So, here's the full story. Back in 2004 I decided to grow a beard because I was tired of shaving. I liked the look, but it was uncomfortable; so I was going to shave it off, but my girlfriend (now my wife) liked it and talked me into keeping it. I got used to it, and kept a short beard until starting school at BYU-Idaho, where there is a lame rule against beards. There's no rule against mustaches, so if you want to grow one and look like a pedophile that's just fine, just so long as you don't have a beard. Never mind that Jesus had one, and all of the LDS church presidents from Brigham Young to George Albert Smith, and they're not against church policy... these days apparently they're evil or something. Okay, rant over...
Of course when you shave off a beard, you can't just shave it off... you've got to have some fun with it! So here is my beard as it was when I started school here, and various stages as I shaved it off (these were taken with a really bad camera):
Here's me at the beach in California with a beard a bit shorter than usual. There's a better picture on Facebook, but I can't seem to find it to post here, so here's the next best one.
This is me going for a white trash look, kind of Joe Dirt-ish.
Handlebars!
Cop mustache. Of course I had to grab my Airsoft gun.
Okay, now let's take a short break and watch an educational video about beards (this is worth watching all the way through).
Now back to the beards! Even though while I'm at school I can't technically keep my beard, I decided while I was out on my internship in the oil field I would see what I could do in about five months. So here is the result of neither shaving my beard nor cutting my hair from mid-December to the end of May:
My wife, my beard and me.
After that I carefully cut around the mustache, and curled it as best I could for an old west look. I technically could have kept this and been "legal" at BYU-Idaho, but mustaches get in the way of eating, and I prefer the full beard anyway:
This next one may be offensive to some... I couldn't resist trimming the mustache down to an "Adolf Hitler" look. And if I have a Hitler mustache, of course I have to do a Nazi salute, right? If my hair type was slightly more suited to a Hitler mustache, I would be very tempted to keep it just to make a point at how ridiculous the BYU-Idaho facial hair policy really is, since while even a well-trimmed beard is not allowed, any sort of mustache is okay. Here is my Adolf look:
Next time I can grow one I think I'll try for a year and see what happens. Now that I've shown off mine, here are a few other beards that I find impressive:
Óðinn (Odin, the "ð" is pronounced like the "th" in "then"), king of the Norse gods. He is one of my favorite mythical characters, and this is my favorite drawing of him and his awesome beard. A couple random facts: Odin was sometimes called Woden, and Wednesday is a modern version of "Woden's Day", so the modern pronunciation "Wends-day" is inaccurate and much less cool. Also, Odin is the inspiration of popular fictional characters such as Gandalf and Dumbledore, both of whom also have awesome beards.
My other favorite Norse god is Thor. He has a huge hammer, and a huge beard. I'm not sure which is a more effective weapon. Since I know someone will call me on it, this awesome picture with his intimidating mane is technically a picture of the German version of Thor, called Donner (Thunder). I wish I could call on thunder whenever I wanted it! I also wish I had that beard and hair. And build. And hammer.
Here's the other king of the gods, Zeus. The Greeks called him that, but the Romans called him Jupiter. He could also call lightning. My guess is he knew a lightning bolt was ready if all the hairs of his beard stood on end.
Leonardo DaVinci was a cool guy, with a cool beard. He also had a cool hat, but it has nothing to do with the beard.
Socrates (pronounced "so-crayts", for those of you who have never seen Bill & Ted) was very smart, at least partly because of his beard. He is also one of my favorite philosophers (my very favorite is Jack Handey, who I doesn't have a beard but is very funny).
Charles Darwin, another personal hero of mine, for both his beard and his contribution to science. Yes, I believe in natural selection and evolution, and yes, I'm probably going to Hell, but not for my belief in evolution or for growing a beard between semesters at BYU-Idaho. I'm most likely going to Hell for not liking the Osmonds and 90% of the rest of Mormon music.
Ludwig Boltzmann. Look at the photo. What's not to like? He was a physicist from Austria, so he probably had an awesome accent to go with that superb beard and intense facial expression.
Henri Becquerel. He was french, but I won't hold that against him because he discovered radioactivity and has an extra cool goatee.
Karl Marx. This guy is not a personal hero of mine, but I think our President is a fan. He's in this post because he had an awesome look, made complete by a very impressive beard. Ironically, you can buy his book at your local Barnes & Noble, thanks to capitalism.
Another crazy Marxist. With faces like that behind it, you'd think socialism would have been more successful!
Joseph Wilson Swan invented the incandescent light bulb. This is all the more impressive when you consider what a fire hazard that beard must have been in the lab.
Robert E. Lee would probably have lost his war if not for his beard. Oh, wait, I'm thinking of this next guy:
Abraham Lincoln. One of our greatest Presidents, and also one of the greatest chin curtain models.
I should note that the Union general had a pretty sweet beard, too. Here it is at its best.
Saddam Hussein. This is the kind of beard you get when you hide in a hole for a few months. Saddam and his very awesome beard have assumed room temperature thanks to the U.S. military.
You think I'm done? I've got more! As I say, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. More cool people with beards, or at least people with cool beards:
Jerry Garcia of The Greatful Dead. When I had my beard, I was told I looked like this guy. I think I needed longer hair to go with my beard. Also, I can't play the guitar.
Bob Marley was better known for his dreadlocks than his beard, but he had one. I'm mostly using that as an excuse to post this most awesome photo of one of my favorite musicians. I wish I could pull off dreadlocks.
Johan Strauss. His music is somewhat famous, because of his sideburns.
Billy Gibbons. He's on the other end of the musical spectrum from Strauss, but both his music and his beard are famous.
Chuck Norris. I couldn't resist. This is an example of a really funny-looking beard. Then again, he's a funny-looking man. His beard really bothers me, almost to the point of pogonophobia. But not quite.
Robert Jordan. This guy is a real hero of mine, and not just because he makes a beard look good. His real name was James Rigney. When he served in Vietnam he shot down a rocket-propelled grenade headed for the helicopter he's in. He's best known, though, for writing the Wheel of Time series. This series is very long, but very good, and he died with the final book half finished. Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series from Jordan's notes. Sanderson doesn't have a beard, but he's a good author anyway, and the series should end well.
Orson Welles wrote and directed weird movies. With that beard and extra intense expression he could fit right in with Marx and Trotsky.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had an epic beard. If he hadn't already been dead when he fell off the tower, the wind resistance from the beard would have saved him. Dumbledore is also one of my all-time heroes, and was my favorite character in the Harry Potter series. My favorite Dumbledore quote, from The Chamber of Secrets: "It is our choices [...] that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
Hagrid also had a jealous-making beard.
Gandalf. I can't leave him out, he's another of my favorite fictional characters. My favorite Gandalf quote: "It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
Gimli. He was a short little guy, but had an awesome Viking-style braided beard.
And to wrap this bit up, one of the best beards ever belongs to bass player Leland Sklar:
Okay, so that was probably overkill. What a long post! I had fun doing the research for it, though. I hope it was worth taking the time to read it. Good thing it was mostly pictures!
6 comments:
Wow, Dan. That's a little out of control. Coincidently in the devotional I listened to yesterday, President Lee mentioned beards so if you'd like to know why they are not encouraged, check out "Be Loyal to the Royal Within You" about half way through it.
Thanks for commenting. Please don't take any of this comment personally, since this is really what I'd like to say to everyone at BYU-Idaho, and your comment merely gives me an opportunity to post it here. Maybe I'll make this a short follow-up to the beard post.
I did read the portion of Harold B. Lee's talk, and if it was Church policy that all men must always be clean-shaven, then he put the reasoning better than any other I've heard. The problem is that it is not a requirement to be clean-shaven to receive a temple recommend, or even to be a bishop or stake president, though they are strongly encouraged to be so. There is no Church doctrine or scriptural support for prohibiting beards. Missionaries are required to be clean-shaven, so as a missionary I was; BYU and BYU-Idaho students sign the "Honor Code" saying they will be clean-shaven (unless they want a pedophile-looking mustache, that's apparently fine), so I only grow my beard when I am not taking classes, knowing I am following BYU-Idaho policy and not Church policy.
As for President Lee's commenting on following past prophets in looks, I have a couple problems with this. First, it's not just that all the ancient prophets and all the modern ones from Brigham Young to George Albert Smith had beards, it's that Jesus had a beard. I should say has, since he is still depicted as having one (though he'd still be the Savior without one). So if that's the reason for a beard, are we stuck on ancient prophets, or stuck on Jesus? The other problem I have with it is that not looking like the prophet doesn't mean not following him. We are never told that a true disciple will look like the current prophet. If that were true, God would have made us all identical in looks! No, the true beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Plan of Redemption is that we can all be one with Christ in purpose and yet retain our unique individuality. We are all given different challenges, different strengths and weaknesses, different personalities, different tastes... and different looks. Yet we are all children of God and Jesus is our brother. It is Satan's plan that wants us all to be the same in every way, with no agency and no individuality. It is God's plan that we are free to choose, that we can celebrate our individuality and uniqueness, and still all be disciples of Christ.
As for beards being the "appearance of evil or rebellion", the real reason beards are looked down on now is that our current church leadership grew up in a time when beards were, in large part, a sign of rebellion, of being outside the norm. Hippies had beards to protest the stuffy white businessman look. Before then, beards were perfectly acceptable, but the Church changed its image to reflect what was "respectable" in the current society. Now the current society has changed, and beards are perfectly acceptable, and the Church is simply lagging behind, which is fine. It won't be until the next generation becomes top leadership in the Church that this will change. Until then, just remember that it is BYU-Idaho policy, and not Church policy, that prohibits beards and allows ridiculous mustaches. Thank you for your comment, though, seriously.
Dan, I'm sure you already know this too, but I should also point out that it is not church doctrine that you have to like the Osmond's or other "church"-pop music to stay out of hell.
I totally agree with you about the mustaches at BYU-I. Most guys can't pull it off at ALL. They do look like some creepy weird guy I wouldn't want to meet in a back alleyway. :)
Haha, yeah Jana, I know that. I wanted to say Hilary Weeks, Inside Out, Michael McLean, 259, Lex de Azavedo, or any of a number of other LDS artists that can only sell CDs because of a captive audience of 60,000 or however many missionaries who aren't allowed to listen to anything else. It's not Church doctrine to like LDS music, but (especially as a missionary) you should have seen the reactions I got when I made comments like "sure, Inside Out has great tone and is perfectly in tune, but I can get that from a midi file. They don't sing with any emotion at all", or "Michael McLean has an irritating voice", or "Lex de Azavedo's music is unimaginative and forgettable". You'd think I had no testimony of the gospel, because I was just as critical of LDS music as of non-LDS music. "But, it has such a great message!" My reply is "if the music is irritating, the message doesn't get through." Paul Simon said something similar that I read recently, which is brilliant: "I think about songs that it's not just what the words say but what the melody says and what the sound says. My thinking is that if you don't have the right melody, it really doesn't matter what you have to say, people don't hear it. They only are available to hear when the sound entrances and makes people open to the thought."
And yes, 99.9% of the U.S. population looks like child molesters or cops when they have just a mustache.
Burnsides mustaches FTW!
Ha ha ha...fun read and bravo...you've got yourself quite a pictures!
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