Bearded

A beard is a gift. It’s like good looks, bone structure, symmetrical ears, kind eyes. You’ve either got it, or you don’t; and if you’ve got it, use it. From that list, I am the proud owner of exactly one half-decent beard and nothing else.

I hate pretty much all of my physical attributes. In fact, the only ones I like are the ones I’ve had tattooed or pierced. I have a big nose, wonky eyes, weird ears and a wide head and that’s just north of the neck. As with most things, going south doesn’t improve the situation.

But my beard. I’m so proud of it. It grows in a naturally good shape, it’s thick and bristly like a boot brush. Its latest iteration is its best. I’ve done nothing to it other than keep sharp things away from it (except for trimming the moustache, but we’ll get to that later).

Since Charlotte bought me a beautiful Merkur razor for Christmas last year, I’ve enjoyed shaving again. The occasion of it - steaming a towel, sitting and doing nothing with your face wrapped to open your pores. Working a lather to massage into your bristles. Carefully dragging a sharp, new blade through it until your face is completely smooth. It’s thirty minutes of pure self-indulgence. I’ve never really spent much time on what I understand to be pampering, but it’s quite something. I almost understand nail bars. Almost.

The only problem with this is it’s thirty minutes. Once a week–sure–but every day? Trying to squeeze a thirty minute shave into fifteen minutes with an unguarded blade is risky. It’s a recipe for painting your bathroom like a scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A crap shave is one of the worst things you can do to yourself in the name of vanity. It sets you up for an awful day and makes you look like a hawk tried to land on your face.

So, I quit and resolved to let my beard grow back (much to Charlotte’s dismay. She calls it “brush-face”, but I tell myself that she’s happy that it makes me happy). This might seem like stating the obvious, but if you’re trying to grow a beard: stop shaving. Don’t shave at all. Your face itches? Get over it. It doesn’t last for long.

If your beard grows in patchy, give it a few weeks. If the patches don’t connect, give up. Seriously, just suck it up and shave. You’re not going to make yourself feel good rocking a beard that makes you look ill, and people will pick up on that (and probably talk to you with a tilted head and buy you flowers). The point of anything like this is to make yourself feel confident. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’re not going to feel confident wearing a beard that thinks it's a mouldy sandwich. As with anything; know your limitations. But, as with almost nothing else, if you don’t have a natural ability; just give up.

Once you have a decent mess of beard, you can decide what to do next. If you make decisions before you know what you’re dealing with, you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed.

Even if you’re only planning on sporting a moustache, let everything grow in. If you’ve ever seen a man during Movember, you’ll know that growing a moustache on its own is not a strong look. Weak, early-growth beard can be shrugged off as stubble or laziness and then, one day, it’s just a beard and you’re home free. If someone clocks your wispy, pathetic pre-tache, it’s open season for sex-pest jokes (and you’ve really brought it on yourself. You do look like a sex pest. Yes; even you. Especially you).

Before you make any final decisions, look at your beard’s natural shape, look at other beards for inspiration. Look at amazing beards and normal beards. Look at the face shape of the people sporting beards you admire. That’s a good indicator of whether that beard will work for you. The only beard that is not acceptable is the horseshoe/fu-manchu (you may disagree but I couldn’t live with myself if I knew someone read this and was inspired to go that route. You’re better than that).

Personally, I’ve never really been tempted to do something splendiferous. Sure, I can admire the work that goes into something like that, but it’s not for me. I want something that makes me feel kickass with minimal effort. The options I have considered are: full, natural beard; full, natural with a handlebar and standard handlebar. In my opinion, a moustache doesn’t work if you have a round face (usually if the ratio of filtrum-to-chin distance and filtrum-to-hairline distance is heavily weighted towards the hairline measurement, something about a moustache just looks wrong to me), so that really just left me with the full beard options.

I tried to style a handlebar, but my moustache hair is incredibly coarse, and I just couldn’t get a decent shape, so I reluctantly conceded defeat. On the plus side, I was left with the lowest-maintenance of my three choices and if you’re not going to style a handlebar every day, you’re best to abandon it. People don’t realise the length of moustache required to maintain a handlebar, but it’s a lot. Like at least one-and-a-half lips. You can’t eat anything with sauce because you will be able to smell it until you next bathe. It’s pretty gross.

Cleaning a full beard is a treat. All the hair on my head is connected, so it all gets shampooed together (Charlotte gets some nice shampoos, too. She has something marketed at pregnant women at the moment and it makes my beard feel awesome). I don’t condition because it gives me spots. There’s a sense of achievement in having a beard with the same status as head hair. You can take quiet pleasure in wringing it out when it’s wet and marvelling at the water that falls out. You can comb it like head hair (except I don’t comb my head hair). You can blowdry it (if the thought of this makes you inwardly derisive, I invite you to try it. There’s something immensely pleasurable about a toasty-warm beard). I’ve taken to carrying a folding comb in my keys pocket to run through it. For no reason, except that it’s a fun thing to do when you’ve washed your hands after using the bathroom. It’s the little things.

In the last few months, beard growth has gone from something I just did to something I’m enthusiastic about. I always get great comments from friends and strangers about it. I’ve been asked for advice about beard-growing (which is partially the cause for this attempt to straighten my thoughts into some sort of order), and I’ve been essentially instructed to write about it. The most important thing I can say is something I say about everything else, but it bears repeating. No matter what you choose to do, make sure you enjoy the journey. For me, that journey has been going from zero-or-negative comments about my appearance to an overwhelming shift to positivity. It may be shallow to place that much stock in your appearance, but when you know how much people’s negativity can take away from you, you realise how much their positivity can add.