Whiskerino

Whiskerino: The North American Free Beard Agreement

We are alienated from our own facial hair.

Society tells us that full beards are unacceptable. Businessmen, politicians, bankers, and the like are all clean shaven; all demonstrating the standards that middle class society expects us to maintain.

In other words, these are all examples of "the man" keeping down nascent beards everywhere. These are the people that alienate us from our masculinity, forcing us to shave and adopt public personas which might not reflect our own true inner animal.

But it wasn’t always so.

Beards used to be glorified as signs of virility and manliness. A man that couldn't grow a strong beard was privately ridiculed. Some societies would only allow males to grow beards once they were married, thus denoting a sign of stature and respect in the community. To be shaved was to be emasculated.

In early America, societies with men that could not grow facial hair were demeaned less advanced and civilized. Native Americans and the Chinese were both ostracized, in part because of their hairless men. And now we have come full circle where our own society promotes this emasculated version of maleness. Where to be a man is to be clean-shaved; to be respectable is not to have a beard

Let us return to our roots! Let us return to true masculinity! Let us cry out with one voice:
"I WILL HAVE A BEARD!! I WILL BE A MAN!! I WILL NOT CONFORM TO YOUR RULES!"

A protest movement I continue to be part of - with pride!