Welcome to the age of the wino fashion-plate

Many years ago I was bearded. I had quite a nice beard, and it adorned my face for about five years. It was a well-maintained beard – not one of those ZZ Top or hippie accoutrements with straggly stray hairs stuck out all over the place, or egg yolk crust contained therein – yuck!

I have an old photo of myself en profile, wearing a white, embroidered dashiki kind of thing, and my hair is to my shoulders, and I daresay I almost look a bit Christ-like – no blasphemy intended. The appearance caused difficulties, however, because people kept asking me to perform miracles and (especially at parties) wanting me to turn water into wine.

Seriously, though, I finally got rid of my beard. The secondary reason was that I never found it entirely comfortable. I like having my cheek on a cold pillow or a warm wife at night. The primary reason was, however, I found the beard to be much more difficult to maintain than taking a simple shave in the morning. So, I have been clean-shaven ever since, and that is for many years.

So, in the context of masculine hirsuteness, here is something I don’t get. What’s with the attraction, especially in young males, with the ‘bum’ look? How was it ever deemed esthetically appealing for a dude to look like a junkie or street wino from the neck up? I pick up an Esquire mag and check out a fashion spread. Here are guys wearing beautiful suits and shirts that bear pricetags well beyond my reach – yet above those pricey collars they look like vagrants. They look like Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath as the Joad family wended its way across Death Valley.

To whom does this look appeal? My mother used to slap my father on the back of the head if he didn’t shave on a Saturday, and never bought the excuse, “But it’s the weekend!” “No reason to look like a derelict,” she’d reply.

My thought is, either shave (daily) or grow a beard, but get rid of the half-way there look. The look suggests you are in some way uncommitted, or indecisive. Do I want a beard? Do I want to be clean-shaven? I know – I’ll do a bit of both.

For example, Lost is coming off hiatus this week. One of the lead characters is ‘Jack’, the neurotic doctor who is more obsessed about getting into adorable ‘Kate’s pants than he is about curing the sick. But, my point is Jack is not a bad looking chap, but he also looks like a refugee from the bad part of town. You might think it’s because he’s trapped on this metaphorical desert island. That is not so, however, because in flashbacks he is still stubbly. Would you go to a doctor who looked like that? I wouldn’t. He looks unclean.

I’ll make an exception for Josh Holloway, who plays ‘Sawyer’ (and who succeeds in separating delectable Kate from her undies). He may be hirsute as well, but he is cool, and cool always overrides any issues of appearance.

I also have a question of logic about Jack’s dishabille, and that is how does he keep his scruffy whiskers at exactly the same length month after month. By this point he, and all the other males, should be bearded like Shakespeare’s ‘Pard.”

Anyway, that is my rant for this morning. I would like to see males in my town and throughout the western world looking like they actually care about their appearances. That may make me appear superficial, but at least I’m clean-shaven when I go about being superficial.