Women like to wear what's in style at the moment. Consider jeans with holes in the knees and elsewhere -- they are definitely "in". I'd be too embarrassed to wear them but fashion forward females pay big bucks for them. In the doctor's office, a rather rotund older beard growth kit woman waiting to be seen was wearing her "holy" jeans and what the holy-ness revealed was not a pretty sight. It doesn't matter. What does matter is wearing "what's in" and playing "follow the leader".
But what do I know. I iron my jeans. In the checkout line at Costco, a woman in back of me noticed three cans of spray starch in my cart and she shrieked, "OMG, you still iron?" I looked down my nose at her rumpled, crumpled "what's in," outfit and replied, my voice dripping with syrupy sweetness, "Yes, I do iron. I even iron my socks." (No, I don't iron my socks. But that nosey woman didn't need to know it.)
When it comes to following fashion and fads, men are probably more inclined than women to play "follow the leader". For example, consider the current "just rolled out of bed" look for business attire that includes a wrinkled shirt ( no tie, of course) and a scruffy beard. If I were a business man I'd be embarrassed to look like that in public, especially on TV. Because we have been conditioned to be non-judgmental about everything, nobody tells the clueless guys, looking like something the cat dragged in, to go home and get cleaned up. Because we don't want to call a mess a mess if it's "what's in", dress standards decline just a little bit more -- a reflection of the overall condition of the culture. As in the fable about the emperor who wore no clothes, we are at a point that if our fearless leader appeared naked on the White House lawn, his supporters would applaud and tell him how splendid he looks, especially if he had a beard.
Ya know, I don't care about what's in or what's out. I am judgmental about beards...
As most women know (or should know), men are barbarians (yes, they really are) and not the cleanest of God's creatures. Women, who are God's favored persons, (guys, please don't argue -- you are outnumbered) were created to civilize the barbarians but unfortunately, too many of us chosen charmers are not doing a very good job. Divine divas that we are, we have traumatized males to the point that many men don't know how to be men, or are afraid to be men. In a lame attempt to display what men perceive as a manifestation of manliness that women can't emasculate or emulate, they grow a beard. (I could be wrong about that, but probably not since I am rarely wrong about anything.)
My biggest beef with beards is that they are depots for disease. When you see a guy with facial shrubbery you have to wonder how much decayed leftovers from last Thanksgiving's turkey dinner (or whatever else) remains fossilized deep in the nooks and crannies.
Because I am a Chosen One and thus, always right, I must point out just how right I am. It has been determined (scientifically, of course) that bearded men have poop on their face.
It would probably help if men thought to wash their hands after using the restroom, but barbarians that they are, they don't think. Oh, I know beard sympathizers will say "You can have fecal germs any place on your body so chill out." To that I say, why make it easier than it already is to spread e-coli and other dangerous pathogens?
According to a group of microbiologists in New Mexico, the rancid bacteria that beards collect could be putting owners' health at risk.
Microbiologist John Golobic, of Quest Diagnostics, swabbed a number of beards searching for bacteria for a study and found that some of the bacteria "are the kind of things that you find in feces."
"I'm usually not surprised, and I was surprised by this," Golobic said. "There would be a degree of uncleanliness that would be somewhat disturbing."
Say what? "There would be a degree of uncleanliness that would be somewhat disturbing"?
Girlfriends, don't tolerate your guy's furry facade any longer! People pleasers that women are, they shave, pluck, tweeze and rip hair from almost every inch of their body hoping to be attractive to the hairy barbarians, and then they put up with poopy beards. I ask you -- how dumb is that?
Sanitation aside, there is another significant issue with beards.
A beard is a mask. Would a sighted man in his right mind have a relationship with a woman whose face he has never seen? Not likely. By the same token, I refuse to believe a normal woman would have a relationship with a man whose face she has never seen. Clean beard growth kit shaven, he could look entirely different and be on the FBI "10 Most Wanted" list. Please, no arguments about a woman hiding her face with cosmetics. At the end of the day after it's all washed off, the real woman, for better or worse, is revealed.
A beard is a deceptive affectation. When a man is young, a handsome veneer can hide the unsavory character he really is inside but as time goes on, the sum of all the thoughts, actions and beliefs he ever thought or acted upon play out on the face. A beard on an older man hides or distorts the reality of the person he really is.
It seems the older a guy gets the longer he allows his beard to grow because he's either (a) too senile to keep himself clean or (b) he is delusional, thinking the mess is a sign of sexiness and virility that went bye-bye long, long ago. It doesn't seem to matter that a beard adds decades to his appearance, making him look like a Santa Claus wannabe or a frail Father Time.