Thursday, December 20, 2007

Reviewed: Beards

Last week I met Murph’s new boyfriend for the first time. For some reason I started talking about how I am jealous of men because they can grow facial hair, and now I’m a little worried about the impression I made. I mean, it’s not as if he didn’t know about my crazies (Murph had to inform him of my fear of going to new people’s houses [it gets so claustrophobic]) but this time, after half a vodka tonic, I think I was a little too adamantly sincere.

But beards are cool, so I am kind of jealous. Men are so lucky! It’s like expressing your personal style—on your face! It’s not like I’m going to go out and take some hormones or something, but I’m just saying if women had the ability to grow beards naturally and it was socially acceptable--if not applauded--to do so then I would totally do it. Even just to have the option of growing a beard seems more free. So we all agree it’s completely unfair. Periods, breast cancer, date rape, FGM; women always get shafted.

Now I’m going to list some of my favorite beards: Aragorn, Ryan Gosling, Al Gore, Casey Siemaszko in Young Guns, John Goodman, John Lennon, Lincoln, Dumbledore…hm, I’ll probably think of some more later.

66 Stars.

3 comments:

Susan said...

i said a similar thing to some of the middle-aged women i work with, and they told me that i shouldn't say that because someday i would regret it. the implication was that with menopause comes unwanted facial hair growth. clearly, though, that is not the kind of beard i was talking about.

Anonymous said...

Beards are a double-edged sword -- they may look brutish and manly at times, but a poorly maintained beard can spoil an otherwise lovely face. With much power comes much responsibility -- Spiderman.

That said, while I offer a resounding "here, here" to Ryan Gosling's beard, I'd like to add Adrian Pasdar, Matthew Fox and this guy I saw in the supermarket when I was in Portugal.

Unknown said...

I prefer moustaches to be honest. Especially ones that can twirl up and stay that way. I'd love to sit around and add a twirl of the moustache for extra emphasis whenever I find myself needing to make a point to someone about something.