So, why do you have a beard?

[ewalling]

I grew one a year ago for a dramatic performance I was in as an older guy, and I thought the beard added years onto my look. Once the itchiness phase had passed, I also welcomed the end to shaving.

But there's an odd aspect to having a beard, which I remember from my mid-twenties when I also had one for around a year: you lose half your face! I remember when I shaved that other beard off, I saw my face gradually reappear in the mirror as the facial hair disappeared.

Some people have commented that they like my beard, although my wife has not been a fan. It's easy having one, sure, but it's a bit like walking around with a pandemic mask on all the time, and I'm wondering if the world deserves to see my beauty again!

If you have one, why do you have it?

[martingitdave]

I grew a beard on vacation in North Dakota 5 years ago. Never shaved it off. If I am successful in losing weight I may go back to clean shaven.

[RustyAxe]

I’ve worn facial hair since 1973. After planting my chin firmly against a car’s windshield I was left with a ragged and red scar. The beard covered it. The scar may be gone now, but I still keep the goatee and ‘stache.

[Jamolay]

No clue, but it has been there since about 1984. I just stopped shaving during a hippy time of travel and never started again.

Never having shaved and now being bald, I had a painful learning curve shaving my head with a single edge razor.

[raysachs]

I’ve had a beard almost constantly since I could grow one. I don’t know why I had or wanted one initially. Over time I occasionally just had a mustache or goatee, but mostly a beard. Two or three times I was briefly clean shaven and during those times I noticed my mouth is about the size of a dime - really really small. Dentists hate me because it’s really hard to get in there to work. I attribute my mostly poor singing to that too - ever notice how many really great singers have huge wide mouths? In any case, I didn’t like the look of that tiny mouth in the middle of my face and facial hair framing it makes it much less apparent. So I’ve pretty much always had facial hair and usually a full beard. I think the last time I had less than a full beard was about five or six years ago when I briefly went with a shaved head and I cut my beard down to a goatee. But the head shaving didn’t last and I’ve had a full beard since…

-Ray

[KenL]

I'm clean-shaven during the spring-summer months and have a goatee during the fall-winter. Can't make up my mind, I guess.

And it's not like the girls are looking at me twice anymore, so what the heck.

[fitness1]

My 'program' for about two years now is to let it grow for 4-5 weeks and then when it gets a little crazy shave it back off and start again.

The reason - it saves me time in my early morning routine - just trim around it a bit once every few days to keep it looking decent.

[Bob Womack]

Well, you asked:

Back in the nineties I worked with a particular producer who came in every morning to create a product. One day he came in with a quizzical, far away look on his face that begged the question, "Why?" He said that at breakfast, his wife had stopped eating, looked him in the eye, and said, absolutely seriously, "I need a change." She got up and pulled a picture of Harrison Ford with a goatee and 'stache and said, "I need you to grow one of these."

While murmuring sympathetic words to my friend, I giggled inside about his problem. At lunch I went home for lunch where my wife caught me giggling between bytes and asked why. I explained my friend's problem and said I thought it was hilarious that his wife would ask for such a thing. My wife looked at me, dead seriously, and said, "You should try it." I couldn't gainsay her and ended up growing a goatee and 'stache.

Twenty-five years later my friend's beard is long gone but my wife still wants mine. The joke was on me.



Sitting in the control room where it happened.

Bob

[Silly Moustache]

At 18, I got expelled from school after my A levels ... for growing a beard. I am/was blonde but my beard was bright ginger. So I never picked up my certificates, and in 41 years of work, never once got asked to prove my qualifications.

I cut it off when I was thirty, just to see what I looked like - grew it back quickly.

Shaved it off again when I was forty - made a few hunfdred for charity (Gt.Ormond Street Children's hospital)'

At 69, I had throat cancer treatment which destroyed my beard on the left side, so now it is just a silly little goatee, plus, of course, my Silly Moustache!!

Why ? Because I like it.

[Nymuso]

I was playing in a Southern Rock band in the early 80s. The other guys said I didn’t look badass enough, so I grew a beard. I shaved it off a year or so later, but my wife had liked the beard.

About eight years ago I didn’t shave one long weekend. My wife asked if I was growing a beard, I said no. “Yes, you are,” she replied. It was an order, not speculation. So I still have the beard.

[ssjk]

Because I suddenly find myself a geezer and without it I’ve started to look sorta like a cross between Karl Malden and Johnny Cash at age 60. Not digging that puffy fleshy vibe.

[RP]

When I first moved to a rural part of Virginia in 1979, I heard an oft-repeated notion that I'd never heard before - men growing beards for hunting season whether or not they were hunters. I already had a full beard so the question was posed to me about growing it for (deer) hunting season or just an assumed acceptance that I'd grown it for that reason. I recently shaved the goatee I'd had for a number of years while keeping my mustache...

[TBman]

I have had a beard since my 20s (I'm 67). It's not a full beard, it's a close to the skin kind of beard. I was tired of getting proofed in liquor stores when buying beer at the age of 25 so I grew the beard.

[rllink]

It came to the point I would look in the mirror and see my dad. I didn't want to look like my dad.

[The Watchman]

I could not have facial hair in my job, so when I retired, I grew a goatee & mustache. I alternate, shaving it off for the Spring/Summer, and growing it back for the Fall/Winter. I think its as much work maintaining a good trim, as shaving it all. But, I took a poll of all the females I know, and the consensus was yes to the goatee. And anecdotally, I believe I get better service from females when out doing business. My shaved face is rather unimpressive, like a bald Radar O'Reilly.