I have a problem. I'm trying to grow a beard but I'm not sure if it suits me! This hairy attachment¹ to men's faces has been very fashionable in the UK for a while. But now mine is finally sprouting², I wonder if I have missed the boat.

 

Perhaps this is not such a bad thing. A new scientific study suggests that the more beards there are in a population, the less attractive they become. If this is true, it would give clean-shaven men a competitive advantage.

 

We've currently reached a peak in beard popularity in the UK and men might soon be reaching for their razors to give themselves a clean-cut look. But beards have gone in and out of fashion over hundreds of years. Think of the famous 19th century British naturalist³ Charles Darwin who had a big bushy beard. Or from the world of literature, Charles Dickens, who sported a very flamboyant⁴ beard.

 

But why have men through the ages grown such defined whiskers? Lucinda Hawksley, writer of Moustaches, Whiskers and Beards thinks that that "the most heavily bearded times in Britain are either when women are in power, such as Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria, or when there's a big discussion of feminism ... you get a woman on the throne and men go, 'Oh, got to have a beard' ".

 

Perhaps that's true, but I don't think my attempt to grow a beard is a display of testosterone in reaction to powerful women - it's probably just laziness. Of course there are good reasons to cultivate a good beard - special campaigns like 'Movember' and 'Decembeard' invite men to get hairy for charity in certain months of the year.

 

I'm not a pogonophile - someone who loves beards. And as I've only managed to grow some stubble so far, I think I will visit the barber to get my facial hair removed. But now I'm thinking about a moustache instead. What do you think?

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