Peak beard is a cultural phenomenon identified during the early 2010s, speculating that the perceived prevalence of beards in the general population of Western countries had reached its maximum.
Peak beard is a cultural phenomenon identified during the early 2010s, speculating that the perceived prevalence of beards in the general population of Western countries had reached its maximum.
The concept of peak beard gained wider popularity following the publication of an academic paper from a team based at University of New South Wales, which suggested that there was a long term cyclic variance in the prevalence of beards in Western culture due to the role that scarcity of physical attributes plays in sexual selection in heterosexual men and bisexual and heterosexual women. [1] [2] They suggested that as facial hair becomes dominant, clean-shaven faces become a more desirable trait in partner selection due to their scarcity. [2] Similarly, when clean-shaven faces are dominant, beards become a more desired trait. [1] [2] This applied to both men and women as the observers. [2]
The increasing prevalence of beards in the first decade of the 2000s followed a period throughout the 1990s which was characterized by a general lack of facial hair. [3] It was suggested the growth of beards may have been triggered by the financial crisis in 2008, and that a similar pattern may have occurred following the Wall Street Crash in the 1920s. Researcher Rob Brooks theorized that this may be a result of high unemployment, with men seeking to emphasize other aspects of their masculinity to compensate for lack of work. [3] [4] The beard during this period became associated with emergence of the contemporary hipster subculture, which itself had been suggested to be a reaction to growth of the metrosexual male. [5] [6] The team hypothesised that beards follow a 30-year cycle. [1]
Whilst numerous media noted the possibility that beard prevalence had peaked in the early 2010s, a YouGov poll suggested that beards had become more commonplace in November 2016 compared with August 2011. [7] [8] This was reflected in the persistent decline in the sales of razor blades between 2013 and 2015. [9]
The beard's oft-predicted demise was suggested to have been further delayed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when remote working from home became rapidly widespread as a public health measure to mitigate the pandemic's spread. That in turn made it acceptable for more workers to go through the unshaven look on their way to growing full beards. [6] [10] [11]
Sexual orientation is an enduring personal pattern of romantic attraction or sexual attraction to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. Patterns are generally categorized under heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality, while asexuality is sometimes identified as the fourth category.
Hair removal, also known as epilation or depilation, is the deliberate removal of body hair or head hair.
Shaving is the removal of hair, by using a razor or any other kind of bladed implement, to slice it down—to the level of the skin or otherwise. Shaving is most commonly practiced by men to remove their facial hair and by women to remove their leg and underarm hair. A man is called clean-shaven if he has had his beard entirely removed.
A beard is the hair that grows on the jaw, chin, upper lip, lower lip, cheeks, and neck of humans and some non-human animals. In humans, usually pubescent or adult males are able to start growing beards, on average at the age of 21.
Sideburns, sideboards, or side whiskers are facial hair grown on the sides of the face, extending from the hairline to run parallel to or beyond the ears. The term sideburns is a 19th-century corruption of the original burnsides, named after American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside, a man known for his unusual facial hairstyle that connected thick sideburns by way of a moustache, but left the chin clean-shaven.
A moustache is a growth of facial hair grown above the upper lip and under the nose. Moustaches have been worn in various styles throughout history.
A handlebar moustache is a moustache with particularly lengthy and upwardly curved extremities. These moustache styles are named for their resemblance to the handlebars of a bicycle. It is also known as a spaghetti moustache, because of its stereotypical association with Italian men. The Handlebar Club humorously describes the style as "a hirsute appendage of the upper lip and with graspable extremities".
Physical attractiveness is the degree to which a person's physical features are considered aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from either. There are many factors which influence one person's attraction to another, with physical aspects being one of them. Physical attraction itself includes universal perceptions common to all human cultures such as facial symmetry, sociocultural dependent attributes and personal preferences unique to a particular individual.
A fake moustache or false moustache is an item of prosthetic make-up. Fake moustaches are made in a variety of ways, but usually require a form of adhesive to affix the moustache to the wearer's face.
The 21st-century hipster is a subculture. Fashion is one of the major markers of hipster identity. Members of the subculture typically do not self-identify as hipsters, and the word hipster is often used as a pejorative for someone who is pretentious or overly concerned with appearing trendy.
Facial hair is hair grown on the face, usually on the chin, cheeks, and upper lip region. It is typically a secondary sex characteristic of human males. Men typically start developing facial hair in the later stages of puberty or adolescence, around fifteen years of age, and most do not finish developing a full adult beard until around eighteen or later. However, large variations can occur; boys as young as eleven have also been known to develop facial hair, and some men do not produce much facial hair at all.
Queer heterosexuality is heterosexual practice or identity that is also controversially called queer. "Queer heterosexuality" is argued to consist of heterosexual, cisgender, and allosexual persons who show nontraditional gender expressions, or who adopt gender roles that differ from the hegemonic masculinity and femininity of their particular culture.
Facial hair in the military has been at various times common, prohibited, or an integral part of the uniform.
The undercut is a hairstyle that was fashionable from the 1910s to the 1940s, predominantly among men, and saw a steadily growing revival in the 1980s before becoming fully fashionable again in the 2010s. Typically, the hair on the top of the head is long and is often parted on either the side or center, while the back and sides are buzzed very short. It is closely related to the curtained hair of the mid-to-late 1990s, although those with undercuts during the 2010s tended to slick back the bangs away from the face.
The Mustache Gang is a term coined for the 1972 Oakland Athletics baseball team, a team that broke the traditionally conservative baseball views by sporting mustaches. From the change in American men's fashion away from facial hair in the 1920s to the early 1970s, there had only been two baseball players who had facial hair during the regular season: Stanley "Frenchy" Bordagaray of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who was then ordered to shave by his manager, and Wally Schang of the Philadelphia A's.
Since 1976, the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (MLB) have maintained a strict appearance policy, specifying that players' hair must not touch their collars and that they may have mustaches but no other facial hair. The policy came from then-franchise owner George Steinbrenner, who believed that regulating his players' appearance would instill a sense of discipline. Steinbrenner began noting which players he believed needed haircuts when he took over the Yankees in 1973, but the policy was not codified until three years later. Steinbrenner's policy remains in place after his death, and has led to a number of dramatic appearance changes for players who come to the Yankees from other teams, such as Oscar Gamble, as well as pushback from players who prefer long hair and beards. In 1991, Don Mattingly was taken out of the Yankees' lineup for a day when he refused to cut his hair.
Male grooming refers to men paying attention to fashion and enhancing their own appearance. This interest has become increasingly apparent in popular culture.
Secular laws regulating hairstyles exist in various countries and institutions.
The recent boom may have its roots in the financial crisis of 2008, Prof Brooks suggests. 'I think one of the reasons beards have made a comeback now is that it's a difficult time. Young men are competing to attract someone when work is not easy to come by. So we might expect some aspects [of masculinity] to get turned up to eleven. After the Wall Street Crash in the 1920s there is some circumstantial evidence that beards got big again. So maybe economic conditions have set the stage for the recent comeback in beardedness.'