Bearded

I mentioned the Roman Emperor Hadrian in a post a few days ago and that reminded me of a theme I've had in my mind for a bit.  Although much lauded now for 'recognising' the limits of Roman rule and avoiding the hubris of his predecessor Trajan (although Hadrian was largely reverting to the Augustan dictum created in the wake of the trauma of the Teutoburger Wald, fixing the boundary of the Roman world at the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates and the Sahara), in his day the second Hispanic emperor was much slated for the gratuitous murders committed at the start and then at the end of his reign.  Nevertheless, he was emperor and that was sufficient inducement for many to ape, in the way that many people today model themselves after their heroes.  Militarised and no-nonsense as Roman society was and distinguishing themselves from the unkempt barbarians, for centuries men of prominence were clean-shaven.  Hadrian, however, set a fashion for beards that lasted a century (with the brief exception of the co-Emperor Geta) and thereafter was on and off in terms of imperial preference.  Arguably, Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, set an even more important trend, eschewing cremation after his death in favour of inhumation (although in terms of procedure we are more familiar with the verb 'to exhume').  That, though, is another tale.
In the news recently, 'hipsters' in New York City are having beard transplants to compensate for their own wispy emanations and Will Self was struck by how many young men in London are hirsute that he felt compelled to write an article about it in The New Statesman.  Well, if the shock of the New can tolerate such garrulous effrontery because of Self's skills, then a little blog should be harmless enough.
Beards and their intermediate stage, stubble, were largely seen as the preserve of backswoodsmen or elderly gentlemen.  In the 1980s, I pontificate, this changed with the likes of George Michael going solo (no longer afraid of not being woken before one went, more a case of 'zip me up before you go-go').  To be rough-cheeked was a sign of danger, of rebellion, of couldn't care less about what the world thinks.  A five o'clock shadow is no a pejorative that applied to shifty sorts.  George Clooney has gone from modelling a burnt field to full whiskery gloriousness in some of his roles.
For a long time, I was warily respectful of beards, remembering a cartoon in New Scientist where men of the laboratory nurtured birds and nests in their face-forest, accompanying an article that also mentioned the food that became lodged, serving as a motel in much the same way that urban animal scavengers raid dumpsters.  In my more impetuous, salad days, I believed anyone who cultivated a beard under the age of 30 was pretentious.  I say impetuous not necessarily as such of the opinion, as from my careless conversation in expressing it to a friend who had cultivated the follicles on the lower half of his head.  I wasn't 'bearding' him as it were, rather he was so familiar that his facial fur did not enter into the equation of my topic.  Needless to say, he was not pleased or, should I say, he bristled (I also had cause to inadvertently impugn his support of Tottenham Hotspur, telling him I had just met at a party a Spurs fan who was not, here's the word again, pretentious, forgetting myself that he was of such a footballing persuasion).  Now we are both over 30 (born 20 days apart), I have no problem with him looking like Captain Haddock.
Many young men in my office are also following the pattern for unshaven chops to the extent that their necks are completely obscured.  I myself have a laziness when it comes to bristles sprouting from my pores.  Altaa likes it, thinks it 'wild' (a controlled wild, with the bounds of civilisation, hence a fictional wild, like a rollercoaster inducing thrills without anyone ever being in danger, in 99.99% of cases), accentuated by the fact that most Mongolian men cannot produce such excessive growth.  Until the age of 30 though, I was careful to slice it away before it became too developed.  Now I can leave it five days before I have at it with a razor, restarting the Sisyphian struggle.  When younger, my face had a habit of leaving the occasional miniature crop circles where my pores stubbornly eschewed stubble.  Vigour sapped, now my face lets through the white 'dead' hairs, giving an extra imperative to shave more regularly, certainly before it get beyond sandpaper brutality.  Whether this hairy habit will last a century as it did from AD 117 to AD 218 is moot as fashion is so fissiparous that one could wake up one day to have Will Self's epiphany in reverse and lament where have all the beards gone.