Beards and Breasts: A Comparative Look

For over a decade I have sported a beard of one variety or another.  Sometimes it has been embarrassingly short, and other times it has been epically long.  But it has always been there.  Even in those bizarre and empty years when I fully shorn my face, my beard was there just waiting to break through the surface.  For me, my beard is intrinsic to who I am as a person.  I do not choose to have a beard, it just grew there, and I am proud of it.

The majority of the time I have shown my beard, women did not like beards.  Having a nude face was the popular thing and I would hear all kinds of complaints about beards.  They are yucky, smelly, feel scratchy, and so forth.  The general beard hate rhetoric we are all used to hearing by now.  Fortunately, my wife has always been cutting edge and encouraged my beard growth.  I am eternally in her debt.

However, in recent years, numerous events have happened that have changed the course of society.  No-Shave-November, hipsters, and Duck Dynasty, have brought beards to the forefront.  Men began to stop shaving, major shaving companies began advertising their beard grooming products in equal proportion to their razors, and even models, legit models, had beards.  I was walking through the mall and right there before my eyes was a male model for some major company, and he had a freaking beard.

So, one day I am minding my own business at some store, and a woman looks at me and says, “Hey there.” I smile and nod awkwardly.  “Nice beard.” She continued.  Without any shame, she walked right over to me and sliced through my beard with her fingers and began to molest the underneath of my chin.  Now, any bearded man will tell you that the dog scratch is like pure ecstasy, rending the beard wearer incapacitated in both speech and movement, sometimes for only seconds, and for some even minutes.  I was standing there in shock.  After she removed her fingers from my face, she patted the side of my head, and smiled.  She said, “Good job on that beard.” and walked off.

My wife found me standing there in shock, unable to move or speak.  I explained about the violation and she took me by the hand understandingly and bought me a donut.  I felt better.

The thing about me is I have always been one of those guys who doesn’t do well with other male friendships.  I have an alpha personality and so I tend to become dominating.  Plus, girls are more interesting and pretty.  I have spent the majority of my life having lots of lady friends.  If any male spends enough time listening to women, and he doesn’t a have a distaste for his own gender to begin with, he soon will.  Nice guys are the minority, and that is the reality.  Once you have the opportunity to hear the unedited stories of women and how men treat them, you realize that women are objectified all the time.  And I mean that as hyperbolically as possible.  Not some of the time, all of the time.

Recently a friend of mine put up a picture of herself in a strapless dress.  It was a really pretty picture of her.  However, the first series of comments on the picture were all from guys asking if she was naked, or requesting that if she is naked that she take the picture again but revealing more, or really, she could just get naked.  This isn’t an isolated incident either, I see it all the time.  And guys’ appetite for attempting to get women naked is unquenchable it seems.  One of my friends often posts nude pictures of herself online, and so you would think the responses would simply be, “Thank you” but since the guys have no need to beg “pan that camera down!” they then all collectively go into aggressive come-ons, or vulgar explanations of what they would like to do to her body.

I have always heard my female friends complain about the burden of having breasts.  Men feel like they all somehow collectively have ownership of their breasts.  They will stare at them, ask to touch them, beg to touch them, and many will just touch without permission.  Though I was always sympathetic to their plight, it wasn’t until beards became fashionable that I really began to understand the reality of what they go through in a small way.  When I first had the breasts/beard comparison conversation with myself in my head, I thought I was crazy.  Not for talking to myself, but like I was going to have all the ladies collectively beat me up.  However, I ran the idea by my wife, and she gave me affirming words about it.  So then I ran it by a long list of other ladies explaining my master thesis on the subject, and they thought it was cute and stuff.  We bonded.

Recently, it has seemed as if I have become my beard, women talk about it, men talk about it, and they stare.  People often times don’t even see me at all.  I complained to a friend about it and the response I got was basically that a beard is a choice, and if I don’t like being looked at or touched, I should just shave my beard.  I felt an impulse to slap his girly-man face, and then I realized I had heard this rhetoric somewhere before!  It even had a name: victim blaming!

If I don’t want my beard touched, groped, pulled, ogled, or otherwise abused, then I just shouldn’t have it, or should hide it in some way.  But shaving my beard won’t make me not have one,  It will always be there, each day attempting to push through, because I am a man and part of the male body is that you grow a beard.

Often, I have seen this happen to women, if they complain that someone is staring at their breasts or butt, or just them in general, they are told it is because of their clothing or their makeup, and if they don’t like it, they should change themselves.  But I am going to tell you something right now, a beautiful women can wear a burlap bag, no make-up, and refuse to shower for a week, and if she walks outside, there will be some male waiting to verbally or physically assault her with some sort of unwanted sexual advancement.  Women shouldn’t be blamed for simply being a woman.  We should shame those who make unwanted sexual advances, not the other way around.

And the heavens above forbid a woman is proud of her body, and actually does want to display it with abandon!  The judgement is unending.

I fall in that second category.  I freaking love having a beard and I am proud of it.  My beard is beautiful and manly, and I wear it with pride.  I will beard until my dying breath.  But my stunning beard is not an invitation.  Trust me, I am not a subtle sort of man, if I want you all up in my beard, you’ll know it.  I shouldn’t have to be ashamed of my beard or hide it, just to avoid being objectified for it.

Though the beard to breast analogy is not a perfect one and I admit that.  As a mighty burly man, I do not have to live with the fear of being raped, at least not on a practical level.  But it has been an experience that has opened my eyes to some realities that I really couldn’t understand on any level before the advent of the hipster experience (yes, I just said it.  Hipsterism is a movement, a social experiment.  When you send me the hate mail, it’s Nathan with two A’s).

In closing, beards are good, boobies are good, but like all things attached to someone else’s body, you need to be polite, respectful, and remember that no means no.

PS – Both men and women can be subjected to sexual abuse and rape.  If you have been the victim of unwanted sexual touch or rape, there is help.  Call the rape crisis hotline (1-800-656-HOPE) today and begin the process of healing.  You are worth it and deserve it.