Hirsute Pursuit

Man’s relationship with his facial hair has been fickle all through history. We work out the current fashionability quotient of this bit of human foliage.

Men’s fashion has for long been in search of its own Kate Moss, its own ‘go to’ style icon. In Sienna Miller and Sarah Silverman, it found two. Sounds like a suspicious start to a hairy story? Especially one as openly OD’ing on androgen as this?

Well, New York Post did say Sienna Miller’s moustache was the most memorable thing about Mysteries of Pittsburg (the film didn’t release in India, so we’ll have to take their word for it), and then comedian Sarah Silverman showed up at the Emmys with a fake moustache. Besides, starting a story about facial hair with male references has been done threadbare already.

The point, though, is this: male celebrities would have evoked as much consternation as Sienna and Sarah had they turned up with a ‘mo’ (Aussie for moustache, not to be confused with Homer’s friend, the abusive neighbourhood bartender). The beard, however, is an entirely different story. It might not have its Kate Moss, but it certainly has its David Beckham—literally. The footballer who made mohawks, tattoos and the metrosexual look famous (in that sequence) showed up to play for England earlier this month with a scraggly patch beard. Michael Owen and five other British footballers have shunned the razor since.

The hirsute pursuit has come to become the soughties of the noughties, the one male fash­ion trend to define the first decade since the turn of the millennium. This has been the decade that face fuzz crept out of the ghettos and made its way to corporate cubicles and then later, even those evenings at the lounges.

For decades, the beard was the monopoly of artists, filmmakers, photographers and gentle­men with khadi jholas and black frames politely predicting a revolution. The corporate clan of the clean-shaven or moustached always looked at them askance, ready to brush their pinstriped sleeves at the very thought of rubbing against them. It was the disdain reserved for hippies and wayward youth. Parents considered it a sin at par with alcoholism, an affront to a good upbringing.

For the most part, beards are still wild. ‘Me, work nine-to-five, are you nuts?’ is still the unstated message. Except that each follicle on that scraggly patch has had all the rebellion taken out of it by conditioners, moisturisers and assorted other gels that make a beard office-wor­thy. It’s what has allowed beards in boardrooms.

But what made men shun the razor in the first place? Or did they? Was it a conspiracy by manufacturers of all those squishy gels? It could be all of these, or maybe even a spillover from the American Recession Stubble—the shadowy look of Wall Street’s jobless who’re ready to join the country’s ‘poorgeoisie’. Add to this, the influence of famous fuzzes on the chins of Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Joaquin Phoenix, and you know it’s spreading like wild fire.

Closer home, Abhishek Bachchan has been using the beard as a sign of escaping his dad’s greying shadow; it instantly made him the thinking woman’s pin-up, a claim wrested only recently by the stubble-happy Abhay Deol. Then there’s Saif Ali Khan, who seems to consider the razor an idea as sharp as a golf set on a stag hunt. The girl-stealing bad boy must look the part. The good boy he stole the girl from, on the other hand, Shahid Kapur too grew his face fuzz for a movie that made him the thinking woman’s pin-up (the thinking woman sure is greedy).  Hrithik Roshan appears to have vowed not to cut his hair or shave his beard until his labour of love, Kites, doesn’t lift off, to the amusement of his famously fashion conscious wife Sussanne Roshan. On TV, the man’s happy playing Pied Piper, leading hollow mobile tariff promises off a cliff. And Akshay Kumar, who’s not in the running to be the thinking woman’s pin-up, makes the most of a stubble under a pair of aviator glasses and a short mop, complete with cool chappals.

The moustache, though, is having a rougher ride back. It had to sit in economy class while the beard sat in business class with a flute of bubbly. Unlike the beard, it has still not managed to sever its ties with out-and-out machismo. Hair above the upper lip is still too old school, and Nathulal from Amitabh Bachchan’s heyday remains one of the most common references. This, despite Brad Pitt hanging on to his ‘mo’ from Inglourious Basterds, Matt Damon playing an informant with upper-lip fuzz, Jude Law playing the mousta­chiod Dr Watson to Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes with a goatee. With 19th century get-ups—three-piece suits, suspenders and plaid flannel shirts—back on our entertainment screens, perhaps the sepia-tinted old moustache will have its moment of revival.

But here’s the important question: do women like men with whiskers?  Do they? Nobody has a half convincing answer.

On facial hair, there’s plenty of junk research available that tells you there are women who find men with beards hotter than hell and women who abhor them with equal disgust. Researchers in the UK, for instance, have concluded that women prefer men with stubbles for love, mar­riage and horizontal happiness compared to the clean shaven or fully bearded. In fact, clean-shav­en men rank lowest on masculinity, dominance, aggression and social maturity, as perceived.

But then, whose research do you trust? Another survey by an after-shave firm found exactly the reverse—that most men think facial hair makes them more manly but most women think not (kissing a fuzzy face is a turn-off, they say). Back in India, a Nielsen survey for Gillette recently discovered that 61 per cent of Indian women find clean-shaven men sexier than those with a moustache or stubble, and for some strange reason see the clean-shaven man as more honest than his scruffy friends. The company has launched a campaign, ‘Women Against Lazy Stubble’, to get more males shaving, and has even roped in three film actresses for it.

It doesn’t end there. Other research apparently found that women find ‘manly faces’ irresistibly attractive while they are ovulating. This presents an opportunity for a hair-sprouting strategy timed to finesse. But it’s never easy. Ask someone who has tried to grow a beard and ended up with nothing but mutton chops and a goatee, and you’ll know why. It’s not for nothing that razor blades, like the grilles of cars, like to emphasise speed (Mach3 is Gillette’s gift to the cause).

Just what women want or don’t in the hirsute pursuit is a debate that could go on and on, bending time along the way, all thanks to Einstein’s formula. Or is it Mariah Carey’s version that men must now wrap their heads around?

Not necessarily. The Fashionable Indian Male may finally be doing the unthinkable: whatever he wants, with little regard for what he thinks about every fifth second or so. You see, we’re playing the odds. Another survey found only 46 per cent of men clean-shaven, which means 54 per cent are not. Men with fuzzy faces are having more fun with women too. Moreover, it’s a bloody relief—an average man spends six months of his life shaving. It ain’t just about style, ladies, it’s also about time optimisation.

Note: the verdict in Open’s office on facial hair is split half and half, not counting the women

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