Just in Time for Father’s Day: A Survey of Facial Hair from Abraham Lincoln to Will Ferrell

 

Facial hair is not a subject people are dispassionate about. For Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse’s brainy arbiter of decorum, who believed that “A man’s character is better displayed through his actions than his attempts at facial hair,” there was no room for gray area (or stubble). The razor ruled. Whereas, until 1916, British soldiers were required to wear moustaches.

Facial hair is literally a sign of masculinity, as its appearance marks a boy’s biological entry into manhood. But its symbolic meaning is always in flux. In classical Greece, philosophers wore beards; later they’d be favored by counterculture beatniks and “turn on, tune in, drop out” hippies who rejected their Gillettes along with gray flannel suits. In the seventies and eighties, the bushy mustaches of Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck reminded us that facial hair can be associated with virility and sex appeal, while the Anonymous hacktivists have adopted fearsome Guy Fawkes masks to mark their vigilante status. (Take that Yosemite Sam.)

But we have the hipsters—all those tattooed, man-bunned and bearded baristas—to thank for giving facial hair a fashion twist and, who, in trickle-up fashion, have made a hirsute handsomeness popular among Hollywood types from Fifty Shades’s Jamie Dornan to Night’s Watch commander Kit Harington.

What better way to celebrate Father’s Day, than a look at the ever-growing popularity of facial hair?

 

Video by Kevin Tadge

The post Just in Time for Father’s Day: A Survey of Facial Hair from Abraham Lincoln to Will Ferrell appeared first on Vogue.