Taking it on the chin

Taking it on the chin
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday July 20, 2013

It’s lucky beards don’t hold grudges because I make damning generalisations about their owners. Shifty weak-chinned buggers they are. I like to know where the beard ends and the man begins. Why the wearers of crumb-catchers always stroke their whiskers while thinking about what they’re hiding behind.

I’ve had some bad run-ins with beards. It started in the 70’s with Catweazle, the TV wizard. I watched every episode from behind a bean bag, revelling in being scared witless. I don’t know if it was Catweazle’s ratty goatee, the crazed look in his eyes or that toad he kept in the pocket of his filthy brown cloak, but that warlock did some lasting damage. Beards gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I turned the corner in Year 6. My teacher Mr Pearsall had an Abraham Lincoln beard, bushy but neatly clipped and a vibrant shade of orange. In the afternoons, he sat on a stool reading to us from a book called Stranger from the Depths, a gripping novel about a bunch of kids who befriend an underwater alien. As he spoke, his beard would catch the sunlight streaming in through the windows of our demountable classroom. His face aglow, Mr Pearsall and his incandescent beard were mesmerising. That book came to life in the hands of a man who might well have been an alien himself.

I never quite understood the appeal of the beard; why 98-percent of the world’s lumberjacks, sea captains and bikies are so attached to their woolly faces. But then I met Gordon.

Gordon and his wife live not far from us. Their Jack Russell and my 3-year old like a morning constitutional so we always stop to chat. I’m fascinated by Gordon’s wispy white beard, the way it fans out from his chin then tapers to a point halfway down his chest.

Even the slightest breeze lifts the delicate ends of his beard and they float up around his face. Abstractedly, he gently strokes them down: “Fifty years I’ve had it now,” he tells me, “Grew it at 30. Every day I comb it, shampoo it once a week. I used to plait it to keep it out of the way, or roll it up and pin it with a clip under my chin, but I’m a fading hippie now so it can fly free.”

His wife shrugs: “I still don’t like it” and Gordon roars with laughter. I suggest he might like to reacquaint himself with the bottom half of his face just to keep the missus happy. He gives his beard a pat and replies: “Nope, too late. It’s part of me.”

My razor-sharp spouse likes to grow a beard on holidays. He calls it a beard but really it’s just ginger scraggle. After two weeks it’s like a badly mown lawn – tufts growing east on one cheek, south on the other, a prickly clump on his chin sporting a smear of dried toothpaste.

But that scruff of whiskers has a strange effect on him. Newly hirsute, he fancies himself as Chuck Norris. I play along and declare him the most macho bloke. And then the bearded one kisses me like he’s Lone Wolf McQuade and days later I’m still applying ointment to my gravel rash.

This season’s footballers aren’t doing facial hair any favours either. Those bushrangers just make the game more untidy. I say leave the chin curtains where they belong, boys: in the 70’s – on singers like Kenny Rogers and Barry Gibb.

But certain beards have the ability to stop traffic. Only yesterday, catching up with two pals at a coffee shop, one girlfriend exclaimed “Hey! Check out that beard!” We all turned to look outside and there was an old gent with a giant Father Christmas beard, white and bushy with an elaborate moustache that curled up at the ends, giving the illusion of a permanent smile.

On older men, the beard can add a veneer of gravitas, on younger men, a rugged virility. Or villainy: Fu Manchu’s evil moustache became the template for Disney scoundrels and Hollywood’s bad guys. 

Whatever the fashion, I say Brad Pitt’s untamed goatee looks one park bench away from deranged. George Clooney’s salt and pepper version gives him the kind of retrosexual manliness my mum fancies.

These days, facial hair needs lessons in etiquette. A beard is too big if you can wring it out, or it joins up with the hair on your chest. A beard must not be used as a bib for eating garlic prawns. When two beards cross paths, the bigger one gets right of way.

None of this matters in our house. Yesterday morning, as Mr 7 o’clock shadow lathered up, I commiserated that the beard-growing season doesn’t start until Christmas: “Never mind,” I said “you look just as rugged without one.” “That’s nice, Blossom, because I haven’t had a close shave in years. Maybe you could find me a razor that hasn’t shaved the beard off your legs.”