To Beard or Not To Beard, That Is The Questions… (that nobody asked)

Beards are a hot topic these days. Some find them cool, some find them pretentious… No matter your preference, beards have been around for a LONG time!

According to an article entitled “A Short History of Beard Styles” as posted on History Cooperative (https://historycooperative.org/a-short-history-of-beard-styles/), early humans used beards for warmth and sometimes intimidation. These days, they are often used to show masculinity, royalty, fashion and status.

Now, beards aren’t necessarily ALL good. There’s a widely-argued debate about how much bacteria beards contain and how unsanitary they may be. There was a study performed where a number of beards were swabbed then analyzed by a microbiologist. The results found were said to be as dirty as the average toilet, although they neglected to include clean-shaven men in this study.

A follow-up study was posted in 2014 where 408 men with AND without beards were analyzed and the results were pretty identical. Ironically enough, the results showed that some species of bacteria were actually more likely to appear on a clean-shaven face. The actual WebMD article can be read at https://www.webmd.com/men/news/20160125/is-your-beard-packed-with-germs#1

Throughout my life, I’ve never had the opportunity to grow enough facial hair for it to genuinely be considered a beard. By the time I graduated from high school, most of my jobs required a clean-shaven visage. Recently I have found myself in a position where I no longer needed to shave for work, so I thought I would see what all the fuss is about.

Now, I generally keep my head shaved, so I allowed some growth to complement the beard. After three weeks, do you know what I discovered? Beards are itchy as hell! Every few minutes or so, I feel the compulsion to scratch the living’ hell out of my face. Therefore, today I gave in and decided to shave everything off! But not before snapping shots of various different styles throughout the shaving process.

So there you have it! Although a break from shaving is always welcome, sporting a full face of hair is definitely not my thing. plus, I’m not really a fan of how much grey hair I seem to have in my beard.

So what do you think? Which look is better on me? I’m not sure why the left side of my face looks swollen, but barring that, leave me a comment about which side you think is best.