that he is the kind of guy that you want.
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And there's a lot of interesting evidence of that, both in psychological research, but also in
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other microbiological research, for example, the study of animals and the comparison, say,
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with feathers. You know, there's an obvious ornament case. And bird females look at males and look at
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their plumage. And the bigger, the better the plumage, the more interested they are. Biologists are
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thinking, well, maybe that's what we're doing with the beards, too. Here's the interesting part.
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They debate about whether, why is this happening? Why do birds grow these ridiculous feathers like
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the peacock, for example? They've discovered that really it's what they call an honest advertising.
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That is to say that it really does take a healthy peacock to grow impressive feathers. And so when you
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see impressive feathers, when a female bird sees impressive feathers, it's not just a trick. It's the
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real thing. That bird is a healthy bird. So it's a good sexual partner. So maybe if you have a big,
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Right, right. Yeah, the other theory I've heard out there is that it's selection for,
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I guess, the beard somehow provided protection to hits to the face. I've heard that theory also as
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Well, biologists don't pay much attention to that. There isn't really much evidence of that. I mean,
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when you think about it, if beards were meant to be, say, protecting, you know, important parts of
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your neck or your face or anything like that, it wouldn't grow the way it does. I think people
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have noticed, you know, for example, a lot of people say, oh, it protects your neck. Well, it doesn't
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actually grow on your neck, you know. It grows on your face, you know, it grows on your chin. And
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does your chin need protection? Yes, where it's thickest is on the chin. Does your chin need
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protection not particularly? What does impress biologists, evolutionary biologists, is the fact
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that, you know, the chin around the mouth is, you know, chin is actually, our human chins are
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actually enlarged, artificially enlarged for visual effect. To look impressive, to look strong, our
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mouth area is something that we use to threaten people with, our teeth. And to have an impressive
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chin, an impressive face, oppressive mouth is intimidating. It looks strong. And that's the
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other part of the theory is that not only is it an ornament, but it could be a weapon. That is to
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say, it shows how threatening and strong we are. And so it's a warning to other men, as well as an
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attraction to women. So kind of can serve both roles. So, okay, if beards under this theory is
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there sort of as an ornament of attraction for women and possibly a deterrence to other men,
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why did humans start shaving? And when did they start shaving?
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Yeah, exactly. Good question. I mean, that's kind of where I started this whole thing. And you
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think of ancient people as being big bearded people, ancient Greeks, the ancient Mesopotamians
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and so forth, the Syrians. Actually, shaving really starts right at the beginning of civilization,
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as far back as we can look, and probably before. One of the reasons to do that, to shave it,
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is to indicate a different kind of, a special kind of masculinity. Not an ordinary natural
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kind that we're born as, but something that we make ourselves into. And the most special
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form of masculinity that the ancient world had was the priesthood. Which, you know, there's
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a joke about prostitution, prostitutes are the original professionals, but the truth is that
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the priests were the original professionals. They were the first people to be set aside for special
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tasks, very important special tasks. That special task was to interact with the gods and to win their
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favor on behalf of all the rest of us. And it's very important, took special preparation and training
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and skills. And so as part of that separation and preparation, they developed this idea of shaving.
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Now, I think it's pretty clear that one has to bear in mind that these early priests, and we're going
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back, you know, 5,000 years ago, these early priests in Mesopotamia and Egypt, they shaved their entire
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bodies, not just their faces. All the hair was removed. And in many cases, they appeared nude in front of the
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gods. So they removed their clothing, they removed their hair. And I think the idea is to purify
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themselves in some ways, erase their dirty humanity, you know, and prepare themselves to
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be as clean and as pure as possible as they approach the gods. And, you know, throughout,
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you read this in the Bible, you know, all the temples had purification pools where you had to go through a
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ritual cleansing before you approach, you know, the holy sanctuary. The shaving of hair and
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ultimately shaving the beards off the face originated there, you know, with that idea of purification.
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So while that was going on, though, in ancient Mesopotamia and in Egypt, the beard still played
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an important role in a man's identity. If you look at those old carvings from Mesopotamia,
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you see these guys with just like ginormous beards. The ancient Egyptians would put on,
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you know, fake beards and sort of like that little strip, right? So what's going on there?
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You had the priesthood who saw facial hair as making them somehow unpure, but then also the
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same time you had these kings who said, no, the facial hair makes me awesome and maybe godlike too.
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Well, and so you kind of have a separation of roles, you know, different types of masculinity. So you
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have the priestly masculinity, and that's a certain kind of power. And then you have the
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warrior masculinity, and that's a different kind of power. And not surprisingly, they have a different
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look, you know, and it goes back to what I suggested about this idea of the beard as a weapon as a
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threat. I mean, you look impressive, you look strong. So yeah, a lot of the ancient kings loved
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loved the big beard as a sign of their warrior prowess. And of course, and even they would insist
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that the beard, the king's beard got to be, had to be the longest, you know, at least in art,
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because that suggests that he is the most warlike, the most manly. And so there's a different role
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there. And so what I have fun with in the book is that there's a moment in that history of Mesopotamia
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in about a hundred years span, maybe 150 years, there was a dynasty that was sort of trying to
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play it both ways, where the king would in some cases appear shaved like a priest,
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doing his priestly duties, because kings had priestly roles as well. And at other times and
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other places, he would appear with his, as you say, ginormous beard. And it's a little hard to tell
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whether he actually put on a fake beard or whatever, but it's certainly in art,
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in official art. He was shown two different ways, depending on what his role was.
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All right. And we're going to see this dichotomy show up throughout the rest of
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Western history. But I think it's interesting too, you point out for those who have read the
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Old Testament and other ancient Near East texts, the act of forcibly shaving a man's beard off
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was like one of the worst things you could do. Why was that such a terrible offense? And why was it
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Yeah, there's a couple of famous scenes about that. David's ambassadors are described as being
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humiliated that way by a king. And I think that by that time, by the time of the Old Testament,
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the beard had become a symbol of masculine honor and patriarchal pride. And as a symbol of that,
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it could be symbolically used against you. It could be removed and then you're shamed,
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publicly shamed. And the David ambassador's story, the ambassadors are so embarrassed that they have
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to stay away from Jerusalem for several weeks while their beards grow again. And only then they can feel
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comfortable enough to actually be turned to their families, into their homes after this humiliation.
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So yes, it's a real thing because it has become so strongly connected with the honor of manhood
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itself. Right. And because of that connection to the honor of manhood, you'd often hear
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ancient people like swear by their beard. Right. Or medieval too. That was reintroduced in medieval
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times by a lot of medieval kings as well. Yeah. Now let's move on to ancient Greece. What role did the beard
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play amongst the Greeks? Well, the Greeks start out by being like the Hebrews. I mean, they believe
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that beards are part of manly honor. They too have a patriarchal society and the honor of the patriarch
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and his great beard is very important. And men who had inadequate beards or even kind of were
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effeminate and shaved them were mocked and humiliated in public. But something happened during
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classical times and we're talking about the fifth century, you know, the time that we often think
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about when we think about ancient Athens, something was happening. And what was happening was that
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artists were thinking of how to represent the gods in a new way. And they came up with the idea of
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representing the immortal quality of the gods as youthful, nude men and women. The gods were youthful
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and nude. And the idea is in a sense to imitate something that they came up with in their funeral
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arrangements. They would erect these statues. They started putting up these statues to important men who
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died. And these statues were nude, youthful figures. And the idea was to represent immortality,
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right? That in a sense, think about the human life cycle and when are we most alive, most fully alive,
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mature, but not old. That's what I want to say. Where's that point in life when we're mature,
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but not old, not decayed? And they decided that that would be like 18, 19 years old, you know,
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when you're mature, but you're not at all old or decayed. And that's like the peak of life.
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And so they like to represent that. No matter how old you were, if you were a 75 year old man and you
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died, you get a statue that looks like you're 19. They did that in art more and more. And then by,
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when Alexander the Great sort of took over Greece, this is in the 300s BC, he took over Greece and then
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conquered the Persian empire and established Greece as the kind of the dominant culture of the whole
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area. He started to make himself look like the art. So, cause he thought of himself as a demigod.
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And so he wanted to look immortal. And so luckily he was young. He was very young. But he shaved his
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beard, unlike his father and unlike the other Greeks at the time, uh, to, to look like a, like a god.
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And, and then everyone thought, Oh yeah, that's a great look. And, and then, you know, the Greeks,
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the Hellenistic era, the Greeks after that, all the respectable men shaved and then barbers,
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their whole profession of barbering took off. And then the Romans picked it up later when they adopted
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Greek ways. And so that's, that answers my question that I had originally is why did the Romans shave?
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Well, they shaved because the Greeks shaved. Why did the Greeks shave? They shaved because
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Alexander the Great one would look like a god. And so it all goes back to that dichotomy of
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facial hair being sort of earthy, natural man, no facial hair being divine. Exactly. Yeah. And
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there's your divide again. It's similar to what was going on earlier where the shading offers you a,
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to represent a different kind of masculinity that's beyond the natural, you know, it's refined,
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it's special, it's extraordinary. You know, it's interesting that dichotomy, I think whenever the
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people depicted Achilles, he was often without a beard later. Right. Later. Earlier, he had a
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beard in art and then later he didn't. Yeah. But the exception with the gods of no facial hair,
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Zeus was often portrayed with the beard still, right? Right. Yeah. Zeus is probably the only guy
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who kept his beard throughout. I mean, it just, even, even the Greeks couldn't imagine Zeus without a beard.
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But the funny one that I like to think about is Heracles or Hercules. Now here's the he-man of
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ancient Greece, the ultimate he-man. And he was a demigod, by the way. He was half-god, half-human.
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So, you know, it was fun to watch him transition in art because here's the ultimate he-man. So
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he keeps his beard a lot longer than the other gods like, or demigods like Achilles. But even he loses
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his beard by Alexander's time. Even Hercules, the he-man of ancient Greece, is beardless.
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Beardless. All right. Continuing on with the Romans, you see a lot of the bust of the ancient Romans,
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most of the emperors, clean-shaven. But then there was Hadrian and he decided,
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I'm going to start growing a beard. So why did he start growing a beard? What was going on there?
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Yeah, that's what I call the first beard movement. So we have 400 years of
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shaving where shaving is expected by men of power. And then after 400 years, Hadrian changes his mind
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and changes everyone else's mind as well and starts a movement towards beards. And he's inspired by the
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philosophers, particularly the Stoics. And the idea here is the Stoics believe that wisdom is following
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the laws of nature, the universal laws of nature. Their argument is nature gave man a beard and gave
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man a beard for a purpose. And that purpose was to show what a man, that a man is a man and not a woman.
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And if you shave off your beard, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to become a woman? What is that?
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You know, and Hadrian was one of these Roman generals, an emperor who loved Greek learning and
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really took philosophy very seriously and studied personally with some of the top philosophers. No doubt
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he, he had these lectures, you know, heard these lectures and about beards and said, you know what,
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that's right. You know, I'm a, I'm a man of wisdom. I'm going to follow the universal laws of nature
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and I want to model that for the rest of my society. And so he proudly returns to Rome
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from Greece, you know, with a beard. And then when he becomes emperor, that, that's it, you know,
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that sets the tone. Yeah. You start seeing, like Marcus Aurelius had a beard and he was also a Stoic,
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Stoic philosopher. Let's talk about one of the most famous bearded men in history who was around
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the time of Romans. It's Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth. Today, you know, Jesus portrayed as having a beard
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all the time. That's what we, we think when we think Jesus, but you, you show that that wasn't always
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the case during the history of Christianity. So can you talk about the beardiness and non-beardiness
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of Jesus throughout the early days of Christianity? Well, what we sometimes forget is that the early
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Christians lived in the Roman empire and the period that we were just talking about. And for a lot of
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that time, well, I'll have to say that here's, here's what I got to start with. After Hadrian's time,
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shaving comes back in the late Roman empire and shaving comes back because there's a sort of a
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revival of the old style as they try to keep their empire together and the old style, you know,
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Caesar and Augustus and so forth. And so shaving is back, if you will. In that time when Christianity
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is really taking off in the Roman world and these, so the early Christians are Romans. They might be
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Greek speaking, but they're Roman citizens and their imagery, you know, when they create art and when
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they imagine Jesus as the savior, they connect him quite naturally with images that they have
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in their classical culture. Images of Hermes, the shepherd god. So Jesus is the shepherd,
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the good shepherd. So they think of Hermes and Hermes is this always represented as this young,
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beardless man. Or they think of him as Apollo, you know, the god of wisdom and or so forth. And so
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they have all these images of these youthful, beardless, you know, immortals. And for hundreds
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of years they presented Jesus in art that way because that's the visual imagery that they had.
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It wasn't really after the fall of the Roman empire and the fading away of these old classical
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ideas and images. That Jesus then is reimagined as a bearded man. And it's true that Jesus was
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almost certainly bearded in real life, but that isn't why we depict him as bearded. We depict him
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as bearded because we developed a kind of artistic iconography. By the way, Jesus always has long hair.
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Did you ever wonder about that? Why does Jesus always have this long flowing hair, you know,
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as well as that beard? And that was just part of the iconography of how his image was developed in
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the early Middle Ages. It's a holdover, by the way. It's a holdover from classical times when long
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flowing hair was considered to be, you know, part of your youthful vitality.
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That's interesting. And you also point out in these early depictions, you know, later on when
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their transition from that classical youthful notion of Jesus, divine Jesus to, you know,
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the bearded Jesus, there would be artwork where there would be a bearded Jesus and a non-bearded
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Jesus portrayed in the same scene. As this iconography is morphing and people are experimenting,
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you know, how could we do this, you know? And so there was actually a period there where they
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were both going at the same time and even an artist would be using both. So they would typically
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use the beardless Jesus as the Jesus that, you know, was on earth and traveling around and teaching
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and gathering disciples and performing miracles. And then I used the bearded Jesus to represent
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that special last time of his life, you know, the entry into Jerusalem, the passion, the death,
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and the resurrection. There really is two Jesuses when you think about it. There's, you know,
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the Jesus, the teacher, the miracle worker, and then there's the Jesus of the passion and the
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resurrection. And they would sometimes say, well, we could kind of think of him as looking different
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for those different times. And that got me thinking that what artists were really going
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for is they were creating contrast. So when Jesus is on earth among ordinary bearded men,
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he's beardless to represent how different he is. He's the divine figure on earth. He's like an
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angel who has descended from heaven among men. But when he's ready to enter heaven,
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when he goes through his passion and becomes, you know, God and not man, and sends to heaven,
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now he's in heaven and surrounded by beardless angels and spirits. And here he's now depicted
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more typically as having a beard. And I think that's, again, the contrast, so that we reminded
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that although he's in heaven, and he's God, he's also a man, and he has a beard. He's not an angel.
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He's not a spirit in that sense. He still retains his manhood with him, even as he sits on the throne
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of heaven, you know. So I think that's what they were playing with, with their imagery. And that image
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of the bearded Jesus in heaven became kind of the standard look. We had this first beard movement
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during the Roman era with Hadrian. Then the late emperor started shaving again to kind of reclaim
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that sort of classical notion. What happened after the fall of the Roman Empire? And as we entered into
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the Middle Ages, did the clean-shaven look continue? Well, it did. There was a bit of a breakdown,
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as you imagine, in culture and civilization. The church, you know, was mostly Roman,
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in Latin speaking. The church leaders tried to limit the growth of hair. They really enforced short hair,
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you know, short cropped hair, because the new German barbarians that had taken over all around
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Western Europe were notoriously long-haired and long-bearded. And we do have a kind of a bearded
00:25:11.120
era here. But the church is resisting, especially in Western Europe, because they want to contrast
00:25:20.320
themselves with the hairy Germans. And that eventually develops into a full-blown, you know,
1.00
00:25:30.720
anti-hair attitude. And that contrast that they start to establish right away in the 500s
00:25:37.920
expands. So by the 700s, they're starting to shave the top of their head. That's what we call the
00:25:43.320
tonsure, where they make a bald spot on the top of their head. They started that in the 700s.
00:25:48.680
And then the monks started shaving their faces as well as shaving the top of their heads.
00:25:53.200
And then that eventually was adopted by the priesthood as a whole. And by the 10th and 11th centuries,
00:26:01.520
so you're getting into more in the middle of the Middle Ages, you have a really strong contrast
00:26:06.800
between clergy and laity. So the clergy are shaving the top of their heads, shaving their faces.
00:26:14.000
And, but the aristocracy has sort of maintained this Germanic tradition of beards and hair.
00:26:22.160
And so you have a real striking contrast between two types of masculinity. And what we've done is
00:26:28.800
we've recreated what happened in the ancient period that I described earlier, where the priesthood was
00:26:34.320
shaved, the kings, warriors were hairy. And then there we are again, we're back to it in the Middle Ages.
00:26:42.640
And in fact, so much so that the church built it into canon law. That is to say, by the 11th century,
00:26:53.280
it was part of canon law. You could actually, if you were a priest and you refused to shave your face,
00:27:00.240
you would be excommunicated, thrown out of the church. So they were pretty serious about it.
00:27:05.600
But what was funny, you point this out too, is you had the kings, the aristocracy,
00:27:08.880
held onto their beards for their pagan beards, right? And then the priests shaving. But the
00:27:13.360
kings would often make fun of the priests as sort of like, you guys are womanly because you don't have
0.89
00:27:16.960
a beard. And so the priests developed this idea of the inner beard. It's like, hey, we're still
00:27:20.960
manly. We have a beard on the inside that you can't see.
00:27:23.520
Right. Well, there was this great, it was the great ideological confrontation of the Middle Ages,
00:27:28.960
was the conflict of the, what was called the two swords. You know, the two kinds of power, divine power
00:27:34.800
and worldly power, the sword of faith, the sword of the, you know, the flesh. And that was the great conflict
00:27:42.320
of the entire Middle Ages. And the popes and bishops battled with kings for authority and predominance.
00:27:52.880
So it was a back and forth thing. And, you know, both sides would accuse the other of being inadequate,
00:27:59.040
you know. You know, the church would say your beards are representative of your worldliness and
00:28:04.640
of your sin. And, you know, so they could throw it back at them. Yeah. So they were very prepared
00:28:11.280
with their, quote, inner beard, where they're growing a manhood of faith and discernment and purity,
00:28:18.160
whereas, you know, the worldly men are lost in. Right. I don't know if you ever saw Dexter's
00:28:23.440
Laboratory. It was a cartoon. There was a scene where Dexter was trying to, he's a kid. He wants
00:28:28.400
to grow a beard. So he puts on a fake beard and this beard, big bearded guy tells him it's not the
00:28:33.760
beard on the outside that counts. It's the beard on the inside that counts. I didn't know that.
00:28:38.480
That's great. When I read that a bit about the inner beard reminded me of Dexter's Laboratory.
00:28:43.200
We did the Middle Ages, pretty much a battle between beardiness and non beardiness, but primarily
00:28:48.160
clean shaving because of the predominance of the priesthood and the church during that area.
00:28:52.080
But during the Renaissance, there was another beard movement. So what was going on there? Why
00:28:58.320
Yeah. And I'll just have to do a preamble to that. And that's what, that shaving,
00:29:05.280
the beard falls away in the 1300s and 1400s because the churchly standard of shaving becomes
00:29:14.560
adopted by the laity as well. So we have the triumph of shaving for at least 150 years there.
0.84
00:29:21.440
And that sets us up for another beard movement then in the 1500s in the height of the Renaissance.
00:29:28.640
And this is that deliberate reaction against the past. That's what the Renaissance was. I mean,
0.56
00:29:34.640
they invented that word. They said, we live in a different time. We're going to
00:29:38.720
rebirth. That is to say, we're going to recreate or renovate our society. We are too stuck in
00:29:44.960
medieval, unworldliness. We're too down on humanity. The humanists of the Renaissance were more optimistic
00:29:55.680
and enthusiastic about human potential. And they were ready to throw off both the spiritual and the
00:30:03.440
actual real power of the church. A new class of worldly merchants, particularly in Italy,
00:30:10.880
uh, we're ready to do this. And, and part of that was reinvention of, of a new worldly masculinity,
00:30:21.360
uh, embracing positively our humanity, our natural humanity and rejecting the unworldliness of the
00:30:31.200
church. And part of that was let's brace beards. And, and so it's, it's kind of similar to what
00:30:38.640
Hadrian had done, you know, with the old philosopher, uh, uh, the stoic philosophy is let's embrace
00:30:44.560
nature. Let's not reject nature. After all, medieval is about how corrupt nature is. Uh,
00:30:50.080
but the Renaissance is, you know, there's duty in nature and human nature is good. So they're embracing
00:30:55.840
that. Yeah. It's so, so funny that this pendulum that keeps going back and forth and then into the
00:31:00.960
enlightenment, shaving comes back again. Yeah. Well, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's,
00:31:07.200
each time needs a different form of masculinity and, and, you know, uh, the liberation of the
00:31:13.040
Renaissance is all good and well, but for other reasons, not because, not because of liberation as
00:31:19.520
such, but, uh, you know, that late Renaissance era, we call it the age of, that was also the
00:31:25.120
reformation and the age of religious wars. It became a very chaotic time in European history,
00:31:30.240
disastrous time in many respects that late 1500s, early 1600s were just terrible social political
00:31:36.960
terms. And so there was in a sense, too much freedom, too much disorder. And, and so royal courts
00:31:46.680
became the center of the effort to restore order. And that means social as well as political order.
00:31:53.820
And that meant a new kind of masculinity that needs to be more disciplined, more regulated,
00:32:00.060
more cooperative, more peaceful. And, um, part of that was this elaborate court ritual that was
00:32:06.860
developed, right? Fancy clothes, fancy stockings, fancy wigs, and then of course the eradication of
0.99
00:32:15.020
all natural hair. You know, you know, you, when you wore those big wigs that you see in the late 1600s,
00:32:20.700
1700s, when you wore those wigs, you shaved your head completely, you know, you gotta get rid of all
0.97
00:32:25.820
your hair and then, uh, and then you put on this massive wig and then you shave off your, your,
00:32:32.860
your, your natural hairs so that it's all controlled and very, very perfect. And not, not unruly nature.
00:32:39.740
It's a war against nature, you know, you know, so Renaissance, you say, let's liberate their
00:32:45.740
nature. And then you're saying, Ooh, too much nature. So let's control it, you know? And so
00:32:51.980
All right. We had the reaction against that, but then, so we had the first beard movement
00:32:55.740
with Hadrian, then the second beard movement during the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment.
00:32:59.980
Well, you could call that the third because we had beards in the medieval times.
00:33:03.500
Medieval times. Right. But then there was another beard movement during the Romantic era,
00:33:08.140
which was a reaction against the Enlightenment era. So I guess the romantics were embracing
00:33:13.580
nature once again. And so that's why you got to grow a beard.
00:33:16.220
Right. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think so. And romanticism and the beard were, were accepted by
00:33:24.060
the extreme Romantics, the poets or the, or the, or the, the move, the liberal East students,
00:33:29.900
or, you know, the, the people that were most animated by this, uh, this exciting idea of liberal
00:33:36.700
romantic ideas that were percolating after the revolutionary era of the end of the 18th century.
00:33:44.300
And, but, but it never took off. It never became a movement as such because the authorities,
00:33:51.900
the middle classes in the air and the monarchies and so forth that existed were, were afraid,
00:33:57.500
uh, were afraid of romanticism and afraid of liberal ideas. So they repressed it. And that
00:34:03.180
was socially unacceptable. Uh, so you had young people, kind of like the sixties, you had young
00:34:08.860
people, you know, espousing this radical new romantic poetry and dreaming about liberation and
00:34:15.740
growing beards. And the older, more, you know, powerful generation are saying, oh,
00:34:21.820
this is, this is way too dangerous. We don't like this. Beards are radical. If you watch Les
00:34:27.500
Miserables, you know, or you read Les Miserables, you'll see, you know, the young men, there is
00:34:32.780
discussion about the young men wearing beards and how awful it is. And then, and then, uh, but
00:34:37.980
what happens is that there are a bunch of liberal revolutions led by romantic bearded young men
00:34:45.420
in 1848 or throughout Europe, France, Germany, Italy, but all those revolutions, uh, if you can
00:34:53.020
imagine like the 1960s youth actually tried to overthrow the government, you know, it collapsed
00:35:00.220
because they were disorganized and, and, and didn't have any leaders. So although the, all that kind of
00:35:07.900
enthusiastic political romanticism got kind of crushed in 1849, 1848, 39. And so in the heap of
00:35:17.180
wreckage of romantic dreams, the, the radical beard is dead and it was now available for all men,
0.97
00:35:25.820
you know, it was no longer a threat. So then more and more men experimented with mustaches and maybe
0.90
00:35:32.460
longer sideburns and then went out of beard. Yeah. And so all of a sudden in 1850s, boom,
00:35:41.100
the big fourth beard movement arrives and then embraced the idea that of beards again. It's the
00:35:47.500
fastest, most immediate, most sudden beard movement ever, because I think men had been eager to grow
00:35:54.700
beards for a long, long time. And you see the, the mutton chops, the whiskers, the burn sides going down,
00:36:01.820
down, down, down, down the side of the face, but they can't dare actually let it grow into a beard
00:36:06.380
because then that would be radical, right? So there's all this pent up desire of men in the 19th
00:36:12.060
century to grow their facial hair. And then finally, when, when it's safe in 1850s,
00:36:19.100
all of a sudden, boom, everybody, it's, it's just like overnight. And I love this, you know,
00:36:25.660
I show a cartoon, you show the woman at a train station and she's, these porters are coming to
00:36:30.540
take her bags and they're all big bearded guys. And she's just scared to death. Cause what hell,
00:36:35.020
you know, she thought she's being attacked by thieves, you know, robbers. And there's this sense
00:36:42.140
that almost shock that all of a sudden everyone's growing beards. It's really hilarious.
00:36:47.820
Right. And then we get some of our, like the most famous beards, uh, you know, we,
00:36:52.220
they're very iconic from that period. Like, I mean, Abraham Lincoln.
00:36:55.100
Right. Right. But this is a decade later. He's a, he's a late adopter. What'd I say?
00:37:00.060
He's a late adopter. And he's, he's very cautious. He's a, he's, first of all,
00:37:03.420
he's a lawyer and he's a politician. And these guys have to be very cautious about their public image,
00:37:07.900
you know, and people say, you know, Hey, you know, kind of join the beard movement, Abe,
00:37:12.700
you know? And he said, Oh, well, that would be kind of a little over the top. Don't you think?
00:37:16.620
You know, he's very shy. And, and then, you know, this little girl writes a letter to him during the,
00:37:21.740
during the campaign. And mind you, he's not campaigning. Presidents didn't campaign in those
00:37:27.900
days. He stayed at home, but letters come to him and letter comes from McGraw. And she says,
00:37:35.100
I saw your picture, your campaign picture, and we all agree that you're, you would look so much
00:37:41.420
better with a beard. You have such a thin face. And, uh, and you know, he, he, he ponders this.
00:37:48.940
He says, well, I think it would be affectation if I grew a beard now. And that's what he says to her.
00:37:54.380
And then, but, but he does, in fact, grow his beard right then and there while he's sitting
00:38:03.260
home and while the election's going on. So that when, finally, when he emerges after the election
00:38:09.580
and takes the train to Washington, he's a bearded man. And, uh, he stops in Northern New York where
00:38:16.300
that girl lived and asked for her by name to come up to him. She came to see him and he said to her,
00:38:26.540
There you go. The rest was history. So we've, we've been talking about beards,
00:38:30.220
but what of the mustache? It's like not a full beard. Um, so it's kind of like, uh,
00:38:35.020
it's a compromise. Is there any cultural significance of the mustache throughout Western history?
00:38:40.140
Yeah. Well, the mustache has a long, long history with aristocracy and therefore the military.
00:38:49.580
I think the most convenient thing, the most important thing that developed was in the,
00:38:55.740
in the, in that romantic era that I talked about, the Napoleonic Wars at the very beginning of the
00:39:01.340
19th century. Um, Napoleon's army and the other armies like the Prussians and the British that,
00:39:08.060
that were fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, the Austrians certainly adopted, um, a style which
00:39:15.020
they thought was pretty awesome. It was called, it was, it was bottled on the look of the, uh,
00:39:21.500
the Hungarian hussars. These are Hungarian cavalrymen who were part of the Austrian army. Ultimately,
00:39:29.100
they had this awesome look that comes from their history. Uh, uh, they had these big bearskin caps.
00:39:36.140
Uh, they had these leopard pelt saddles. They had ribbons and embroidery. They were colorful. They
00:39:44.780
were dramatic. They had a curved saber sword. They had, and then they had this big black mustache and
00:39:52.060
the whole look was just awesome. It was original shock and awe, you know, and these cavalrymen would
00:39:57.420
come charging at you and you just like run, you know, just the sight of them. That was the idea.
00:40:03.020
Then the European armies adopted this because it was soft. And this is because of the Napoleonic
00:40:08.540
Wars. So by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, by 1815, you know, all the European cavalrymen are
00:40:14.220
looking like that and they've, the army is regulating and drawing up new costume regulations
00:40:19.260
or uniform regulations to adopt to this. And then more units want to do it. You know, they say,
00:40:25.820
wow, this is, this is fantastic. We want to look good too. And so it spreads to the other officer
00:40:32.220
cores, you know, and by the middle of the 19th century, um, now all, all military units are
00:40:39.580
excited about this and, and more and more units are permitted. And by the middle of the 19th century,
00:40:44.140
it's actually become regulation in most European armies that all, all officers and even all
00:40:50.140
enlisted men have to have a mustache as, you know, part of their military look.
00:40:56.540
And it's a regulation. You must have a mustache. And in fact, a lot of young men, imagine an 18
00:41:02.380
year old recruit who's got, you know, not very thick hair, maybe even blonde and they can't grow
00:41:09.260
much of a mustache. They had to have a regulation black mustache. So if you had a blonde, blonde mustache,
0.76
00:41:14.940
you had to color it. If you didn't have a mustache, you had to put something on, get a fake one
00:41:20.220
because it was regulation. It was your costume. And, and there's all these complaints in newspapers
00:41:24.780
like, oh yeah, we're not paid enough to get our good quality fake mustaches. And there's some fun
00:41:32.060
stories about that. And then that, that remains true all the way up to World War I. The French,
00:41:37.740
the British, the Germans, the Austrians, they all required their soldiers to wear a mustache.
0.52
00:41:43.740
And I have the best accounts from the British army because the British were complaining, the British
1.00
00:41:49.020
recruits were complaining, complaining that they didn't want to have to wear a mustache, you know.
00:41:53.340
It was inconvenient to maintain it, to trim it and so forth. And, and now what happened was that
00:42:01.580
during the, during the First World War, the British had to go to the draft in 1816, 1916.
00:42:09.100
And when they instituted the draft, they realized they had a morale problem because
00:42:15.740
a lot of the young recruits didn't have mustaches and didn't want to grow them.
00:42:19.820
And it wasn't fashionable at the time. It wasn't their image. They didn't like it.
00:42:23.820
And, and, and so the army was, they actually had a court-martial. They started, they started
00:42:29.740
court-martialing men for not having mustaches. And, and then, and then the higher off, the
00:42:37.740
officials started to rethink this and think, is this really worth our time to court-martial
00:42:42.460
men for not having mustaches when we're asking them basically to be cannon fodder on the Western
00:42:48.300
front. And so they, they re-examined, re-evaluated and rescinded the order, uh, right in the middle
00:42:55.580
of the war because, you know, court-martialing was not worthwhile. It coincides with the use of
00:43:03.740
gas masks. And so we, we tend to think that it's gas masks that made, you know, the shaving made
00:43:10.940
mustaches go away, but that's not true. You can fit our gas mask around a short mustache anyway.
00:43:16.940
The, it was more an issue of morale. Right. So yeah, that, that, this begins the 20th century,
00:43:22.060
the movement away from beards, from facial hair. And we entered like this age of clean shavenness
00:43:27.740
that we still see today. Yeah. Well, there are a bunch of reasons that kind of conspire a perfect
00:43:33.660
storm at the beginning of the 20th century to make this happen. We're already moving away from beards.
00:43:40.140
The younger generation wants a slicker look and, and mustaches are actually the really
00:43:45.500
the look for a lot of the late 19th, 1880s, 1890s. And then by the turn of the century though,
00:43:50.700
as my story about World War I tells you, mustaches were going out of favor and there's a perfect storm.
00:43:56.860
One of the feet factors is, is the new interest in, in cleanliness. It was now understood that
00:44:03.980
disease was caused by microbes, little bugs, you know, and these little microbes
00:44:09.740
and they, they just figured out actually, you know, live in hair and they did, you know,
00:44:15.100
they could use the microscope for the first time they look at hair and oh my God, there's all these
00:44:18.860
microbes on it, you know, and, and now hair is scientifically dirty, you know, diseased.
00:44:26.620
And so hair, removing hair is, is tantamount to cleanliness. So that's, that's one thing.
00:44:33.100
Another thing is that this is the age of bodybuilding. Guys like Eugene Sandow are coming along and, and,
00:44:38.620
and introducing this idea of muscle building and bodybuilding. And that becomes a new way to display
00:44:45.420
masculinity, youth, toughness, and vitality. And, and James Sandow is one of those, he's,
00:44:51.900
he realizes right away, you know, if you, if you shave your body, you know, you shave your
00:44:56.540
chest and back and so forth, your musculature comes out more cleanly. And, and so it's muscles
00:45:03.420
versus hair here. And if you're going for the muscles, you're going to try to remove the hair.
00:45:08.380
And although Sandow had a short mustache, like an aristocratic man of his day, eventually, you know,
00:45:15.420
the idea of the clean shaven, smooth, muscular, athletic look is, is taking over. And the third
00:45:23.260
thing is that we're entering the age of corporate employment and corporations want their employees
00:45:31.020
to represent the company well and look professional and orderly and disciplined. And so we're having a
00:45:37.580
kind of new regulation society that's not unlike what I talked about with the courts back in the
00:45:44.940
17th and 18th centuries, where we want discipline as our primary
00:45:52.460
discipline and reliability, as well as cleanliness, as, as the, as our primary attributes of a, of a good
00:45:59.900
man and a good employee. And companies started to enforce shaving regulations, even banned
00:46:07.420
not only beards, but mustaches as well, even from the police forces, you know, police have this
00:46:12.780
military tradition of loving to look like, you know, Olympic military. They have a, and even today,
00:46:17.740
you'll see that, right? And police love to have a mustache because it, it kind of has a military look
00:46:22.700
to it. But a lot of police forces back in the early 20th century were telling their men, get rid of
00:46:28.460
We're still in that today, but you're, you are seeing sort of a resurgence of the beard.
00:46:33.900
What's the status of the beard today? Does it have any larger cultural significance like it did
00:46:37.820
in times past, or is it sort of like any other postmodern idea where the meaning of the beard,
00:46:46.300
Yeah. The thing about today is that we live in a very, um, culturally fluid time. I, what,
00:46:53.900
what I've been describing all this time is, is, is patterns that are established by elites and
00:46:59.340
dominant political groups, and, and they establish a form for themselves and then sort of impose it as
00:47:05.980
the norm for everyone as much as they can. So we have a kind of a, more of a monolithic style,
00:47:12.300
and that's been true all the way up through, until recent times. And I think today we're seeing
00:47:17.900
a more fluid cultural dynamic where there isn't one type that is enforced, uh, on everyone.
00:47:27.900
And, and there's some good things about that, I guess, but as a historian or as a sociologist,
00:47:33.660
it's very difficult to say what's going on because you have all sorts of people following
00:47:38.860
different drummers. So you have a quite a tremendous variety of, of attitudes to facial hair,
00:47:45.900
but I will say that there's a great deal more acceptance, you know, in the last 20 years,
00:47:50.860
very much more. Even Walt Disney Company allows workers at its theme parks since 2012
00:47:59.340
to grow modest facial hair, which was strictly forbidden up to then. So that shows you that
00:48:05.020
we are becoming much, much more tolerant of facial hair. And, and because we're more tolerant,
00:48:10.700
I think we're going to have it. I mean, we're going to, because men are always going to want
00:48:15.340
at least the option. And so when people ask me, are beards here to stay? I'd say, yeah,
00:48:21.020
I think they are here to stay because we've, we've reached a high level of tolerance. And,
00:48:26.860
and I think that beards help men develop style of look for themselves and establish themselves
00:48:34.780
as men. And that too is increasingly difficult in our society where masculinity is more and more up
00:48:42.780
for negotiation. Going back to our theme that we followed at this whole discussion, because beards
00:48:49.020
are associated with nature and with natural masculinity, it always is a resource there for men
00:48:56.460
to use to make a stake, at least a basic claim to nature, their nature as men. And I think that's
00:49:04.780
why it's going to stay. Well, Christopher, this has been a great conversation. We really dug deep,
00:49:08.220
but there's so much more in your book that people can find out more. Is there any place where people
00:49:11.900
can learn more about the book or your work? Well, I think the book is widely available now
00:49:15.420
out in paperbacks. So that's good news. I have, you know, I've done a couple of things in the
00:49:20.220
Wall Street Journal and there's a, you can, you can even find an interview with me on
00:49:24.860
CBS Sunday morning. And if you Google around, you'll find some smaller articles where I'd make
00:49:30.620
some commentary about our present situation if they want to read. Well, fantastic. Well,
00:49:35.340
Christopher Oldstone-Moore, thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:49:40.540
My guest, it was Christopher Oldstone-Moore. You can check out his book of Beards and Men on
00:49:44.300
Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash beards,
00:49:49.180
where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:49:59.820
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:50:03.820
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy this
00:50:07.180
show, I've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you take a minute to give us a review on iTunes or
00:50:10.620
Stitcher. Helps us out a lot. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time,