Coon tails vs. beards. "The poor ye have with ye always", said Jesus, "but me ye have not always." Thus well-paid engineers like me often became raconteurs on tour. Managers liked to see those resume tales of ours when they were for educated men as Christian mendicants in the world. However, bearded men sometimes intervene as if they could easily do the work with or without equivalent education or experience, which has led to clashes. Beardless boys may seem to be neophytes and younger men of scant experience to them, whether or not they have a splendid raconteur tale with educational credentials and experience.

Since about 1917 USA males have been largely clean shaven, partly because shaving was mandatory for soldiers in World War I and World War II. Only a mustache could be tolerated at the time. Perhaps this was partly due to massive Italian immigration to the USA in the early years of the century. Christians argued quite a bit for resembling children in order to unplug unduly aggressive instincts and accidents involving bites. Circumcision was also popular among Christians and Jews to make life sweet and reduce the incidence of bites and tragedies. The military was convinced that surrender would be better received if soldiers were clean-shaven after negative experiences in the Civil War.

Elsewhere, Muslims felt that by emphasizing masculine traits they could more easily control their wives, and often preferred bearded man as he was to unmasked man.

On the other hand, Marxist nomenclature focused political class struggle on the difference between "Bourgeoisies" and "Proletarians", often interpreted as irresponsible gay boys in business versus graver, presumably more sober and responsible bearded workers or scientists. Marx and Engels were both bearded types like Alfred Nobel or Galileo, for example. This brand of political philosophy came to power in Russia in 1917, about the time women got the vote, World War I got underway, and American beards vanished away. Without beards, emergency payment could be more easily extracted from the soul of debtor in the form of sexual favors, which was associated under capitalism by carrying one's money in one's hip pocket. Sometimes payment was taken in advance in the form of a spirited blood oath to a liege lord, which sometimes led to visions of "gangsters" and "molls", so that men came forward as guys and dolls, or ladies and gentlemen.

The struggle between science and religion was involved; Catholic types struggled against the crucifixion of the spirit in the "Jaws of Hell", and usually worked to insure that the "Jaws of Hell would not prevail" by tending to forbid man to veil himself with a beard. On the other hand, persecutions over divorce or separation often caused men to disguise themselves, and in that state of mind they could take refuge in a kiss-repelling mask, which was also used in many cases to disguise bad teeth.

In general, revolutions came when men were determined to make progress, and rebellion came when they would rather make belles of themselves, so that revolutions were often associated with revolt against feminization. On the other hand, with the beard off men felt romantic, attractive, and more sexually versatile, if not as swash-buckling.

I note that when his skin quality went way down, psychologist Dr. Timothy Leary grew a beard, which seemed to me to improve his appearance in his declining years. Prior to that time he tended to oppose beards, as a Catholic type typically does. Christianly popular Santa Claus had a white or grey beard that could disguise tragic flaws of old age such as bad teeth, wrinkled skin, or a sagging jaw line with a turkey waggle-bag under the chin.

Perhaps there are clashes due to immigration, which became much easier after the Berlin Wall came down, allowing specimens of more widely differing philosophy and appearance ready access to the USA and its facilities. US men no longer seemed to be taken from Eisenhower's army, as in the past, but from a wider segment of the terrestrial population. More than at any time since the 19th century, US men are like an Explorer's Club.


Pie in the Face: Spirited Opposition.