The Art of Manliness - #311： The Meaning of Beards

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast where the ability

00:00:18.100 to grow a beard is what separates boys from men and except for a few rare instances of bearded

00:00:22.260 ladies, men from women. Because it's a uniquely masculine feature, facial hair has played an 0.99

00:00:26.160 important role in forming our ideas about manhood. Today on the show I talk to a cultural historian

00:00:30.120 who specializes in the history of facial hair to discuss the cultural, political, and religious

00:00:33.920 implications of the beard. His name is Christopher Oldstone Moore in his book of Beards and Men. He

00:00:38.500 takes readers on a tour through the history of facial hair starting with cavemen and going all

00:00:42.180 the way to the hipster beard of the 21st century. We begin our conversation talking about why male

00:00:46.380 humans grow beards in the first place and then take a look at the spiritual and political significance

00:00:50.620 of beards and shaving beginning with the ancient Sumerians and going all the way through medieval

00:00:54.200 Europeans. We then discuss why the Greeks were big on beards until Alexander the Great and why

00:00:58.480 the ancient Romans were barefaced into the days of the early empire. We also discuss Jesus's beard

00:01:02.680 and why many early Christians actually depicted him as being clean shaven. We end our conversation

00:01:07.600 talking about the great beard of the 19th century, why clean shavenists took precedence in the 20th

00:01:11.940 century, and no, it's not because of the military's use of gas masks and the cultural meanings of facial

00:01:16.420 hair today. Whether you're bearded or barefaced, this podcast is going to leave you with lots of insights

00:01:20.440 about the hair that grows on your masculine mug. After the show is over, check out the show notes

00:01:24.140 at aom.is slash beards.

00:01:44.560 Christopher Oldstone Moore, welcome to the show.

00:01:47.540 Thank you for having me.

00:01:48.820 So you recently published a book of Beards and Men, The Revealing History of Facial Hair.

00:01:53.480 You're a professor of Western Civilization, and it says in your CV that you have a focus on

00:01:57.880 facial hair and its intersection with the changing ideas of masculinity. I'm curious,

00:02:03.220 how does a professor of Western Civilization end up specializing in the history of facial hair?

00:02:08.440 Well, the short answer to that question is that I'm looking for fun things to put into my lecture,

00:02:13.500 social history. Actually, it started out with the question of why did men shave? That's the

00:02:19.680 original question. And I was looking about the Romans in the classical period of Julius Caesar

00:02:25.920 and so forth, and all their busts of well-shaven men. And I thought, when did that start? How did

00:02:31.780 that get going? And is that a Roman thing? And so I started looking around, trying to find some

00:02:36.300 information. And it was pretty surprised to find that we, that is to say, academia, knew almost

00:02:43.540 nothing about the history of shaving facial hair. And it was just completely overlooked. And so I

00:02:52.240 got more and more interested in it. And then I fell completely into the rabbit hole.

00:02:57.480 Here we are today. Do you yourself have a beard or do you shave?

00:03:00.200 You know, I go back and forth. Right now, I do have a beard. I often have a beard during the

00:03:05.280 summertime when I'm, you know, camping and so forth and so on. And sometimes I shave it off. I guess

00:03:10.580 I'm indecisive. In my book, I have a picture of both me, bearded and not bearded, but it also

00:03:17.320 reflects history. That's the way history has worked too. So let's talk about the question, why do humans

00:03:22.060 have beards in the first place? Because you point out other primates don't have copious amounts of

00:03:28.320 facial hair like we do. Do biologists have an idea why humans evolved to have facial hair?

00:03:35.440 Well, that's a great conundrum. And it's been debated for decades. And there are a lot of good

00:03:40.720 reasons, but we can't be dead sure because it's impossible to recreate the conditions of about 50,000

00:03:46.520 years ago or so when these things evolved. I think that the predominant theory is still Darwin's idea

00:03:53.980 that beards are an ornament. That is to say, they're meant to demonstrate a man's maturity,

00:04:01.760 health, strength, those kinds of qualities that would make him a good sexual partner.

00:04:08.260 And therefore, as an ornament, a signal to sexual partners that he is the kind of guy that you want.

00:04:15.060 And there's a lot of interesting evidence of that, both in psychological research, but also in

00:04:21.700 other microbiological research, for example, the study of animals and the comparison, say,

00:04:28.640 with feathers. You know, there's an obvious ornament case. And bird females look at males and look at 0.99

00:04:35.160 their plumage. And the bigger, the better the plumage, the more interested they are. Biologists are

00:04:41.040 thinking, well, maybe that's what we're doing with the beards, too. Here's the interesting part.

00:04:45.460 They debate about whether, why is this happening? Why do birds grow these ridiculous feathers like 0.94

00:04:50.700 the peacock, for example? They've discovered that really it's what they call an honest advertising.

00:04:58.660 That is to say that it really does take a healthy peacock to grow impressive feathers. And so when you

00:05:06.140 see impressive feathers, when a female bird sees impressive feathers, it's not just a trick. It's the 1.00

00:05:11.540 real thing. That bird is a healthy bird. So it's a good sexual partner. So maybe if you have a big,

00:05:17.280 healthy beard, that's a good sign.

00:05:20.280 Right, right. Yeah, the other theory I've heard out there is that it's selection for,

00:05:24.960 I guess, the beard somehow provided protection to hits to the face. I've heard that theory also as

00:05:30.760 well.

00:05:31.080 Well, biologists don't pay much attention to that. There isn't really much evidence of that. I mean,

00:05:36.280 when you think about it, if beards were meant to be, say, protecting, you know, important parts of

00:05:42.880 your neck or your face or anything like that, it wouldn't grow the way it does. I think people

00:05:49.840 have noticed, you know, for example, a lot of people say, oh, it protects your neck. Well, it doesn't

00:05:53.820 actually grow on your neck, you know. It grows on your face, you know, it grows on your chin. And

00:05:59.220 does your chin need protection? Yes, where it's thickest is on the chin. Does your chin need

00:06:04.160 protection not particularly? What does impress biologists, evolutionary biologists, is the fact

00:06:09.480 that, you know, the chin around the mouth is, you know, chin is actually, our human chins are

00:06:16.440 actually enlarged, artificially enlarged for visual effect. To look impressive, to look strong, our

00:06:23.560 mouth area is something that we use to threaten people with, our teeth. And to have an impressive

00:06:30.380 chin, an impressive face, oppressive mouth is intimidating. It looks strong. And that's the

00:06:36.260 other part of the theory is that not only is it an ornament, but it could be a weapon. That is to

00:06:40.880 say, it shows how threatening and strong we are. And so it's a warning to other men, as well as an

00:06:46.880 attraction to women. So kind of can serve both roles. So, okay, if beards under this theory is

00:06:52.300 there sort of as an ornament of attraction for women and possibly a deterrence to other men,

00:06:57.620 why did humans start shaving? And when did they start shaving?

00:07:01.840 Yeah, exactly. Good question. I mean, that's kind of where I started this whole thing. And you

00:07:06.080 think of ancient people as being big bearded people, ancient Greeks, the ancient Mesopotamians

00:07:12.500 and so forth, the Syrians. Actually, shaving really starts right at the beginning of civilization, 0.98

00:07:19.260 as far back as we can look, and probably before. One of the reasons to do that, to shave it,

00:07:26.880 is to indicate a different kind of, a special kind of masculinity. Not an ordinary natural

00:07:34.640 kind that we're born as, but something that we make ourselves into. And the most special

00:07:41.920 form of masculinity that the ancient world had was the priesthood. Which, you know, there's

00:07:48.100 a joke about prostitution, prostitutes are the original professionals, but the truth is that 0.72

00:07:53.680 the priests were the original professionals. They were the first people to be set aside for special

00:07:59.200 tasks, very important special tasks. That special task was to interact with the gods and to win their

00:08:06.800 favor on behalf of all the rest of us. And it's very important, took special preparation and training

00:08:13.520 and skills. And so as part of that separation and preparation, they developed this idea of shaving.

00:08:24.480 Now, I think it's pretty clear that one has to bear in mind that these early priests, and we're going

00:08:29.840 back, you know, 5,000 years ago, these early priests in Mesopotamia and Egypt, they shaved their entire

00:08:35.280 bodies, not just their faces. All the hair was removed. And in many cases, they appeared nude in front of the

00:08:42.960 gods. So they removed their clothing, they removed their hair. And I think the idea is to purify

00:08:49.040 themselves in some ways, erase their dirty humanity, you know, and prepare themselves to

00:08:57.280 be as clean and as pure as possible as they approach the gods. And, you know, throughout,

00:09:03.600 you read this in the Bible, you know, all the temples had purification pools where you had to go through a

00:09:08.720 ritual cleansing before you approach, you know, the holy sanctuary. The shaving of hair and

00:09:15.120 ultimately shaving the beards off the face originated there, you know, with that idea of purification.

00:09:23.760 So while that was going on, though, in ancient Mesopotamia and in Egypt, the beard still played

00:09:29.680 an important role in a man's identity. If you look at those old carvings from Mesopotamia,

00:09:35.440 you see these guys with just like ginormous beards. The ancient Egyptians would put on, 1.00

00:09:40.160 you know, fake beards and sort of like that little strip, right? So what's going on there?

00:09:44.160 You had the priesthood who saw facial hair as making them somehow unpure, but then also the

00:09:50.160 same time you had these kings who said, no, the facial hair makes me awesome and maybe godlike too.

00:09:55.520 Well, and so you kind of have a separation of roles, you know, different types of masculinity. So you

00:10:00.560 have the priestly masculinity, and that's a certain kind of power. And then you have the

00:10:05.760 warrior masculinity, and that's a different kind of power. And not surprisingly, they have a different

00:10:10.240 look, you know, and it goes back to what I suggested about this idea of the beard as a weapon as a

00:10:16.240 threat. I mean, you look impressive, you look strong. So yeah, a lot of the ancient kings loved

00:10:22.160 loved the big beard as a sign of their warrior prowess. And of course, and even they would insist

00:10:30.000 that the beard, the king's beard got to be, had to be the longest, you know, at least in art,

00:10:36.800 because that suggests that he is the most warlike, the most manly. And so there's a different role

00:10:42.560 there. And so what I have fun with in the book is that there's a moment in that history of Mesopotamia

00:10:49.680 in about a hundred years span, maybe 150 years, there was a dynasty that was sort of trying to

00:10:57.360 play it both ways, where the king would in some cases appear shaved like a priest,

00:11:04.800 doing his priestly duties, because kings had priestly roles as well. And at other times and

00:11:11.520 other places, he would appear with his, as you say, ginormous beard. And it's a little hard to tell

00:11:17.520 whether he actually put on a fake beard or whatever, but it's certainly in art,

00:11:25.200 in official art. He was shown two different ways, depending on what his role was.

00:11:32.080 All right. And we're going to see this dichotomy show up throughout the rest of

00:11:35.840 Western history. But I think it's interesting too, you point out for those who have read the

00:11:39.840 Old Testament and other ancient Near East texts, the act of forcibly shaving a man's beard off

00:11:46.560 was like one of the worst things you could do. Why was that such a terrible offense? And why was it

00:11:51.920 often used as a way to punish a man?

00:11:54.240 Yeah, there's a couple of famous scenes about that. David's ambassadors are described as being

00:12:00.640 humiliated that way by a king. And I think that by that time, by the time of the Old Testament,

00:12:09.920 the beard had become a symbol of masculine honor and patriarchal pride. And as a symbol of that,

00:12:20.960 it could be symbolically used against you. It could be removed and then you're shamed,

00:12:26.480 publicly shamed. And the David ambassador's story, the ambassadors are so embarrassed that they have

00:12:36.160 to stay away from Jerusalem for several weeks while their beards grow again. And only then they can feel 0.90

00:12:45.200 comfortable enough to actually be turned to their families, into their homes after this humiliation.

00:12:49.920 So yes, it's a real thing because it has become so strongly connected with the honor of manhood

00:12:55.600 itself. Right. And because of that connection to the honor of manhood, you'd often hear

00:12:59.360 ancient people like swear by their beard. Right. Or medieval too. That was reintroduced in medieval

00:13:05.840 times by a lot of medieval kings as well. Yeah. Now let's move on to ancient Greece. What role did the beard

00:13:11.920 play amongst the Greeks? Well, the Greeks start out by being like the Hebrews. I mean, they believe 0.99

00:13:17.920 that beards are part of manly honor. They too have a patriarchal society and the honor of the patriarch

00:13:24.800 and his great beard is very important. And men who had inadequate beards or even kind of were

00:13:32.000 effeminate and shaved them were mocked and humiliated in public. But something happened during

00:13:38.800 classical times and we're talking about the fifth century, you know, the time that we often think

00:13:44.800 about when we think about ancient Athens, something was happening. And what was happening was that

00:13:52.480 artists were thinking of how to represent the gods in a new way. And they came up with the idea of

00:14:00.560 representing the immortal quality of the gods as youthful, nude men and women. The gods were youthful

00:14:10.720 and nude. And the idea is in a sense to imitate something that they came up with in their funeral

00:14:18.240 arrangements. They would erect these statues. They started putting up these statues to important men who

00:14:23.440 died. And these statues were nude, youthful figures. And the idea was to represent immortality,

00:14:33.600 right? That in a sense, think about the human life cycle and when are we most alive, most fully alive,

00:14:43.920 mature, but not old. That's what I want to say. Where's that point in life when we're mature,

00:14:49.120 but not old, not decayed? And they decided that that would be like 18, 19 years old, you know,

00:14:58.400 when you're mature, but you're not at all old or decayed. And that's like the peak of life.

00:15:05.200 And so they like to represent that. No matter how old you were, if you were a 75 year old man and you

00:15:10.880 died, you get a statue that looks like you're 19. They did that in art more and more. And then by,

00:15:17.120 when Alexander the Great sort of took over Greece, this is in the 300s BC, he took over Greece and then

00:15:26.400 conquered the Persian empire and established Greece as the kind of the dominant culture of the whole

00:15:34.800 area. He started to make himself look like the art. So, cause he thought of himself as a demigod.

00:15:40.320 And so he wanted to look immortal. And so luckily he was young. He was very young. But he shaved his

00:15:48.800 beard, unlike his father and unlike the other Greeks at the time, uh, to, to look like a, like a god. 0.59

00:15:54.880 And, and then everyone thought, Oh yeah, that's a great look. And, and then, you know, the Greeks, 0.78

00:16:01.280 the Hellenistic era, the Greeks after that, all the respectable men shaved and then barbers, 0.98

00:16:07.360 their whole profession of barbering took off. And then the Romans picked it up later when they adopted 0.99

00:16:12.080 Greek ways. And so that's, that answers my question that I had originally is why did the Romans shave?

00:16:17.920 Well, they shaved because the Greeks shaved. Why did the Greeks shave? They shaved because 1.00

00:16:21.360 Alexander the Great one would look like a god. And so it all goes back to that dichotomy of

00:16:26.480 facial hair being sort of earthy, natural man, no facial hair being divine. Exactly. Yeah. And

00:16:32.400 there's your divide again. It's similar to what was going on earlier where the shading offers you a,

00:16:38.560 to represent a different kind of masculinity that's beyond the natural, you know, it's refined,

00:16:45.280 it's special, it's extraordinary. You know, it's interesting that dichotomy, I think whenever the

00:16:49.520 people depicted Achilles, he was often without a beard later. Right. Later. Earlier, he had a

00:16:55.600 beard in art and then later he didn't. Yeah. But the exception with the gods of no facial hair,

00:16:59.920 Zeus was often portrayed with the beard still, right? Right. Yeah. Zeus is probably the only guy

00:17:05.840 who kept his beard throughout. I mean, it just, even, even the Greeks couldn't imagine Zeus without a beard.

00:17:12.640 But the funny one that I like to think about is Heracles or Hercules. Now here's the he-man of

00:17:19.200 ancient Greece, the ultimate he-man. And he was a demigod, by the way. He was half-god, half-human. 0.90

00:17:25.760 So, you know, it was fun to watch him transition in art because here's the ultimate he-man. So

00:17:33.200 he keeps his beard a lot longer than the other gods like, or demigods like Achilles. But even he loses

00:17:40.160 his beard by Alexander's time. Even Hercules, the he-man of ancient Greece, is beardless.

00:17:46.480 Beardless. All right. Continuing on with the Romans, you see a lot of the bust of the ancient Romans,

00:17:52.000 most of the emperors, clean-shaven. But then there was Hadrian and he decided,

00:17:56.800 I'm going to start growing a beard. So why did he start growing a beard? What was going on there?

00:18:00.800 Yeah, that's what I call the first beard movement. So we have 400 years of

00:18:04.640 shaving where shaving is expected by men of power. And then after 400 years, Hadrian changes his mind

00:18:11.760 and changes everyone else's mind as well and starts a movement towards beards. And he's inspired by the

00:18:17.600 philosophers, particularly the Stoics. And the idea here is the Stoics believe that wisdom is following

00:18:25.840 the laws of nature, the universal laws of nature. Their argument is nature gave man a beard and gave

00:18:33.520 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. 0.86

00:18:39.840 And if you shave off your beard, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to become a woman? What is that? 0.54

00:18:44.320 You know, and Hadrian was one of these Roman generals, an emperor who loved Greek learning and

00:18:52.000 really took philosophy very seriously and studied personally with some of the top philosophers. No doubt

00:18:57.520 he, he had these lectures, you know, heard these lectures and about beards and said, you know what,

00:19:03.840 that's right. You know, I'm a, I'm a man of wisdom. I'm going to follow the universal laws of nature

00:19:08.400 and I want to model that for the rest of my society. And so he proudly returns to Rome

00:19:14.080 from Greece, you know, with a beard. And then when he becomes emperor, that, that's it, you know,

00:19:19.360 that sets the tone. Yeah. You start seeing, like Marcus Aurelius had a beard and he was also a Stoic,

00:19:25.280 Stoic philosopher. Let's talk about one of the most famous bearded men in history who was around

00:19:31.200 the time of Romans. It's Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth. Today, you know, Jesus portrayed as having a beard

00:19:36.640 all the time. That's what we, we think when we think Jesus, but you, you show that that wasn't always

00:19:42.000 the case during the history of Christianity. So can you talk about the beardiness and non-beardiness

00:19:46.880 of Jesus throughout the early days of Christianity? Well, what we sometimes forget is that the early

00:19:51.280 Christians lived in the Roman empire and the period that we were just talking about. And for a lot of

00:19:56.320 that time, well, I'll have to say that here's, here's what I got to start with. After Hadrian's time,

00:20:01.440 shaving comes back in the late Roman empire and shaving comes back because there's a sort of a

00:20:06.960 revival of the old style as they try to keep their empire together and the old style, you know,

00:20:13.200 Caesar and Augustus and so forth. And so shaving is back, if you will. In that time when Christianity 1.00

00:20:19.920 is really taking off in the Roman world and these, so the early Christians are Romans. They might be 0.99

00:20:25.440 Greek speaking, but they're Roman citizens and their imagery, you know, when they create art and when

00:20:30.400 they imagine Jesus as the savior, they connect him quite naturally with images that they have

00:20:37.200 in their classical culture. Images of Hermes, the shepherd god. So Jesus is the shepherd,

00:20:42.800 the good shepherd. So they think of Hermes and Hermes is this always represented as this young,

00:20:47.040 beardless man. Or they think of him as Apollo, you know, the god of wisdom and or so forth. And so

00:20:54.080 they have all these images of these youthful, beardless, you know, immortals. And for hundreds

00:21:02.320 of years they presented Jesus in art that way because that's the visual imagery that they had.

00:21:09.360 It wasn't really after the fall of the Roman empire and the fading away of these old classical

00:21:17.520 ideas and images. That Jesus then is reimagined as a bearded man. And it's true that Jesus was 0.84

00:21:26.800 almost certainly bearded in real life, but that isn't why we depict him as bearded. We depict him

00:21:32.960 as bearded because we developed a kind of artistic iconography. By the way, Jesus always has long hair.

00:21:40.800 Did you ever wonder about that? Why does Jesus always have this long flowing hair, you know,

00:21:45.440 as well as that beard? And that was just part of the iconography of how his image was developed in

00:21:54.000 the early Middle Ages. It's a holdover, by the way. It's a holdover from classical times when long

00:22:00.480 flowing hair was considered to be, you know, part of your youthful vitality.

00:22:04.800 That's interesting. And you also point out in these early depictions, you know, later on when

00:22:08.720 their transition from that classical youthful notion of Jesus, divine Jesus to, you know,

00:22:14.640 the bearded Jesus, there would be artwork where there would be a bearded Jesus and a non-bearded

00:22:19.600 Jesus portrayed in the same scene. As this iconography is morphing and people are experimenting,

00:22:24.640 you know, how could we do this, you know? And so there was actually a period there where they

00:22:30.720 were both going at the same time and even an artist would be using both. So they would typically

00:22:37.280 use the beardless Jesus as the Jesus that, you know, was on earth and traveling around and teaching 0.67

00:22:44.720 and gathering disciples and performing miracles. And then I used the bearded Jesus to represent

00:22:50.560 that special last time of his life, you know, the entry into Jerusalem, the passion, the death,

00:22:56.160 and the resurrection. There really is two Jesuses when you think about it. There's, you know,

00:23:01.520 the Jesus, the teacher, the miracle worker, and then there's the Jesus of the passion and the

00:23:05.680 resurrection. And they would sometimes say, well, we could kind of think of him as looking different

00:23:10.960 for those different times. And that got me thinking that what artists were really going

00:23:17.440 for is they were creating contrast. So when Jesus is on earth among ordinary bearded men, 0.97

00:23:22.880 he's beardless to represent how different he is. He's the divine figure on earth. He's like an

00:23:28.000 angel who has descended from heaven among men. But when he's ready to enter heaven,

00:23:34.560 when he goes through his passion and becomes, you know, God and not man, and sends to heaven,

00:23:41.600 now he's in heaven and surrounded by beardless angels and spirits. And here he's now depicted

00:23:48.720 more typically as having a beard. And I think that's, again, the contrast, so that we reminded

00:23:55.440 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.

00:24:02.560 He's not a spirit in that sense. He still retains his manhood with him, even as he sits on the throne

00:24:11.360 of heaven, you know. So I think that's what they were playing with, with their imagery. And that image

00:24:17.200 of the bearded Jesus in heaven became kind of the standard look. We had this first beard movement 0.76

00:24:23.040 during the Roman era with Hadrian. Then the late emperor started shaving again to kind of reclaim

00:24:28.720 that sort of classical notion. What happened after the fall of the Roman Empire? And as we entered into

00:24:33.280 the Middle Ages, did the clean-shaven look continue? Well, it did. There was a bit of a breakdown,

00:24:40.240 as you imagine, in culture and civilization. The church, you know, was mostly Roman,

00:24:49.120 in Latin speaking. The church leaders tried to limit the growth of hair. They really enforced short hair,

00:24:56.640 you know, short cropped hair, because the new German barbarians that had taken over all around 1.00

00:25:04.080 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

00:28:56.720 did people embrace the beard?

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

00:32:50.060 we're going into a re reaction.

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?

00:36:59.100 He's a late adopter.

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,

00:38:22.940 you know, look, I followed your advice.

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

00:46:27.740 those mustaches.

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,

00:46:44.140 you know, depends on the person or the group?

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.

00:49:38.300 Great. Thanks. It's been the same for me.

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,

00:50:14.220 I'm Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - June 09, 2017

#311： The Meaning of Beards

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