NationStates Jolt Archive


What's up with Bill Richardson's beard?

Ashmoria
03-03-2008, 04:15
i think it gives him a slightly edgy look. he should have grown it long ago.

i think its an algore-esque defeat beard.
Bann-ed
03-03-2008, 04:15
Been trying to grow a mustache, not so much a beard yet.
I'll get back to you all in 15 years or so.
Sel Appa
03-03-2008, 04:20
Right after he drops out of the presidential race, he starts growing this beard. WHY NOW?!!? He would have been the most awesome candidate if he had a beard. We haven't had a president with facial hair since Taft in 1913. I totally would have supported him strongly if he was like that before... Beards are made of win. What is up with the cultural hatred and shunning of them. It's the one thing that distinguishes a man from a woman like how breasts distinguish women from men. I envy bearded men because my facial hair refuses to grow past like a centimeter. Maybe I'm not old enough yet...

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2008/0226/20080226_120103_beard_200.jpg

Related article:

Link (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8361169?source=rss)

Hi, beard! It's cool to have you back! David Letterman and Conan O'Brien, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and American Idol contestant Robbie Carrico. Justin Timberlake, Ricky Martin, Brad Pitt. Pro jocks in playoffs. So many more.

What took you so long?

Even young rebels long have eschewed the beard, at least since the 1960s, a period thick with hairy young people intent on insurrection. What did punks fetishize? Razors.

Look around now, and witness a full-beard resurgence among people born around the time "Grizzly Adams" left the airwaves in 1978.

But don't get too comfortable. Beards sometimes come, and then, quickly, beards go.

The beard is a ridiculously simple thing for most men — just stop shaving. The message it broadcasts about the man? Nothing straightforward about that at all. Hairy chins and cheeks suggest qualities that makes mainstream USA uneasy.

"It's either Santa or satanic," says Allan Peterkin, a psychiatrist and author of "One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair." "You are demonized. You have something to hide."

Either way, Nathan McGarvey, 24, the frontman for the Denver band Hearts of Palm, has embraced the beard.

"There's definitely much more beard action going on now," says McGarvey. McGarvey has been growing his bushy beard for about nine months; of the eight men in his band, seven sport beards (a woman also belongs to the band). "There's an upswing of beards in rock 'n' roll."

"It's a kick, it's funny," he adds. "It's very much a dude thing."

A growing trend

The dude thing inspired Aaron Johnson, a Boulder performer who goes by the name Ukelele Loki, to form the Hirsute Moustache & Beard Grower Society.

"I threw out a call for guys with facial hair to come to an event at a Boulder restaurant," he says. "I thought we would get like 15 people. We got more than 100."

The guys hung out and talked about their beards, and competed in a beard contest.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson looks more presidential sans beard than with. The last president with a beard? William Howard Taft, who left office in 1913. (Associated Press file)

Twenty-something Johnson isn't exactly a double for Dumbledore, though. He wears a Three Musketeers- style arrangement: a long, blond mustache waxed into something like long grasshopper legs rising up from the ends of his mouth; and a tuft of hair beneath his lower lip.

He started growing facial hair as soon as he could in part because it's "the one thing men have that they accessorize with."

The beard is not the same thing as the goatee, which has been with us, in force, since the middle of the 1990s. The goatee today, like the mustache in the 1970s, is acceptable even for corporate types, who tend to shrink from facial hair.

But if an up-and-coming "brand manager" for a big company grows a flowing Moses beard, he'll be stuck in the mailroom.

Outlaws — pirates, bikers — can always wear beards. Mystics, like Jesus, an East Indian swami, or even a hippie, wear beards, too. Intellectuals tend them, hermits sprout them, and villains stroke them.

But vast categories of guy — for example, guys who work in corporate offices, guys who work in stores and guys who sell things (that's a lot of guys) — reject the beard, even today, even with the beard's return, which has not moved from Hollywood and rock 'n' roll to the boardroom.

Beards are like smoking jackets: You might don one every once in a while, for kicks or for making a statement, but you're not wearing the thing every day.

And so we toy with beards on vacations. We approach beards with scruff on our jaws in the winter, and then, razor- armed, we retreat.

And if a good excuse comes our way — say, a writers strike or a failed presidential bid — we do not hesitate. But when the strike ends, the camaraderie fades, and one morning we stand in front of a mirror, our faces lathered in foam.

"Shaving contributes to a group dynamic, a group mentality, a disciplined and orderly unit," says Christopher Oldstone-Moore, a Wright State University lecturer who is writing a book about facial hair, shaving and Western civilization. "Beards work better for individualism."

Late-night TV hosts Conan O'Brien and David Letterman definitely stood out when they joined their writers by growing temporary "strike beards." They seemed to relish their woolly chins and cheeks. But once the scribes returned, off went the beards.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson cleanshaven was presidential material. Add a beard, and suddenly he's not; in fact, maybe he's too much of an "individual." Al Gore's post- 2000-election beard unleashed the editorial cartoonists, who suggested he'd become a guy gone wild.

Beards of yore

Until Alexander the Great, who ruled a large swath of Europe and Asia in the fourth century B.C., shaving often hinged on a person's status: priests, for example, shaved, but kings did not, nor did most other men. But not only did Alexander shave, he insisted his soldiers shave, too.

Ever since, beards — at least among Western civilizations — have entered the mainstream, en masse, only occasionally, Oldstone-Moore says.

Temporary beards work well for guys out backpacking for a spell or playing sports, for example, "because it gives them the feeling of extra manliness."

"They are really being men in the wild, men in the rough, and maybe they need a little bit extra of that attitude to win the World Series," says Oldstone-Moore. "It's OK to be a wilder masculine type for a short period of time, for times of emergency and times of war and times of strike, but it's not OK to be that all the time."

Jeff Holland, 51, doesn't think much about his very- dude beard, which looks something like a fat plug of gray- and-white cotton candy hanging halfway to his sternum — in a good way.

"It's not an interesting statement or anything," says Holland, who lives in Nederland and works in the music business. "I'm just used to it. I like Civil War-era stuff. Everyone had beards. I live in the mountains. Everyone has beards."

Regardless, men half his age are starting to toy with full beards.

No surprise, Peterkin says. Facial hair is closely yoked to fashion, and it's the beard's turn.

Oldstone-Moore thinks facial hair has less to do with fashion than it does with social currents — issues like feminism, he says, contribute to the status of the beard with more force than fashion — but both scholars agree that beards are unsettling to the culture at large.

"The last (president) to have facial hair in the United States was (William Howard) Taft," who left office in 1913, says Peterkin. "Clean-shavenness is supposed to suggest honesty and purity and integrity. There is a huge industry creating five-blade shavers and ultra-fine titanium shavers trying to convince us the cleanshaven face is the godly face."

Holland is familiar with the bias.

Since 9/11, he's been strip- searched — twice — in airports.

"Terrorism," he says, "has given beards a bad name."
Cannot think of a name
03-03-2008, 04:27
Beards are awesome. My beard is the most awesome of all. Richardson with a beard is awesome. He was my early pick. I hadn't looked too deeply into him before he dropped out, but he interested me.

I dig the beard. It's the "I don't care" beard. Go beard.
Sel Appa
03-03-2008, 05:11
He looks more like a leader with it.
Cannot think of a name
03-03-2008, 05:17
He looks more like a leader with it.

And slightly less like Horatio Sanz...
http://www.3conservatives.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/horatio-sanz-cropped.jpg
Straughn
03-03-2008, 05:32
Had to go with Option 9.
I like them, but they itch far, far too much to be worthwhile to me.
Privatised Gaols
03-03-2008, 05:38
Shit, he'd have had my vote. :(
Straughn
03-03-2008, 05:48
Shit, he'd have had my vote. :(
Preachin' to the choir.
:(
Sneaky Puppet
03-03-2008, 06:01
Beards itches until it grows out enough. Took me maybe 2 weeks for the itching to subside.

Beards are definitely cool. Proof: ZZ Top

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Zztop_20101983_01_640.jpg/250px-Zztop_20101983_01_640.jpg
Straughn
03-03-2008, 06:03
Beards itches until it grows out enough. Took me maybe 2 weeks for the itching to subside.

Beards are definitely cool. Proof: ZZ Top

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Zztop_20101983_01_640.jpg/250px-Zztop_20101983_01_640.jpg

I've had 'em itch badly as much as a month later. It's hard enough not getting ingrown hairs anyway. :p
The_pantless_hero
03-03-2008, 06:09
Now he looks like he could be a terrorist in a James Bond/Tom Clancy/Die Hard movie. All serious terrorists/Soviets wear beards like that.
Vetalia
03-03-2008, 06:23
Now he looks like he could be a terrorist in a James Bond/Tom Clancy/Die Hard movie. All serious terrorists/Soviets wear beards like that.

He would immediately begin negotiations with the Soviet Union.

COINCIDENCE???

(At least it's not a neckbeard...)
Zilam
03-03-2008, 06:36
Al gore grew a beard after winning..erm sorry..."losing" his race.
H N Fiddlebottoms VIII
03-03-2008, 06:39
I don't like beards, as I feel they look slobbish and itch like hell.
Instead, I try to maintain a bit of stubble, so it looks like I shave normally, but haven't had time in the past day or two. Perhaps because of some desperate life-or-death situation involving lots of gun play and yelling at people about all the time I don't have.
Sel Appa
04-03-2008, 00:38
Had to go with Option 9.
I like them, but they itch far, far too much to be worthwhile to me.
WEAK

I've had 'em itch badly as much as a month later. It's hard enough not getting ingrown hairs anyway. :p
That's what happens when you shave.
Maraque
04-03-2008, 00:41
Dude, ol' Bill looks awesome with a beard. I must say.
Soviestan
04-03-2008, 03:57
I love them. I grew one soon after I became Muslim and decided to keep it.
Sel Appa
04-03-2008, 04:54
I love them. I grew one soon after I became Muslim and decided to keep it.

That's what I like, among other things, about Islam and the Taliban--mandatory beards. That's awesome! I'm not so fond of the shaving downstairs though...
Straughn
04-03-2008, 09:13
WEAK
In many ways, but in pertinence to beards, i'm saying that i don't have enough interest in incessant scratching. Besides, i've been putting up with beards for 20 years now.

That's what happens when you shave.
Not every time. Those are the ones i keep, at least for a little while.

Where's yours again? Photo?
Straughn
04-03-2008, 09:14
I'm not so fond of the shaving downstairs though...WEAK

Shit, lets hear what you say about waxing, and THEN we'll talk "weak" :p
Straughn
04-03-2008, 09:35
Shaving? Waxing? I manually rip it out regularly burn and harness the renewable energy.

Libruhl!
Tongass
04-03-2008, 09:38
Shaving? Waxing? I manually rip it out regularly burn and harness the renewable energy.
Vetalia
04-03-2008, 10:20
Libruhl!

God, the smell of burning hair has to be some kind of environmental crime.
Demented Hamsters
04-03-2008, 14:42
Right after he drops out of the presidential race, he starts growing this beard. WHY NOW?!!?
Why now? Perhaps he realised that while he was in the presidential race he talked like a **** so shouldn't really look like one at the same time.
Rambhutan
04-03-2008, 15:06
There are very few leaders with beards in democratic countries. Having a beard will lose you votes. Those leaders who do have beards tend to be in non-democratic countries.
Khadgar
04-03-2008, 15:09
Thought about growing a beard, just 'cause I'm too fucking lazy to shave. Only thing is a coworker I hate has a beard and last thing I want to do is to any way emulate that ewok little fucker.
Sel Appa
05-03-2008, 02:35
In many ways, but in pertinence to beards, i'm saying that i don't have enough interest in incessant scratching. Besides, i've been putting up with beards for 20 years now.

Not every time. Those are the ones i keep, at least for a little while.
If you started by not shaving, it would never be a problem.
Where's yours again? Photo?
I said it's barely existent. :( And I have no recent pics...sorry.



WEAK

Shit, lets hear what you say about waxing, and THEN we'll talk "weak" :p
Wax on. Wax off.

Why now? Perhaps he realised that while he was in the presidential race he talked like a **** so shouldn't really look like one at the same time.
He doesn't look or talk like a ****.

There are very few leaders with beards in democratic countries. Having a beard will lose you votes. Those leaders who do have beards tend to be in non-democratic countries.
Bearded men make better-looking leaders than shaven. Also, please reference som "non-democratic countries" so I can debunk your claims. Most "democracies" are in the West. The West has a culture stigma against beards. So, it's just a coincidence.