A Complete History of Facial Hair in 60 Seconds: From Abraham Lincoln to Kit Harington

 

Don’t shirk at the thought of gifting a shaving or beard-grooming kit to the dad in your life this Father’s Day. Facial hair, after all,  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 mustaches.

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 ’70s and ’80s, the bushy mustaches of Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck reminded us that facial hair can be associated with virility and sex appeal, while more recently the Anonymous hacktivists have adopted fearsome Guy Fawkes masks to mark their vigilante status. (Take that, Yosemite Sam.)

And then 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 Game of Thrones’s 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

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