One Guy’s Opinion: Beards Are Not All Bad

Welcome to One Guy’s Opinion, where we let a member of the opposite sex respond to something we’ve ranted about here. Today, David Schlink takes on Jennifer Wright‘s diatribe against furry-faced men.

Says Dave:

Well, if it doesn’t sound like someone has a little beard envy. Did some silly hipster with a beautiful beard break your heart?

Didn’t Martin Luther King Jr. tell us to judge a man by the content of his character, and not the color (or amount) of his facial hair? Do you hate civil rights and equality too?

Taking a look at your two lists of “ugly and bearded” vs. “hot and hairless,” I think you have stacked the deck pretty heavily and completely ignored some really cool things about the men who have fallen into your “ugly and bearded” list. I mean, Abe Lincoln? This guy was a little busy freeing slaves and uniting our great country, sorry if he didn’t have enough time to shave. I for one have personally called Homeland Security and asked them to put you on watch for anti-American propaganda.

And Santa Claus? He’s most beloved character of all time. This guy literally travels around the world in a night and delivers presents to all the little boys and girls without asking for anything but some cookies and milk. Selfless, loving, caring, and beloved by all is a good way to describe this man. Or we could just say the obvious: he is a figment of your imagination and therefore should not count in your bearded man hate.

How about this friendly agreement: us guys will consider shaving more if you girls stop freaking out every time you hear a song from the 80′s? We all know that “Don’t Stop Belivin’” is “your song” and we know how much fun it is to jump up and down and yell about it when you hear it for the 300th time of the night. But in the end, no matter how much we pretend, we find that just about as attractive as you find our beards.

But let’s be honest — we like beards because they are a true look into manhood. As a guy, you can really feel like you’ve grown up when you get a nice full beard going. We like to look like pirates, cowboys, and bank robbers. It also gives off a bit of a “fuck you” to society, bosses, and the girls who we are trying to pick up. There is nothing better than meeting a girl, much like yourself, who hates facial hair, and then later that night she’s feeling butterflies because I can make her laugh. All of a sudden my facial hair is the last thing on her mind. Imagine that, being attracted to someone for more than just physical appearance.

For some, myself included, facial hair lines up our face a little bit — I’ll be honest, I’ve got a baby face, and if it wasn’t for my blue eyes, dimples, and groomed facial hair I would still be living in my parents’ basement without the knowledge of what a real live woman looks or feels like. But above and beyond all of that, I think most guys have this one moment in time (maybe even the first memory of Dad) when we remember sitting on some guy’s knee, as happy as anyone could ever be in life. And at that point it wasn’t much — we probably didn’t realize how important that moment would be — but the guy just had this great beard going. And in the back of our minds we think, ‘That’s what it is to be a man.’

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