The Political Reality of Beards

You know, every so often I find myself  snapping into a sort of uber self-consciousness. It happens in a variety of different situations throughout my everyday life. I find myself very aware of my surroundings when in a city and the role that I play in that city. I think about the different professions that keep that city functioning, the professions that I frequent and contribute to.

I also think about the underbelly of the city, the street-level professions such as prostitution, drug dealing, 'illegal' labour. I wonder if those prostitutes realize that they are party to a timeless and ancient profession, historically one that was not as frowned upon as it is today. Do the 'illegal' labourers (a more appropriate term would be undocumented, I guess) realize that they are somewhat a splinter of historic slave-labour that made the polis of old as great and prosperous as they were.

And then I looked at my shaggy appearance in the mirror this evening. I have kept a full beard on my face for the last two years now, and a goatee another 2 or 3 years prior in one capacity or another, and I love it. If one does not wear a beard, one does not know how much a beard completes a face. I saw my face and the unkempt condition of my barbs and thought to myself, 'What do I represent with this beard?'

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I have long been an admirer of Fidel and Ernesto Guevara; what they symbolized in both their actions and their appearance. The represented change and an alternate way of doing things, of conducting oneself both in society as well as in a larger national and global way. The romance of the Cuban Revolution, the foundations of which were very non-partisan, contrary to popular belief, which a interestingly contrasts with the daddies of Communism and their strikingly eyeblinding facial-statements of the 19th c.

Thus the political issue reveals itself. Do my political preferences and inclinations manifest themselves in a physical way via my facial hair? Can I be picked out of a crowd as a socialist, just by my beard? I think yes. My keeping a beard signifies my aversion to conform to normal, mainstream trends. Since the end of the 19th century beards have been on the steady decline. American Presidents stopped wearing facial hair altogether after Taft [c.1930] (also, coincidentally the 1st Governer of Cuba) and it took decades before it was again donned en mass with the emergence of the hippy sub-culture.

And so I present that wear my beard as a personal statement just as much as a political or fashionable statement. I want my physical appearance to reflect my inner self, and non-conformity and ruggedness manifest through my neck, chin and cheeks in the form of sharp, whiskery barbs. I reject the classical clean-shavenism that finds its roots in the barbarians and non-Romans. I reject the notion that they only way to live in a civilized manour is to enter into the kind of society that we have created over centuries of misguided, liberal theology. How interesting that in order to be considered a civil person, one must remove one the most natural, biological products that a human, puebecent male can produce.

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That is my rant on beards and their connection to politics. There is much more that can be said, and perhaps I will say it at a later time. Until then, grow a beard and realize the miracle of masculinity!