Tonight, while taking a break from writing a paper on an entirely different subject, I was dipping into Sharon Weltman’s book Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education. She recalls how Ruskin did not object to women playing men in the pantomime; not object, that is, ‘until they whip out their cigars’. The problem for Ruskin (as for his contemporaries, it seems) came down not only to those cigar-smoking women but also to the presence of that wonderful gift – a gift which Ruskin himself cultivated over the years – ‘the beard’. The problem with ‘the beard’, as with ‘the cigar’, Weltman suggests, is that it ‘symbolizes masculinity too forcefully for critical comfort. A conventionally feminine pantomine boy poses less of a sexual threat, especially since tights show off shapely female legs, often specifically admired by Victorian theater critics. But women with beards and cigars symbolically suggest morphological possibilities too unsettling and compromise gender boundaries too bluntly to pass unremarked’ (p. 32).
This got me thinking about what other kinds of ‘morphological possibilities’ beards might communicate – like how sheer laziness with the grooming side of things can communicate a lack of consideration of a partner’s longing for smooth chins – and of the ways which such might serve as social and ideological signs; and that led me to a couple of amusing images (from here and here) that I thought worth sharing:
jasongoroncy.com 
Um, I think you need to go old school and shave like a man – use a double-edged safety razor and a brush to build your lather using real shave cream. You’ll get a better shave and save _tons_ of money over the overpriced cartridge razors and chemical goo they call cream. And your wife will actually enjoy kissing you. And you won’t have to worry about how people label you due to your beard – they’ll just label you “Badass” in envy due to your awesome baby bottom-smooth skin. :)
LikeLike
Phone number of the Hawg Preacher…Puh-leez!!
LikeLike
I live and minister in the Pacific NW, so, like good locally roasted coffee after the service, facial hair is basically expected on the (male) ministers. My wife thinks that it does indeed represent a kind of passive-aggression and lack of consideration towards her. But, I’ve got expectations to fill! Sadly, my facial hair falls somewhere b/w a “Spurgeon” from #2 and “Evangelical” from #1. I’m Presbyterian, dang it! I at least need a Neo-Reformed to be respectable…at least to myself.
LikeLike
Sorry I wasted my time on this. I have a full beard, just a little shorter than Dusty Hill’s, maybe the 5th or 6th one I have raised. There is no laziness involved as was ignorantly spouted in the above text. Takes more care to properly maintain a beard than hair.
LikeLike