Protect your beards, lads!

[ozmeath]

KT they were truley magnificent specimens!! I've heard of the facial hair comps but seeing is certainly believing, and I WANT TO BELIEVE.
Caradoc, I did same, and my girl actually cried. I grew it back. Is that a compliment? well I wonder but I've had the full beard for most of a year now. Luckily I've been blessed with a decent coverage. I've heard baldness is inherited from your maternal grandfather, so I can only asume good beards come frome same. Since my maternal grandmother never spoke of my grandfather ( he "died in the war") (thinly disguised euphemism) it's actually a connection that I enjoy with a grandfather I never knew, nor my mother.

I also reckon there's a huge bias against beards.
Long ago Romans, clean shaven as they were, told the story of the minataur. He was half beast(bull) and half man.The head was of the beast, body-man. He was known to have slept with the queen so was banishe'd.He was cursed to roam a labyrinth beneath the city. They sent the bravest and most dispensible to go down there and kill him. This was the representation of a culture no longer associated with "earthly" things. Seen how small the penis is on the statue of David? this is a product of this philosophy.
We have inherited much of the roman ways. Our legal system for one. Much of the solar god worship has tranlsated into the denigration of women. The myths of Perseus slaying the Gorgon, once a symbol of protection on all roman doors, is a good example of this.The feminine is a reprentation (particularly to the romans, and consequently now to most of western culture) of the intuition, mystery and life/death/rebirth process.Supress that and now we fear all manifestations of these mysteries: the old (or death), black, female, psychic or just the unknown. Beards make men their age and "natural", not an attempt at being boyish and women fear this, and some men. It's not to say that all men with beards are real men and those without are not! We know better than that! But this is the basis of the prejudice.
Good thread. Keep the beard alive.
E.

[cormacmacguardhe]

I have had a full beard for most of my adult life, going on to 40 years. The only problem my wife has with my beard is that I like to let it grow as long as it wants to, and she prefers it trimmed. Once I shaved it and my children (small at the time) were frightened of me, they had never seen me without it before. I always say that this is the way God made me, facial hair and all, and who am I to go against God.