Do you know how to trim your whiskers properly? With beards and moustaches more popular than ever, this delightful little book sets out to answer this pressing question. And if a trim is not required, then it will show you how to wax, polish and maintain your face furniture so that it is always in tip-top condition. Alongside these manly grooming tips is a guide to famous facial-hair aficionados, from Karl Marx to Des Lynam; a breakdown of styles; and a perambulation through hirsute history, including an explanation of why the beard was considered sacred by the ancient Greeks and slovenly by ancient Romans. So whether it's the Handlebar or the Chevron; the Goatee or the Spade – peruse this book for hints and tips of how to handle your facial fuzz.
Do you know how to trim your whiskers properly? With beards and moustaches more popular than ever, this delightful little book sets out to answer this pressing question. And if a trim is not required, then it will show you how to wax, polish and maintain your face furniture so that it is always in tip-top condition. Alongside these manly grooming tips is a guide to famous facial-hair aficionados, from Karl Marx to Des Lynam; a breakdown of styles; and a perambulation through hirsute history, including an explanation of why the beard was considered sacred by the ancient Greeks and slovenly by ancient Romans. So whether it's the Handlebar or the Chevron; the Goatee or the Spade – peruse this book for hints and tips of how to handle your facial fuzz.
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Do you know how to trim your whiskers properly? With beards and moustaches more popular than ever, this delightful little book sets out to answer this pressing question. And if a trim is not required, then it will show you how to wax, polish and maintain your face furniture so that it is always in tip-top condition. Alongside these manly grooming tips is a guide to famous facial-hair aficionados, from Karl Marx to Des Lynam; a breakdown of styles; and a perambulation through hirsute history, including an explanation of why the beard was considered sacred by the ancient Greeks and slovenly by ancient Romans. So whether it's the Handlebar or the Chevron; the Goatee or the Spade – peruse this book for hints and tips of how to handle your facial fuzz.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750952385 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2011 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 104 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Gentleman's Guide to Beard and Moustache Management
By Chris Martin
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Chris MartinAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5238-5
CHAPTER 1
A Short History of Facial Hair
For As long as man has grown facial hair, the beard has been with us. Join us now as we take a journey through the history of pogonotrophy throughout the ages.
PREHISTORIC & NEOLITHIC BEARD MAN
One likes to think that when our earliest ancestors crawled from the primordial ooze, they wore a Goatee at the very least. Our earliest records of the state of men's faces probably come from cave paintings. Unfortunately, the representations of human beings found in these ancient images are usually symbolic, so we don't really know if prehistoric man wore a beard or not. But as these early artists took great care to describe every element of the world around them and there are no drawings of stone razors, mud shaving foam or twig hair tongs, it seems safe to assume that early man was bearded.
Around 300 BC man started shaving with flint. Indeed, archaeologists have found evidence of men using a variety of unpleasant tools to remove their whiskers, including clam shells and sharks' teeth. This must have been extremely tricky and frankly quite painful. Nonetheless, a formal portrait from ancient Iran from around this time shows a man with a magnificent moustache riding a horse while – no doubt – wincing from screaming razor burn.
ANCIENT & CLASSICAL WORLD
In the early classical civilisations we first see the deliberate styling of a man's facial hair, from an unruly and unchecked growth hacked at with sharpened stones, to a refined symbol of manhood, wisdom and prestige.
In the Homeric epics of ancient Greece beards were celebrated and portrayed as a badge of virility. When asking for royal favour, it became a form of entreaty to touch the beard of your king. A smooth face was condemned as a sign of effeminacy to the point where the terrifying macho Spartans took to punishing those they considered to be cowards by shaving off their beards.
The ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, were a bit on the fey side and didn't much care for face fuzz. Copper and gold razors used by the pharaohs have been unearthed in Egyptian tombs. While it may have been fashionable to be soft-cheeked, to give the Egyptians their effeminate due they did at least try to enhance the hair they did have on their chins – usually with henna-based dyes or plaits laced with gold thread to show their ranking in society. Ultimately, the only beards that were really valued by the Egyptians were fake ones, and queens, kings and sometimes even sacred cows took to wearing ornate chin covers fashioned from precious metals, known as postiches.
Luckily the two next great civilisations to come along – in Mesopotamia and Persia – were far more in tune with their bearded selves. Their upper classes grew their beards long and took great pains to style them, using special oils and heated tongs to create long patterned tresses and decorative ringlets.
ANCIENT MACEDONIA
Such unchecked growth in the popularity of beards could not continue, and by the time of Alexander the Great it would all go wrong. Legend has it that the Macedonian custom of shaving the face smooth was introduced when Alexander was preparing to fight against the impressively bearded Persians. When one of his officers brought him word that the army was ready for battle, Alexander promptly decreed that all his soldiers be shaved. It has been argued that he feared their beards could be grabbed in combat by their enemies; however, it seems more likely that Alexander – who was just 19 when he became King of Macedonia – probably couldn't grow a beard himself and didn't want to be embarrassed by his hirsute comrades.
Beard-wearers were now faced with a double jeopardy. The first piece of bad news was that this fit of teenage pique was taken seriously by subsequent Macedonian kings and the practice of shaving spread throughout their empire. The second piece of bad news was that the Macedonian empire consisted of the whole known world. They even passed laws against growing a beard in the great metropolises of Rhodes and Byzantium. The only excluded group was the philosophers, who retained their beards as a badge of their profession – proving without doubt that the stroking of a beard is essential for truly deep thought.
ROME
The Roman Empire would have a laudably hairy start and throughout the period of the Kings of Rome the Romans did not shave. But Pliny tells us that around 299 BC a man named Ticinius brought a barber to Rome, who promptly shaved one of its leading citizens, Scipio Africanus. Africanus must have been something of a trendsetter because the practice seems to have caught on very quickly. After that point a long beard was considered a mark of slovenliness and, oddly enough, foreign tourists.
Soon almost all Roman men were clean-shaven. Traditionally, a Roman would only let his hair and beard grow during mourning. This is the exact opposite to their old rivals, the Greeks, who used to cut off their hair and shave their beards as a display of grief. The association with smelly Greek tourists meant that a smooth face became the sign of being a Roman citizen. In time they even came to consider a bearded man to be 'virtuous and simple'. This sounds good, but in Roman terms it meant you were a pleb.
The need for a close shave meant that barbers' shops became extremely popular in ancient Rome – even the term 'barber' comes from the Latin 'barba', meaning beard. This allowed men who were not wealthy enough to own slaves to pop in for a clean shave on their way to the Forum.
In the latter days of the Roman Republic, decadent and rebellious youth did begin experimenting with facial hair again. Usually they sported partial beards to create an ornamental display. These show beards predictably became a fad in thrill-hungry Rome and prepubescent boys took to oiling their chins in the hope of forcing premature growth.
The first shave a boy took was regarded as the beginning of manhood, and the day on which this took place was celebrated with the hair that was cut off being consecrated to the gods. The emperor and infamous mentalist Nero put his first trim into a golden box set with pearls and dedicated it to Jupiter. Never a great example to anyone, Nero went on to grow one of history's most infamous neck beards and burn Rome to the ground. Historians are unclear whether the two activities were connected.
THE RISE OF THE BARBARIANS
Despite the dominance of the Roman Empire across the world, many other great nations remained unaffected by its vacillations of fashion. In ancient India it has always been no holds barred on the chin rug front. The Indians saw the beard as a symbol of dignity and of wisdom so they let it all hang out – wild and wonderful growths are still worn by sadhus and holy men there today. Closer to home in Europe, the Celts grew their hair long and twined it with moustaches that were even longer. One group of Celtic tribes called the Lombards ('Longobards' or 'Langbärte', meaning – you guessed it – long beards) even derived their fame from the great length of their beards.
Meanwhile in the east, the dark forces of the Hunnic Empire were rising. These wild horsemen would sweep across Europe killing everyone in their path as the wind blew through their long, unruly hair.
MIDDLE AGES
The end of the ancient world brought back long hair but introduced a decline in the care of beards, as the newly arriving barbarians valued the ability to kill things far more than personal grooming. Fortunately by the Middle Ages, this devil-may-care combination of hair growth and homicidal skill had been formalised and a proud beard became a symbol of a knight's honour. These new codes of chivalry meant that even so much as touching a knight's beard was a serious offence that could only be sorted out with a bloody duel to the death.
As time passed, Europe saw a return of the preference for shaven faces and smaller beard and moustache combinations. Barbers' shops sprung up in medieval cities, but these new high-street entrepreneurs had a slightly different twist on the art of hairdressing than their scissor -wielding Roman predecessors. Medieval barbers also doubled up as surgeons. The traditional red and white barber's pole hung outside the barber's shop was created to symbolise the blood that was associated with such have-a-go surgeries and the bandages that would be required to dress wounds. Basically, the man who shaved you was more likely to pull out your teeth than ask you if you needed something for the weekend. Mercifully this practice ended in the mid-1700s, when surgeons began to focus their skills on medicine and stopped shaving people for cash on the side.
THE RENAISSANCE
In the fifteenth century, European men were largely clean-shaven, but by the sixteenth century beards were back and about to play a key part in a brand new religious war. There were a wide variety of face-dos around at the time, for example the Spanish Spade beard, the English Square-cut beard, the Forked beard and the Stiletto beard (presumably Italian). These beards reflected the foppish and frivolous attitudes of the time. In 1587 such beards entered common speech when – after sending ships to Cadiz, killing hundreds and destroying thirty-seven naval and merchant ships – the lovable licensed pirate Francis Drake claimed that he had singed the King of Spain's beard. What fun!
However, there was nothing fun about the Reformation. It would change the political and religious landscape of the time and reawaken an interest in serious beard growth across Europe. The big beard of a reformer came as a reaction to the Catholic clergymen of the time, who were usually clean-shaven to indicate their celibacy. When a man decided to throw his hat in with the rebellious doctrines of the Protestant Reformation, he would often signal this by allowing his beard to grow. The longer the beard, the more striking the statement – you only need to check out the portraits of John Knox and Thomas Cranmer from the time to see these monster mouth mats in action.
This trend was continued throughout the Catholic Queen Mary's reign, despite it being a time of reaction against Protestant reform, but when Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne she put her foot down. She hated beards and established a tax on them.
By the early seventeenth century beards were once again out of fashion in urban circles of western Europe – and the newly discovered Americas – to such an extent that when Peter the Great of Russia wanted to bring Russian society more in line with the sophisticated west, he ordered men to shave off their beards. He even went so far as to mimic Elizabeth I and levy a tax on beards in 1705. The army, however, remained an exception, and the great popularity of Hussar and Grenadier moustaches meant that soldiers unable to produce this manly decoration were found trying to draw them on with coal.
VICTORIAN ERA
The popularity of the beards continued to decline in western society, and by the early eighteenth century most men – particularly amongst the nobility and upper classes – went clean-shaven. There was, however, a dramatic shift in the beard's popularity during the 1850s, when beards were adopted by many kings and emperors, such as Alexander III of Russia, Napoleon III of France and Frederick III of Germany. This royal trend was picked up by leading political and cultural figures, such as Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Verdi. Once again the beard became linked with notions of masculinity and male courage.
Their resulting popularity contributed to some breathtakingly styled ventures in sideburns, beards and moustaches to rival the extraordinary architecture and engineering of the day. It also created the template for the stereotypical Victorian male – a monstrous figure clothed in heavy tweed whose gravitas was indicated by an imposing beard.
THE MODERN AGE
By the early twentieth century the popularity of beards had begun to wane once again, this time to be replaced by a new enthusiasm for moustaches driven by the rebellious young men of the time. The 1920s and 1930s saw an upsurge in racial political and philosophical thought and with it came challenging moustaches and Goatees worn by the likes of Marcel Proust, Albert Einstein, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Adolf Hitler.
But across the pond, in newly industrialised, post-war America, there were rumblings that would forever change man's relationship with his face fuzz. The development of new shaving technologies – in particular the safety razor and shaving foam in a pressurised tin – meant that for the first time men could enjoy a pain-free shave at home that matched the closeness of a trip to the barber's shop. These advances were further enforced by the development of new advertising and marketing techniques. Indeed, the Gillette Safety Razor Company was one of the first clients of the early advertising titans of Madison Avenue. Soon, beards and moustaches were vanishing across the western world in favour of clean-shaven faces and business-like crew cuts.
Facial hair was reintroduced to mainstream society by the counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. The jazz-loving 'beatniks' in the 1950s welcomed back Pencil moustaches, Goatees and Soul Patches, while the anything-goes hippie movement of the mid-1960s completed the revival with everything from full Spade beards to wild and wonderful moustaches. This time it was rock musicians who led the way, with The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and many other bands beginning with 'B', all wearing facial hair.
From the 1980s onwards, the fashion in beards has generally tended towards Goatees, Van Dykes, closely cropped full beards and stubble. In present-day western cultures, the moustache remains sadly quite rare, while in the Middle East and India they are almost compulsory. One thing is noticeable, however: men are no longer tied to one style of facial hair and it has never been easier to chop and change between style to suit your needs, age or mood.
CHAPTER 2A Guide to Beard & Moustache Styles
The decision to grow a beard or moustache is about a lot more than letting yourself go for a few days. It is a living connection with the alpha male gene pool. A hearty beard is the hairy totem of a Neanderthal god and makes its wearer a true lion amongst his fellow men.
While the beard is the mark of man writ large on the cave wall, its companion the moustache is the signature of gent embossed on the heavy business card of his own legend. The world is your oyster when you come to grow a moustache. Throughout history a myriad of different styles have come in and out of fashion, yet each one has symbolised a time and an attitude which can be as relevant today as it was then.
A beard or a moustache is neither an alien invader nor a parasitical companion; it's an outward expression of the inner you, so it is important that once you have made the decision to step back through time and commune with the ancestors, your choice of facial topiary suits both your face and your personality.
MOUSTACHE STYLES
A moustache is a facial statement that reeks of style, individuality and, in some unfortunate cases, soup. When you grow a moustache you're not just covering a prominent overbite or bluffing the fact that you can't afford razor blades, you are making a very public statement about the kind of man you are. As such, it pays to choose wisely.
Below is our guide to the common moustache styles and their hidden meanings.
LEVEL: Amateur Hour
The Chevron
Like hamburgers, muscle cars and pneumatic cheerleaders drunk on Budweiser, the Chevron is an all-American classic. Grown long to cover the top border of the upper lip, this no-nonsense face wedge is worn thick and wide. The perfect compliment to a medallion-adorned barrel chest and diver's watch the size of a dustbin lid, the Chevron doesn't take bullshit from anyone. The Chevron-wearer tells it as he sees it and, yes, he is the kind of man who knows how to handle a woman – which is just like a five iron.
The Pencil
Sometimes known as the moth brow, the Pencil is worn narrow and straight and is styled as if drawn on by a pencil. Closely clipped, it creates a mere accent on the upper lip, leaving a scandalously wide shaven gap between the nose and moustache. Widely recognised as the moustache of choice for drug lords, effeminate assassins and ageing tango instructors claiming Jobseeker's Allowance, the Pencil spells out that the wearer has murderous intent – even if it's only on the dance floor.
The Walrus
Delivering exactly what it says on the tin, the Walrus is characterised by a thick, bushy growth of long whiskers that droop over the mouth to give the wearer the appearance of a docile walrus. Once thought to promote good health by shielding the mouth from germs and particles, this monstrous crumb-catcher has proved remarkably popular with philosophers, empire-builders and statesmen over the years – proving once and for all that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing on a massive scale. The Walrus-wearer has an uncontrollable appetite for life to match his uncontrollable appetite for facial hair, which is why you'll find Walrus moustaches littering the faces of great men in history, from Mark Twain to Count Otto Von Bismark.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Gentleman's Guide to Beard and Moustache Management by Chris Martin. Copyright © 2013 Chris Martin. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Introduction,
A Short History of Facial Hair,
A Guide to Beard & Moustache Styles,
Moustache Styles,
Beard Styles,
The World Beard & Moustache Championships,
When Facial Hair Goes Wrong,
Alternatives to the Beard,
The Worst Facial Hair Ever,
The Hall of Fame,
Great Moustache Wearers Through History,
Great Bearded Men Through History,
Grooming the Facial Fuzz,
Essential Equipment,
Washing & Trimming Beards & Moustaches,
Waxing & Styling,
Get a Grip: Three Lost Grooming Treasures,
The World of Beards & Moustaches,
Quotes about Beards & Moustaches,
Beard & Moustache Records,
Beards & Moustaches in Nature,
Copyright,