A conversation the other day between my boyfriend (Zach), his dad (John), and his grandfather (Pa) really struck up my curiosity about male facial hair. Being a female I don’t necessarily understand the terms that come with the whole ordeal that is facial hair. The conversation was basically John insisting that Zach needed to shave off or somehow “clean” up his beard. John does not have any facial hair, he keeps to the standard of being “clean cut.” So to him being clean is not having any facial hair at all. Pa was siding with John in that Zach needed to “get it clean.” Pa was a face full of hair. I’m of course sitting there stunned as to what all this exactly means. I’m pondering the use of double standards, why the hair needs to be “controlled”, and where all these “rules” came from.
I had a conversation with Zach after this and all he could tell me what that he felt like he had to shave his facial hair to keep most people happy because he was so young. He thought that most men who were able to pull of facial hair were older men. To this I had to disagree because my brother-in-law, Steve, who is in his early 30’s has a full on beard with an absolutely bald head. I don’t find him to be old seeing as he isn’t much older than us. So I find it hard to believe that the standards of facial hair are age related.
In pondering this, I went to Steve directly to see what he thought. He seems to think it is profession based. He is a sales manager for a major global company. He is required to keep it “clean.” Whatever that means. He felt that if you are in a profession such as the medical field you are to be clean and sterile, therefore you must not have any facial hair. But if you are simply in a field that is less hands on, you just need to “keep it clean.” Prodding a bit I was able to get his definition of this. He says that men need to keep their facial hair trimmed and shaved, they can grow it out but it must be kept in control. They can’t have stray hairs hanging out, it should all be the same length, and it needs to be shaped. For him he says the he keeps his facial hair in a shape that isn’t creepy looking and is still professional.
In some of what Steve had to say I could understand. It needs to be shaped and trimmed, to this I compared to a female’s eyebrows. We must keep our eyebrows “under control” in order for our faces to be following the “rules.” It needs to be professional, again I was sort of able to understand this. But who dictates what is “professional?” I had a thought about this when someone I work with, a female with naturally curly hair, was told that letting her hair go nature made her look lazy and unprofessional. I’m sorry, but what?!
In looking into this professionalism thing I thought about professional athletes who grow out their facial hair as a sort of ritual for their team. There is a standard for each sport when it comes to facial hair. The big thing right now are the Red Sox’s players playoff beards. The majority of the team have these very grand beards. The MLB has rules for the players to be “clean cut.” These guys somehow meet that requirement.
http://blogs.pjstar.com/eye/2013/10/23/red-sox-cardinals-prep-for-world-series-opener-in-boston/
Pretty crazy right? I was watching Live with Kelly and Michael this morning and Kelly compared the Red Sox players to cavemen. So even though these men and their facial hair meet the requirements of the MLB in being “clean cut” they are still being criticized for their “unruly” facial hair.
To me, these all falls under some type of peer pressure and conformity. Society pressures all of us regardless of our sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc, to fit within this mold of normativity that it has set for us. Society and its normative police, as I like to call them, keep us in check. But in reality, it is our prerogative to be what and who we want. We shouldn’t have to conform to all these unrealistic norms if we don’t want to.
Unruly Bodies 
At my current job facial hair is regulated by a line under the jaw (can’t go under), lines on the cheek (can’t be on cheeks at all, basically), and overall length (can’t remember but it is pretty short). I’ve had to leave work to shave during corporate audits at times. The policy is that if one employee has an ‘unruly beard’ then the whole store loses the possible point (which might lead to overall cut hours or etc bad news).
Personally I stop getting carded + generally feel ‘older’ after a couple weeks without shaving, although there are definitely a lot of other factors in this kind of stuff.
I think ‘neckbeard’ as shorthand for repulsive internet troll (or etc) is pretty wacky re: all of this.
I’ve seen similar policies in the US military. My father is now in the Army reserves but for the majority of my life he was active in the Army and I definitely grew up an “Army Bratt” as they say. My whole life I have never seen my father with a beard, not ever. The US Military has surprisingly strict rules about facial hair. Men have to be clean shaven at all times with the exception of mustaches… for whatever reason those are okay. Facial hair and how its maintained is considered a part of the uniform soldiers wear on a daily basis. It is also considered “more hygienic” and a strange form of discipline over one’s body. It wasn’t until very recently, I want to say in the last few years, that they began to allow religious exceptions.