| The Facial Hair Report |
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I was at a gathering in Los Angeles last month. As usual, I was the life of the party - if you define that as "the guy off by himself, leaning against the wall and looking at his fingers." At one point, I managed to tear myself away from my hangnail and actually saw other people in the room. I noticed a guy in his mid-twenties. Good looking. Glossy hair and a handlebar mustache. He was an extremely cool guy. And I thought, now why is that? If I'd been almost anywhere else but L.A., if I'd been in Chickamauga, Georgia or Turners Falls, Massachusetts, and I'd seen this guy, the phrase that would come to my mind would not be, "cool guy." It would be, "Run." So why, then, did this guy with greasy hair and a handlebar mustache strike me as being so terminally hip? Because location is everything. And irony is everything else. Because if you took the same guy, just plucked him out of the L.A. party and set him back down in a small town, he'd pass for a local. Utterly outdated and clueless. But in the context of a groovy city, at a groovy bash with groovy people, the guy suddenly seemed absolutely it. Everywhere he walked, wherever he stood in the room, a giant eye hovered above him, wink, wink. Handlebar Mustache Man knew, he absolutely understood, that handlebar mustaches went out of style with Tony Orlando. He knew that most of the men who still sported them drove rigs and liked Big Gulps from 7-eleven because later, you could pee in the cup. And because he understood the context of his look, and because he lived in L.A. and probably did yoga every morning and believed in aromatherapy for long flights, he was able to adopt this look and make it fantastic. So this got me thinking of facial hair in general. Of what works and doesn't work and why. A couple of years ago, the goatee was pronounced "over" by a leading men's magazine. At the time, I wore a goatee and I still do. Am I hopelessly out of style because of this? No. And the reason is because I don't care. In my case, the goatee corrects a facial deformity. I have pointy features and a bald head and a slight amount of fat under my chin that I am not willing to have sucked out. The goatee works to make my head look less objectionable. And this is the first rule of facial hair: if it fixes a flaw, it's ok. So if you have a harelip and you hate it (I personally think harelips are incredibly cool) a mustache is ideal. And you will always be in style. Just as a full beard can help disguise a disfiguring third degree burn. But again, why you'd want to disguise this is beyond me. Almost no look is sexier on a man than a look which says, "A tank of gas blew up in my face." Beards, goatees and mustaches all have different shapes. And it is within these different shapes that danger awaits. Any variation of the "classic" shape can be great or terrible. And it's almost impossible for you to know the difference. Only ask an extremely fussy homosexual male who holds a top position in the fashion industry. If you want to have a pencil mustache and you have not made a movie featuring a transvestite eating dog shit, you better damn well have the "OK" from the man who highlights Angelina Jolie's hair. That's all I'm saying. For everybody else, stick with trim that's "normal." But what about sideburns? Sideburns are the male miniskirt. Their length changes by the week. Thursday it's chops. But the following Friday, they better be hugging your hairline or you will be expelled from civilized society. For sideburn issues, I always refer to supermarket tabloids. These tend to have the freshest photographs of male celebrities. And celebrities are generally coached in these matters by extremely well-paid people who think about things like sideburn length and sweater nap. Another thing to think about is this: you can change your look according to your mood. You can be clean-shaven during months that begin with the letter "M." And you can go scruffy, like Tom Cruise sometimes does, for those "J" months. This is the one good thing about being a man: we may have boring shoes and redundant suits but we can grow whiskers and every day can be like witness protection for us. Women can change their hair, of course. They can cut it, curl it, iron it, color it. But they can't alter the shape of their face. They can't reverse-age just by scraping a disposable razor across their face. Or achieve a happening death row look by going a few days without the clippers. (Actually, it is possible, but that's called "menopause," and it's a different article for a different magazine.) And this is great. Change is great. Because you never have to get bored with the guy who looks back at you from the mirror each morning. Of course, not every man can grow luxuriously thick facial hair. Some men have very smooth faces, growing only fuzz after many weeks. And yeah, that can suck. Not if you like being clean-shaven, but no man wants what he has. He wants only what he can't have. But what do women think? Most of the women I asked prefer a clean-shaven man. A few said they like a beard. A couple more said they like a guy with "modern" facial hair. Modern being whatever Brad or Tom are doing. When I asked the clean-shaven women why, I didn't get very far. "I don't know, it's just, you know, clean. Nice and neat." I didn't buy this for one moment. I suspected the true reason why these women liked their men clean was vaginal. In other words, the whiskers hurt their pussies. So I asked. "Imagine you were female-circumcised as a young girl or you suffered an acid burn that rendered your nether region completely devoid of sensation. Would you still prefer your man to be clean-shaven? Or would a goatee be okay then?" Every woman I asked replied exactly the same way. "Oh, my God, what a horrible question." But clearly I was right. In general, whenever you encounter violent opposition you have encountered unfathomable desire. And gay men? Where do they stand on facial hair? No surprise, every gay man I asked had a different answer. And a different, highly specific answer. "I like chops on a guy, but only if he has high cheekbones and a cleft chin and blue eyes," said one. "So he can pull off a Montana look." Another dude said, "A soul patch is great. I die for soul patches." A soul patch is a square of hair just below the bottom lip. Think of Hitler's evil mustache, move it just above the chin and that's a soul patch. (Also known as a "flavor saver." Or in less savory company, a "dick target.") And actually, it is a good, young look if you're under forty. If you're over forty, it's also a good look if you're very handsome. And that's another thing. Handsome people can do almost anything. If Mathew McConaughey decided to grow two flame-shaped sideburns and then weave small beads into them, every other man in the country would be asking his sister's lesbian friend for any extra beads she has lying around. But for the rest of us, we must give more thought to our facial hair choices. If you have a big eye hovering over you at all times winking, by all means go for hick. But if you're like me and that big eye has a nervous twitch and an infected sty, go classic. One last thing, and this is really important. Don't just take anyone's advice when it comes to grooming issues. Consider the source. As you sit there reading this magazine and making mental notes, "Hmmmmm, maybe he's right and it really is okay to play around with my looks. Maybe I will grow a man chu." Just keep in mind that the author of this article used to use so much hairspray (back when) that when it rained, the water slid off his hairstyle and he never, never looked wet. I'm just saying. Don't let the mental patient write you a prescription. |
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