The military required men to be clean shaven, which was partly tactical (proper gas mask seals), partly to whitewash (e.g., black men can have severe skin reactions to shaving every day) the service, and had other benefits to unit cohesion and general order (routine personal fitness and hygiene).
Well, that stuck, and an entire (massive) generation of men and their male children were taught that to be good they simply had to be clean shaven. Those two generations make up the vast majority of business and political power in the US, so the idea of “success” and “power” was idolized by a clean shaven male. This was further accentuated by the counter culture reaction of this cohort’s kids in the 60s and 70s, where longer and unkempt “bad” hair was cast against this “good” clean shaven look.
Fast forward to today, those traditions and appearances have been baked into most of modern life. As the boomer population starts to fade away, so will the tyranny of the razor.
Beards are where the Communism is stored. As the ruling class become richer and more obscene, class consciousness grows amongst the working class. Hence, beards.
Yeah that too, if the Carthage was not destroyed it would serve as counterbalance to Romans at least for a time, and the vile shaving custom would not spread as much.
Yeah that too, if the Carthage was not destroyed it would serve as counterbalance to Romans at least for a time, and the vile shaving custom would not spread as much.
Unfortunately, more recent information is googlebombed with people’s lightly supported fluff pieces, so a cursory look didn’t turn anything like this up for the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, and 10’s.
Now that I think about it, you can just extrapolate that curve forwards and it matches anecdotal data about the 80’s and 90’s, reaching a similar smooth face extreme around 1990 to peak beard in the 1890. By that logic, it’s a 2-century cycle, and we’ll be back to all beards late this century.
That’s the tism side of my brain. The ADHD side of my brain thinks shaving is the most boring chore ever. I fold and put away my laundry with greater frequency.
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