23 March, 2006

Beards Making a Comeback

The New York Times has an article today which claims that beards are back in fashion.

At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons. At New York Fashion Week last month at least a half-dozen designers turned up with furry faces.

"This is some sort of reaction to men who look scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed," said the designer Bryan Bradley, who stepped onto the runway after his Tuleh presentation looking like a renegade from the John Bartlett show, at which more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy.

"It's less 'little boy,' " Mr. Bradley said. "For a while men have looked too much like Boy Scouts going off to day camp."


As I told my friend Old Man Standiford, who has had a beard for ages, today "If you wait long enough, even you'll be back in fashion." I'm glad to see the Boy Scout look is falling out of fashion. Films & TV shows featuring such men as big action heroes just seem hokey when you have a guy who looks like a 10 year-old boy running around saving the day.

Perhaps the trend will be ported over to women and this whole Brazilian waxing thing can be laid to rest and with it can go such awful people as Marylin Jaeger who earns her living by going around and making women feel like monsters if they have any pubic hair.

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