Was it an indication of changing nature of
realpolitik? Were these young, fierce, joyful
and cunning gods paving the way to a new
breed of powerful leaders who would replace
the unpredictable, the moody and the gloomy
rulers? As I moved on from unholy notions of
young Greek Gods...I have ventured in to the
Renaissance. I remembered reading once that
Henry the VIII had introduced a beard tax
sometime in mid 1500’s and so did Peter the
Great of Russia nearly 200 years later. On the
face of it ...yes, I know...pun intended, facial
hair was back in fashion again, representing a
rite of passage, masculinity, dignity, discipline
and social status as nearly every portrait of a
man painted between, say, 1 550 and 1650
contained some form of facial hair. What did
it mean in my quest for understanding?
First, the logical conclusion was that only
white, noble or otherwise privileged men
could afford the tax and, in that, separate
themselves from those who didn’t. Yet again,
the idea that leaders and politicians were
always on the look out to define ‘us’ versus
‘them’ is not new, as from the days of Scipio
Africanus, a great Roman general , being
clean-shaven became a sign of being Roman
and not Greek. The political climate of the late
19th and 20th centuries has underlined this
notion. As the presence of facial hair became
more and more popular with revolutionaries
from the East and hippies of the West it has
grown more unpopular among politicians,
many of whom wanted to distance themselves
from the counterculture. Slate correspondent,
Justin Peters, wrote in 2012 "For many years,
wearing a full beard marked you as the sort of
fellow who had Das Kapital stashed
somewhere on his person". At that time, very
few politicians and elected officials would
have chosen to appear as either Communists
or hippies.
14
Author A.D. Perkins, reinforced the same
idea by writing in his 2001 book “One
Thousand Beards: a Cultural History of
Facial Hair”, that modern-day politicians are
routinely instructed by their advisers and
other handlers to remove all traces of facial
hair before launching a campaign for fear of
resembling " Lenin and Stalin (or Marx for
that matter). In my mind, this directly linked
to the fact that voters make presumptions
about candidates based on appearance as less
and less people actually understand the
political issues in depth. To mask their
ignorance, they search for easy clues to
candidates’ issue, positions and personal
traits. Rebekah Herrick, from Oklahoma
State University, confirms my theory by
introducing a research in which pictures of
the members of Congress with facial hair
were perceived by her student subjects as
more masculine, aggressive, powerful..... and
less supportive of feminist issue positions. In
attitude that would indicate that the reason
that no president has sported facial hair since
William Howard Taft left office in 1913,
before women had the right to vote, was
more than a coincidence.
Today, as the new generation of both
politicians and voters, some of the latter may
not be able to spell ‘Communism’ or think
that Marx is a brand name of energy drink,
facial hair is less associated with the past
threats of collective theories and more with
religious “Holy” wars, yet again, the good
people of the beard are outnumbered by the
ISIS sadists, Taliban degenerates and Hamas
PR specialists. So in that respect, you may be
the first black American president called
Hussain...but you sure as hell don’t want to
look like one on the Election Day.
Groomed Gentleman