by Marc Hays
That’s me. I’ve had a mustache and goatee for about 13 years–nonstop facial follicles. There has never been an urge to shave them because I didn’t grow them by accident. They are not merely the result of not shaving. They are a result of a principled not-shaving.
Prior to my present state of faithful, facial follicility, I was fickle. I tried on a mustache to look older and to look more “cowboyish.” The Justins, the Wranglers, and the Stetson only displayed my desire to look more cowboyish, which was not the intended effect. The accompanying mustache only made me look like I wanted to look older. It didn’t actually accomplish that either. So, I got rid of the whole look.
A few years later, the decision to grow my mustache and goatee was different. I’m not sure where I heard it, maybe Douglas Wilson, but I remember hearing someone talk about the fact that facial hair was distinctively male. Beards are distinctively male, and this is probably not news to anyone. For a man to have a beard is entirely natural, and at one level, intrinsically laudable. By that I mean that no number of effeminate, beard-donning men can change the nature of a beard from that which is masculine into something else; it will forever be a badge of the sex of the one who wears it.
However, a woman with a beard would more than likely be seeking laser hair removal. It would in no way be a badge of her femininity and would instead be source of embarrassment. So far, no amount of egalitarianism has managed to convince Madison Avenue to market Rogaine specially designed for a woman’s chin; although the day it happens, I will not be surprised. An anti-beard advocate once told me that he thought that beards made a man look feminine, and I’m still trying to figure that one out. Needless to say, he did not convince me, and I have been in the state of facially-follicled felicity ever since.
As an aside, one might ask me, “Why just the goatee? Why not the full meal deal?” Well, the Apostle Paul says that in whatever state a man finds himself, he should be content. I have zero sideburns and the cheeks are in need of some major, facial, follicle fertilizer. I’ve grown it all out before and I looked like a teenaged, Mennonite boy attempting to grow a beard and not quite yet accomplishing it. I keep it at the goatee level so that I can say I have accomplished my task rather than forever be trying to get it done. (Those of you fellas that are in that “teenaged Mennonite boy” stage but are still just letting it grow, I applaud you.)
One more thought concerning the masculine aspect of beardedness. In the face of some terribly immature behavior by some heavily-bearded men, a wise woman–a paragon of femininity, once said, “The man makes the beard. The beard does not make the man.” G. K. Chesterton could not have said it better, which means it could not have been said better.
So, as we bearded ones look in the mirror, or scratch our chins, or wipe the soup out of it when our wives give us the subtle clue, may we forever remember that we have been called to be men, which means far more than allowing the pores on our faces to do what comes by them naturally. We are called to be like the Son of Man, who was the only one to ever live up to his beard, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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