Granted, it’s from Gawker, but Hamilton Nolan makes an interesting point:
If you see a man sporting permanent stubble, it is appropriate to assume that he has character flaws that are very grave.
I don’t come to smear anyone. I don’t come to spread any false teachings. I come only to share with the general public a fact which I have discovered. The passage of time and the concomitant accumulation of life experience have only served to strengthen my resolve on the truth of this point.
Men’s facial hair can take three basic forms. You can be clean shaven. That’s fine. You can have stubble, meaning you haven’t shaven for a little while and a little bit of visible hair is growing in. That’s fine. Or you can have well-defined facial hair—beard, mustache, etc. That’s fine.
All of these are fine. By “fine,” I mean that they are not in and of themselves indicative of moral character. Yes, Stalin had a mustache—but so do some nice guys, too. You never know.
There is, however, one form of facial hair that is indicative of an underlying character flaw. That look is permanent stubble. As you can deduce, stubble is naturally a temporary state. It is the state between shaving, and having a beard. If someone has permanent stubble, that means that they are taking steps to groom and cultivate their stubble, keeping it permanently at a short length, so that it never makes the transition to beard, nor to a straightforward clean-shaven face. They are working for that stubble.
They are so thirsty.
Why do we find stubble to be an appealing look? . . .
I’m of a generation to which unshaved stubble—not a beard and definitely not clean-shaven—makes a man look like a bum.
Filed under: Shaving
