Associate Research Fellow Dr Alun Withey is an expert in early modern medical history; in this blog he looks at ‘beard trends’ over the centuries. He has looked at the ways facial hair fashions have changed and the influence this has had on the cosmetics industry.

This post first appeared in Dr Alun Withey’s blog.

This week came the startling revelation that, in the past year, manufacturers of razors and related goods such as shaving foam, have seen a drop in sales of more than £72 million pounds. Market analysts IRI noted that men’s shopping habits were changing and, even though the total market still accounted for 2.2 billion pounds, this was a substantial dent. The cause of this change? Beards.

Express:Rise in popularity of beards cuts sales of shaving products by whopping £72m

Nobody can have failed to notice in recent months the ubiquity of facial hair. Keep your eyes open as you walk down your local high street and you will probably notice a variety of styles, with the ‘Amish’ style seemingly especially popular. It is also interesting how newsworthy beards are. Just look at how often they have appeared as a topic for discussion in recent months. The furore caused by Jeremy Paxman’s beard for example. There were lengthy discussions about celebrity beards at the Baftas in 2013, and now the economic revelations about how much the beard is costing.

This current beard trend is actually very interesting. Over the past 10 years or so beards have been less in vogue. There have been ‘spikes’ of beardedness but these have tended to be of short duration – sometimes only a matter of months.

But this latest outcrop of beards has already lasted the better part of eighteen months. By early summer 2013 the idea of ‘peak beard’ was already being put forward. Quoting the head of a major British barbering company, the Guardian suggested that “beards are more popular than ever…there’s a beard culture – people like talking about their beards, feeling their beards’. Now, in September 2014, passion for beards shows little sign of abating and, in many ways, appears to be going from strength to strength.

It is also interesting to note how economics have begun to intrude into the argument. By anyone’s yardstick £72 million is a large chunk of revenue to be lost to what some people see as an irrelevance – something everyday, quirky…even repulsive. In reality though beards have never been anything less than central to men’s conceptions of themselves. Faces, after all, are the most public part of us. The way we present ourselves to others involves all manner of things, from clothing to cosmetics, but the face is the ultimate index of character. The decision to shave, cover or adorn the face has implications for how we see ourselves and wish to be seen by others. Beards actually matter. Quite a lot. And they always have done.

Over the centuries beard trends tended to last for decades. It’s perfectly possible to identify an historical period by its beard hair. Think of sixteenth-century England. The Tudor ‘Spade beard’ was the order of the day. This was the long, oblong outgrowth of facial topiary sported by kings, princes and elites. Doubtless it made its way a lot further down the social scale too. This type of beard is evident in Holbein’s paintings. Not all Tudor men embraced the beard though. Men like Thomas More was a clean-shaven, perhaps in line with his austere lifestyle. Thomas Cranmer was clean-shaven but, it is said, grew a beard as a symbol of his grief upon the death of Henry and of his break with the past. In this sense the beard was a turning point in his life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the seventeenth century Stuart monarchs preferred small, pointed ‘Van Dyke’ beards. Charles I and Royalist ‘Cavaliers’ often sported this type of facial hair together with flowing locks. Masculinity here was remarkably feminine, with flowing, diaphanous gowns and silk breeches the order of the day. Contrast this with Puritans whogenerally went clean-shaven, believing beards to be a mere bauble. One argument about the origins of the term ‘roundhead’ is that it referred to the shape of the head after the beard and hair had been shaved – a popular parliamentarian style – rather than the shape of helmets.

Victorian men, after 1850, were characterised by their huge bushy beards. After nearly a century of being clean shaven British men were exalted by a range of new

publications with names like Why Shave? which sought to convince them that shaving was little less than a crime against God and nature. The beard was the ultimate symbol of masculinity, and something used as a tool to prove to men that their position of superiority over women was justified. More than this, it was argued, beards had health benefits that simply couldn’t be ignored. They acted as filters to keep germs away from the nose and throat. (See my other post on Victorian beard health).

In the twentieth century, at least up until around 1950, moustaches were much more in vogue. Charlie Chaplin’s ‘toothbrush’ moustache was a cultural icon. Whether or not (as is sometimes suggested) Adolf Hitler grew his because of Chaplin, whose work he admired, is another matter, but the military moustache was a staple of the first decades of the century, from British Tommies to the emblematic RAF pilot’s moustache.

There are many other important aspects to beards. Growing a beard has been an important marker of life stage; the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The first shave is a virtual rite of passage for a teenage boy. On the other hand, in the past, the ‘beardless boy’ has been a symbol of immaturity or even of a lack of sexual prowess.

Indeed the ability to grow a beard has been central to conceptions of masculinity through time. In the early modern period the lack of a beard was viewed in humoural medical terms as the result of a lack of heat in the ‘reins’ and therefore a lack of sexual potency. Men who had a thin, scanty beard were open to suspicion of effeminacy (in the early modern sense literally meaning that they had feminine characteristics). In the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries, so central was the moustache to military regiments that men unable to grow one were expected to wear a false moustache made of goats hair.

The management of facial hair says much about how men view themselves. During the enlightenment the mark of a civilized man was a clean-shaven face. To be bearded signified loss of control over the self and a rugged masculinity that was not elegant or refined. After 1850, however, as I have noted, the fashion was for huge beards, which were seen then as the ultimate symbol of God-given male authority. In this sense it was the emblem of the Victorian man.

After 1900 with the burgeoning market for shaving apparel and cosmetics the situation became even more complex. It is also noteworthy that the pace of change has quickened. Where beard trends used to last decades, since the 80s they have become more fleeting – probably a result of internet-driven celebrity culture.

If all this is true, what does the current vogue for facial hair tell us about men today? What ideal of masculinity are men in 2014 aspiring to? It is difficult to say. Unlike in the past it is harder to track changes in masculine ideal as they are now much more transitory. Nonetheless, one of the constants has been emulation. In the early modern period monarchs provided a bearded (or indeed clean-shaven) ideal. By the Victorian period powerful and fashionable figures, and new types of industrial and military heroes, offered men something to aspire to. Now, with almost unlimited access to the lives of celebrities through the voracious media and internet, the opportunities to find fashion ‘heroes’ to emulate are almost limitless. The question now is how long this trend will last and, perhaps more interesting, will there be a backlash against the beard? History suggests so.

Dr Katie Lunnon is the University of Exeter lead on the newly launch Alzheimer’s Research UK’s South West Research Network Centre, a partnership with Plymouth University.

Here, in a Q and A with the charity, she outlines her work and explains why she is dedicating her career to advancing knowledge on the condition.

Find out more about how the new research partnership will tackle dementia.

Why did you decide to become a dementia researcher?

Since a young age I have always been fascinated by science, and wanted to become an academic scientist. Dementia is an illness very close to my heart; both of my grandmothers sadly died with dementia. The first of my grandmothers, Mary, first developed symptoms of Lewy Body Dementia about 15 years ago, and watching her change from a fun-loving lady, who was the centre of every party, into a shadow of her former self was incredibly hard for all the family. When my other grandmother, Joan, developed vascular dementia in more recent years, we knew what changes to expect, but it was still very hard to see her kind personality change. My hope is that ultimately the work we do every day as dementia researchers will one day mean that other people won’t see their grandparents lost to this devastating illness.

How will the new South West Network change your research and research in the area?

The new South West Centre will significantly enhance research capacity across Devon and Cornwall. The centre will provide a platform for new collaborations within Exeter and Plymouth, as well as allowing us to easily interact with researchers at the other 14 Network centres across the UK. This support from Alzheimer’s Research UK will also foster the next generation of dementia researchers too; postgraduate students will be able to now attend conferences with centre support, which they may not have otherwise been able to do. Finally, given the age demographic within the South West, the establishment of this new network centre will allow researchers to interact and work together with members of the public affected by dementia at our annual meeting. I believe as researchers, seeing and understanding the impact of dementia within the community we live in is incredibly important.

What has been the highlight of your career?

I work in a very new research field called “Dementia Epigenetics”. To put this in context, every cell in your body has the same genetic code contained within its DNA, yet a heart cell behaves and looks very different to a nerve cell for example, as certain genes are switched on and certain genes switched off in different cell types, which is known as “epigenetic” regulation. Epigenetic changes are thought to be one mechanism through which environmental factors, such as diet, exercise and smoking for example, can lead to disease. I am very proud that we recently published the first studies showing that very striking and consistent epigenetic changes occur in Alzheimer’s disease, particularly in regions of the brain that are involved in learning and memory. Off the back of this work I have some funding from a number of Alzheimer’s charities, including Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Association (US) and the Bristol-based Alzheimer’s charity BRACE to explore these changes in more detail.

What do you think needs to be done to increase the number of dementia researchers in the UK (currently outnumbered by cancer researcher 6:1)?

One of the biggest hurdles is the significant imbalance in funding available to dementia researchers, compared to those working in cancer, with twelve-times as much funding for cancer research compared to dementia. With a limited pool of funds available, many excellent research projects often cannot be funded. As an early career researcher, you are often competing with established investigators for the same pot of money. With greater funding from government for dementia research and with more early-career focussed schemes, it would encourage more excellent young researchers to pursue a career in dementia research.

What do you think are the barriers for people pursuing academic careers?

As a researcher, after completing your postgraduate (PhD) studies, you often spend up to ten years as a postdoctoral scientist. These jobs are rarely permanent, and you work on fixed-term contracts ranging from a couple of months to a number of years. After each contract, you often end up moving to a new university, in a different city, and perhaps even a different country. It is hard for scientists to put down roots during this postdoctoral period, and given that the academic career path represents a pyramid, with significantly fewer positions at each level along the pathway, unsurprisingly many excellent scientists leave academia to take up permanent positions outside of the sector before reaching a tenured post.

The gender imbalance in science is often very striking, especially when it comes to the numbers of female professors. What do you think can be done to address this? Do you have any views on getting more girls into STEM subjects in the first place?

The prospect of many years on fixed-term contracts could discourage many women with children from pursuing an academic career. The Athena SWAN charter aims to encourage more women into STEM disciplines. It is incredibly encouraging for research in the South West that Exeter has been awarded a silver institutional award for addressing gender imbalances, and has working groups tasked with maintaining this progress. Within the University, flexible working patterns, and adapted targets to account for career breaks are positive steps for addressing these imbalances for the next generation of scientists.