The Semiotics of Facial Hair
We are at an important moment in the history of the beard. After a decade of (literal) growth in popularity we are starting to see the inevitable backlash. At the same time, barely a day goes by without some new threat to western orthodoxy being presented to us from behind a beard on rolling news, whether it’s decrying austerity or chanting death to America.
The inherent contradiction in the modern beard is neatly summed up by what happened near the Swedish town of Gränna last week. When the police were called to investigate a group of suspiciously bearded men waving a black flag they expected to find a local chapter of the Islamic State up to no good. Instead, they found the Bearded Villians, an international club for men with beards, arranging a photo shoot.
The international media was quick to pick up on the story, collectively laughing at the incongruence of a menacing terrorist organisation being confused with a group of of cuddly hipsters who raise money for charity in between posing for Instagram.
As hilarious as this may have been, it raises interesting questions about the lingering suspicion we have over beards in the West. Whether it’s a general distrust in bearded politicians, or an increased interest in bearded men at the airport since 9/11, beards are generally bad news.
This all leaves aspiring politicians in a bit of a bind. Follow a fashion trend in order to appear cool and trendy, or safely shave it all off and avoid all controversy.
Only two of the participating world leaders at the most recent G20 summit had any sort of beard or moustache. Only one member of the current British cabinet is bearded and no one in the French cabinet has any sort of facial hair. There hasn’t been a beardy US presidential candidate for the last 99 years.
But beyond the world of politics, beards are everywhere. Fashion, as it is wont to do, has come around full circle and beards are ‘in.’ So what is stopping this rather mainstream fashion trend from penetrating the political elite? Surely it is only a matter of time before beards become lame enough to be accepted by the electorate again.
Indeed, there are already signs of this being the case. August saw the election of perennial outsider and bearded man, Jeremy Corbyn, as the leader of the Labour party, the official opposition in the British Parliament. But is this the start of a wider trend, or simply the exception that proves the rule?
Western society reached ‘Peak beard’ somewhere in 2014. A quick look at Google Trends clearly shows a peak in traffic for ‘beards’ towards the end of 2013. Science, yes that guy science again, told us that as beards become more popular they become less attractive and when they’re less popular they become attractive again. This endless hairy cycle revolves in around thirty year periods.
Apart from my dad’s previously attractive 30 year old beard now becoming part of a boring trend, there are wide reaching ramifications to this. Although there may be a lot of beards around now, it’s unlikely that this will last much longer. Once everyone is that ‘that guy with the beard’ nobody is. The people behind Movember are worried that this mainstreaming of facial hair will affect their charity as moustaches just aren’t as fun anymore (if they ever were). Beards are so mainstream that Conchita Wurst was even able to win Eurovision in 2014.
For such a supposedly counterculture accessory in the West, beards may now be at the height of their popularity but at their lowest level of cool. Instead of being visual shorthand for a devil-may-care attitude and a rugged sort of manliness, beards now just signify that you’re, at worst, still a big dirty ‘hipster’ and, at best, lazy. I personally blame the Internet. The collective Internet. Occasionally those guys over at Internet HQ will declare some sort of trend as the next big thing and then that’s that until the next one comes along. (See “man-buns” and “books”).
Politicians are rarely ahead of the curve. If they make any concessions to fashion it is usually a few years late and at a point when it’s unlikely to shock the electorate. Once the President or your hip young local MP has a beard it’s definitely time to shave yours off. So if beards have been scientifically ‘lame’ for the last year or two, how come we haven’t seen more lame beards in politics before now?
Beards are often seen to be untrustworthy for men in positions of power, with Margaret Thatcher famously banning beards in her cabinet as the chin is the window on the soul. In a world dominated by a fixation on image, the semiotics of facial hair plays a bigger part the higher your profile. In UK politics’ age of spin in the late 90s, many of Labour’s high ranking politicians fell victim to an obsession over image and had to lose their beards.
Perhaps hiding half of your face behind a beard shows that you have something more to hide? Maybe it’s that beards still a sign of aging, and the stuffy image associated with them the exact opposite of what a fresh dynamic young politician wants to achieve? Despite an illustrious history of beards in politics, nowadays the majority of political facial hair that comes to mind generally belongs to folk you wouldn’t necessarily want to associate yourself with in the modern arena.
Whether they’re scruffy old Communists (Marx, Lenin, Castro), dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Gaddafi) or revolutionaries/terrorists (Che Guevara, Osama Bin Laden, Gerry Adams), it’s generally better to just avoid all possibility of being linked with these men and just go clean shaven. In America, the McCarthy era of suspicion about the Commies combined with the counterculture of the Beats and Hippies resulted in beards being thoroughly shunned by the mainstream. The media narratives surrounding the ‘War on Terror’ certainly haven’t helped things.
Even now, those that do go for a beard or moustache still fall on the more radical ends of the political spectrum. In France, the most high profile facial hair in politics belongs a Communist, a Green and a Syndicalist. If the more mainstream politicians do go for a more unkempt look it’s generally after a scandal (DSK) or during a period of exile (Sarkozy post-defeat in 2012). The beard is as politicised as it ever has been, a sign of the outsider or of someone who doesn’t care what the rest think any more.
The recent success of Jeremy Corbyn is perhaps a sign of the end times. Here we have a crusty old leftist back in the news, beard and all, and he is refreshingly uncool. However, Corbyn is still of the old guard and it is more a case of the mainstream accepting one of the outliers, rather than a beard becoming mainstream in and of itself.
Personally, I would like to see less of a focus on candidate’s image in general, bearded or not. That way we may actually get to a point where a woman can run for office without her every style choice being torn apart in the tabloids.
I would give up on the hopes of having a bearded leader if it meant that more women were in charge. As all this hoohaa about beards masks the most shameful statistic in politics, that women are vastly underrepresented. Afterall, there have easily been more bearded than female leaders in history, and you don’t need Buzzfeed to tell you that that’s uncool.
