May 15, 2014 • 40 mins
You've probably been wondering, "Is there any data about facial hair, particularly gloriously groomed beards?" Why, yes, there is. Find out how facial hair transforms perception and whether or not it could help blunt a few blows in a bar fight, all in this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to Glow your Mind from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to bow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
we both have full beards today. But but but I
fear that we may have gone too far. Yeah, it's possible.
I mean, we got all excited about growing them out,
(00:24):
at least I did, worked online for months only to
find out that quote scientists warn we've hit peak beard.
The more people grow facial hair, the less attractive it is.
What are you talking about? In a very straightforward way,
this would seem to just to be a matter of
beards are unique and cool until everyone has them, and
then a clean shaven face is unique and weird. Well,
(00:46):
let's just yeah, a clean shaven face is weird kind
of right. Anyway, this topic brought up beards again with us,
and we thought, hey, let's go ahead and replay our
episode on beard, the merits of them, the demerits of them,
and why they may be important enough this fight. Yeah,
because we have a lot of bearded individuals out there,
you might be thinking about shaving that beard. I think
(01:10):
twice about it, and listening to this episode Julie named
for me your favorite beards, and then the world out
there of bearded faces, which which one's called you the most?
You mean the wearer of it? No, I'm just saying
like beards that you I mean. I guess it's hard
to have you separate the wearer from the beard. How
(01:31):
do you separate the beard from the bearded? I don't know.
I'm staring at our producer right now, Noel, who has
a wonderful beard? Does? It's a good beard, It's a
friendly beard. It's it's a coron. That was an awful
pronunciation of very current. Um, it's a good it's a
solid beard. But you know, one of my favorite beards
(01:51):
of all time, all pretty gray. Yes, this is the
biogere intologence. Yes, he has a straight, straight up wizard beard,
a long beer that you look at it and you're like,
this is a man with with wisdom. This is a
man um of experience that I can trust to help
me live forever. Yeah, And you know what I kind
of had wondered. You know, I think I made a
comment before in another episode when we were discussing some
(02:14):
of his ideas about living forever. Um. You know, there
was this idea of, well, if he shaved his beard,
would he look twenty years old or would he look
a hundred and twenty. I don't know. There's that much
facial hair going on. Yeah, and off the top of
my head, I don't know how old he is either,
so you can't even factor that into it. No, But
after sort of looking at some of this research, I
(02:35):
have a new view of Opportugray that I will discuss
later on in the podcast because I don't want to
give anything away. Okay, um, it's interesting you sent this
um this infographic around the trustworthiness of beards that ranks
all these varying degrees of beards from from the very
trustworthy to the disastrous, and there's there's like a dozen
(02:56):
of them on here, and uh, on the far end
of the very trustworthy s we have like to the
two beards that are closest to the end. One basically
looks like Noel's beard and the other one looks like
Aubrey do Gray's beard. If you go on the other
end of the spectrum, then you have to encounter a
hitler mustache and a pencil thin mustache. Say the pencil
(03:18):
fan always says Villain to me or John Water. I
don't think of John Waters as a villain. Well, I
think a benevolent villain. I think he would would term
himself at you know, possibly possibly he's a provocateur. But
also funny on this particular infographic is that the the
Hitler mustache and the John Waters mustache right below that
(03:38):
is a full werewolf. So I'm glad that hyperdricosis made
the list. Yeah. Um, and I'll tell you one beard.
There's so many great beards out there, um, so many
great beards from science history alone, which I'm hoping we'll
do a little gallery to go with this online. Now
I have to mention before we launch into beards and
we really look at the science find them, um, that
(04:01):
I feel like, in part we should owe this episode
to your own facial hair. Yes, oh, the sideburns. Burns,
You've got nice chops there. Yeah, well let's they go
from the sideburn level to the chocolate which I was
I was looking at where those rank on this particular
trustworthiness of beards, and certainly the chops that the chops
(04:23):
are a little more in the neutral zone, whereas the
sideburns are are a little more towards the trustworthy side.
So if I can actually go buy anything that this
infograph has to say about the matter. Well, just as
a side note, you have a great photo gallery sideburns
of science, sideburns of science. Yeah, I'm thinking we'll do
one about beards as well to go with this episode.
(04:45):
One beard that I that I am seeing a lot
of recently because I'm watching um the current season of
Madman is the actor who plays the character stand j R.
Ferguson has this huge beard. I don't know if you're
up to that point. Yeah, and so illustrator, the illustrator
massive beard, and uh I was looking up I found
an interview with him and he says that when he
(05:06):
after he came in, um, you know, ready to do
the show, grew out this beard that they wanted him
to have for this season. He said it was actually
a bit too much. It was like a cross between
Jeremiah Johnson and Tom hankson Castaway, and they actually had
to trim it down to its to the state that
you see it in on that So so virile was
his beard. Yeah, I had to tame it back. You
(05:28):
know what's interesting about that, and we'll get into this,
is that as a character. He he usually says some
pretty loudish things, like loudish like um, you know, he
says some inappropriate things, sexually charged, now clean shaven, super creepy.
But the beard I actually think softened that a bit. Yeah,
I think you're right. Yeah, because yeah, he's he's a
(05:50):
far more lovable character with the beard. Well, also you
see a little bit more character development of him my
fields the show progresses, so you know him a little
better by the time as the beard. But yeah, like
earlier on you're like, who is this this guy's guy's
kind of awful, and now you're like, this is one
of the better gentlemen in the office. Yeah, you're right,
this guy's got personality. Yeah, and he I guess it's
the only I can't think of any of other characters
(06:11):
that current that are currently on the show that have
a beard. So no, but there is a lot of
facial hair going on for sure. No, let's look back
here in the time machine ancient Greece, where the beard
was big, right, it was a sign of virility, and
it was an advertisement that you were not a Unich. Yes,
because presumably or this was the thought actually that if
(06:33):
you were a Unich you wouldn't have the ability, would
not have the hormones to produce that the massive glorious
beards on your wisdom. And certainly in olden days, various
societies this was there were enough Unix around that this
was actually something to think about. There were actually a
fair number of units playing varying roles in society, sometimes
very important roles. Um. Which reminds me we do need
(06:56):
to do an episode on Unix. Was that because the
history of Unix and some of the science of Unix
is is really, um, really fascinating. Um. But yeah, yeah,
go back to the Greeks. The Greeks loved them, at
least until Alexander the Great came along and he said, actually,
we don't need beards. We need to shave these beards
off if we're going into combat, because somebody could grab
(07:16):
me by my beard and start slicing at my face exactly.
And I imagine that at some point too, if you
are in a situation where you don't have access to
clean water and so want and so forth, that that
little beard could get quite contested. Yeah. And certainly we've
been shaving beards for a while. Um. I mean we
(07:38):
well before we were shaving beards presumably we're you know,
there were situations where one would pluck out the facial hair,
especially if you if you weren't stay capable of growing
like a full beard anyway, maybe you just decided to
go clean cut on it and you would be you
would have to to plug at the hairs or find
out some of their method. But we have found archaeological
evidence dating back to one thousand BC of endo edual
(08:00):
shaving their beards clearly with some sort of flint instruments,
so you know, the first razors if you will. Indeed, um,
it should not go unnoted that bearded ladies make appearances
throughout history, right um. I wanted to point out that
some of this is due to something called hair sudism,
which is a variant of hypertrocosis also known as the
(08:21):
werewolf syndrome, when there's an abnormal amount of hair growth
on the body. Uh, though with hair sudism, it's usually
due to increased levels of androgens or male hormones. Now,
bearded ladies would show up in sideshow acts in the circus, right,
or freak shows as they were called. Most of the time,
those weren't actually ladies. They were just dudes to put
(08:43):
on a little with beards that put on a little
makeup and address. Yeah, but that's been going on since
Shakespeare's time, right, no ladies on the stage. Um. I
also want to point out the cultural significance of the
term beard, which is also slang for um, A person
who is a cover for a gay friend or a partner. Yes,
and apparently sometimes too, it would be a cover for
(09:06):
somebody who's having an affair in a mixed gender situation
as well. Yeah. Yeah, although I would say that the
actually i've heard it more used as a way to
sort of negate someone's homosexuality in public. Feel like that's
the usage that sticks with us more these days. Yeah,
it's sort of this idea that you could give this
(09:26):
heteronorm appearance of a couple knowing that one of them
was gay the other was not. Um, But I do
I think it's fascinating because the term, again, when you're
talking about heteronorms, you talk about masculinity. And in the
instance where there is a male who is gay who
is with a woman, she the beard gives him masculinity.
(09:48):
I'm not saying that she gives him real masculinity. I'm
saying that from society's perspective, she's imbuing him with this power.
But it always makes me anytime or the term beard
used in those scenarios, it makes me think of money.
Python's the Life of Brian where there's a scene where
someone someone's going to be stoned to death and punishment
(10:10):
for some sort of infraction, and and only the men
are allowed to come and witness this, but only the
women are really interested in attending it. So they're all
buying these fake beards from a vendor outside the stoning area,
and uh, and they're all, you know, there to participate.
I love that bit because on so many different levels,
(10:31):
I think it's a commentary and society is. It's some
wonderful commentary thrown in to what is still a very
silly sketch. But that's a Python for you. All right, Well,
let's talk a bit about the evolution of the beard
and this sort of powers I said that is imbued
by this mass official hair. So needless to say, the
beard grows on the face. And it's really interesting when
(10:54):
you start thinking about the face. What is the human face? Right?
Because certainly it is a bunch of skull meat. It
is uh, it's a place where we keep our eyes,
in our nose, in our mouth. So it's it's kind
of this uh, frontloaded sensory array that allows us to
take in the sense world around us. But then it
is also something a bit more too, It is also
(11:17):
a communications array. Now, all this is complicated by the
fact that, of course we end up thinking of our
face as ourselves, right, like I am my face to
a certain extent, or at least my face is an
expression of who I am. Or you're saying that some
people allow how they look to color their personality. Well,
people end up augmenting their face and to varying degrees.
And the varying degrees may include, um, growing a beard,
(11:38):
it may mean wearing makeup. It may mean piercings, it
may mean tattoos, it may mean cosmetic surgery. All of
these things are done because we see the faces an
expression of who we are. But then the but then
it's also tied in with the fact that the faces
a means of communicating. Um. Obviously, we make expressions. There
seven primary expressions and then various um micro expressions that
(12:03):
appear for just you know, fractions of a second, and
some of the best. Yeah, that allow you to get
gain some insight into what's going on, what emotions are
we feeling, what emotions are recovering. And there's actually a
two thousand and eight check study that found that facial
expressions alone can speak a thousand words. So we get
into this idea of the face is not just you
(12:25):
know who we are, but but a means of communicating
with other members of our society. And uh. And so
there was another study that I found that plays into this,
and this is a two thousand twelve study from a
team of U. C L a biologist, and they started
thinking about the evolution of the human face and the
evolution of the primate face and and how does facial
diversity um factor into all of this. So they looked
(12:46):
at a hundred and twenty nine different adult male primates
from Central and South America. And the study included this
great wheel that that graph that had all these different
to monkey faces on it, and they ranged, uh pretty wildly.
There's you know, there there are some very conservative looking
monkey faces that it's just like, oh, well that is
that is a monkey. If you saw a picture of
you be like, well, look at that monkey. There is
(13:07):
and then others are you know, like crazy red faced, mustachioed,
you know, crazy eyebrow like you know, crazy monkey pictures. Yeah,
like very like punk rock monkeys. And so you would
look at these and if you look at these thinking, um,
all right, some of these monkeys are gonna be more
solitary than others, and some are gonna be a little
more society driven, a little more you know, social and
(13:29):
prone to live in in packs and small groups. Um.
And so what is the correlation between facial complexity uh
and uh and in social activity? As it turns out,
the crazier the face on the primates in this study,
the more solitary the monkey, whereas the planer faced monkeys
were more likely to live in in some sort of
(13:51):
a close knit society and in a group of some
courts sort. And so the theory here is that since
our face is the communications of race, since our faces
means of communicating with other members of our species, the
plane or the faces, the better the communication system. It's
in a large community, yeah, it's like, you know, this
is the poster that I'm going to use, or you know,
(14:12):
this is the billboard I'm going to use to communicate
with people, and the more graffiti I have on it,
the you know, I have drapes up on it and
all sorts of crazy stuff. It's it's getting in the
way of my ability to use that to communicate the clearest.
So that the crazy faces they're standing on their own
because they don't have to to use this. But the
planer faced monkeys, they're using this as a communication system.
(14:32):
And it's like a like a satellite dish. If you
want to pick up a signal, you want to have
it cleaned off. You don't wanta have a bunch of
brush on it and drying clothes and what have you. Yeah,
it makes total sense because if you are in a
large community and you've got to read each other's facial expressions,
than the plane or the face the easier to read.
But if you are just hanging out with one or
two people, not a big deal. If you put on
(14:52):
as much of the makeup exactly nature's makeup as possible. UM,
I do you think it's really interesting in the human context,
because conservative estimates say that UM communication is perceived by
up I think upboards of six of nonverbal cues. Okay,
(15:13):
so it would make sense that whatever is crossing your
face is really going to inform another person about how
you feel, and particularly when you blush. I just looked
at some research on blushing, and it turns out that
the way that our vision is constructed, the cones in
our eyes they think, Uh, scientists and researchers think that
it was constructed in a way that we could really
(15:35):
see the variances in skin color and humans, so that
we could perceive things like blushing as a subtle way
of saying, oh this, you know, the person um across
from me feels ashamed about this or regretful for doing something.
And again this plays into this idea of nonverbal cues
letting us know what is truly going on between humans.
(15:58):
So what does always have to do with facial hair? Well,
if you dress up this canvas that you display your emotions,
you are certainly trying to say something with your beard,
or rather there are some subconscious things going on with
the beard. Well, to a certain extent, you're growing a mask.
You're growing this thing out of your face that covers
up uh, you know, at least like half your face.
(16:20):
It's so it's it's it can be used as a
means of masking what you're actually feeling well, And I
like this idea of UH putting on a mask of
power to write. And if you look at the writings
of Barnaby J. Dixon, he's a postdoctoral researcher in the
Evolution and Ecology Research Center at the University of New
(16:42):
South Wales. He has a lot to say on this topic. Um.
He has a couple of different studies out right now.
And in fact, if you go to his website, he's
Dixon with a s by the way, d I X
S O N to see himself of a beard. Yes,
and he go to his website, not only will you
see his glorious beard, which is um, you're not did
with a mustache, by the way, you will also be
(17:02):
able to participate in a couple of online studies and
see some images of people with beards or men with
beards and then without beards, and go through the process
of rating them on their attractiveness. So let me get
back to Barnaby though Uh. In the paper published in
Behavioral Ecology quote beards augment perceptions of men's age, social steps,
(17:25):
and aggressiveness, but not attractiveness. Dixon and Paul L. Vacy
take a look at the power and structure of vis
via beard. And in the abstract he says, or they say,
Darwin positive that beards evolved in human ancestors via female
choice is a highly attractive masculine adornment. This is Darwin's theory. Yes,
this is they're saying. You know, Darwin put this out there,
(17:47):
who himself had a big beard later in life, after
earlier in life having glorious beard. But they go on
to say that they think it's not necessarily um an
element of attractiveness. Here is more of power. And he
said that they show that women from two very different
ethnic groups a group of women um that are Europeans
from New Zealand and Polynesian women from Samoa, they don't
(18:10):
rate bearded faces as more attractive than clean shaven faces.
In fact, women from both of those groups judge bearded
faces to be older and ascribe them higher social status
than men who are clean shaven. Yeah. I mean, of course,
one of the things with all this, you have to
take into account all the human complexity of any of this.
You know, if you're in a society where the beard
(18:31):
is more important and more established, and you know that's
gonna that's gonna weigh weigh in on things. Uh. But
but most of the the studies that we were looking
at here, they were we were seeing that the beard
has a stronger role in intra sexual signaling than in
any kind of female mate preferences. And in other words, guys,
you're growing that beard because you have something to say
(18:52):
to the other guys, not because or you know, you
may you may think otherwise, but ultimately your beard is
speaking to the other men. Well, and what's interesting about
the Polynesian women and the women from New Zealand is
that they then saw that men who were acting aggressively
with beards were deemed to be more aggressive than the
clean shaven brethren. So there's this idea again that it's
(19:13):
a sort of a sort of suiting up, a manning
up and again assuming a power roll. And if you
look at a paper by D. Carolyn Blanchard which was
published in Behavioral Neuroscience, um, you begin to see the
animal world being pulled in in the form of lions
in their means. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. This was
(19:34):
an interesting study that you came across. And the idea here,
the theory here is that all right, so why does
the lion have a main because it looks cool because
it's since the signal. Or does the lion have the
main because all of this extra hair protects some some
some very important parts of the neck and face. True,
and she says that lions with prominent means are like
(19:58):
men with beards, with the ideas that both began to
grow facial hair at puberty. Both the main and the
beard helped the single out gender in a crowd. And um, yes,
the beard, like the main, would give the wear a
more imposing silhouette and serve to blunt any attacks. Yeah,
because one thing you have to to think about here too,
if this theory holds up, you have to think about
(20:21):
the way humans have evolved. Um, what are natural weapons?
Are natural weapons? Are fists? The first things we're using
to hurt each other, you know, aside from you know,
the the odd bite and maybe you know, you know,
at some point someone relies. Hey, we can kick things too,
but for the most part, we our hands have evolved
to punch people in the face. I did a blog
in a video about this a while back, and the
(20:41):
idea is that when you make a fist, and and
certainly we are the only species that makes fists and
punches other members of our species, or if you're Lia Nissa,
maybe a wolf with your with your fist. When you
make a fist, it's uh, you know, certainly you can
hurt your hand still when you you know, make contact,
but it's structured so that you're actually protecting a lot
(21:04):
of the more fragile parts of the hand, the bones
and muscles when when you ball up. So the idea
here is that that we have we've evolved over time
to use these as weapons. So in the course of
evolution to it makes a certain amount of sense that
we might also develop some sort of protective feature against
(21:25):
people punching us in the face. And then later in
early developments, clearly some of our first weapons are going
to be blunt instrument weapons as well, before we eventually
get to where we're creating spears and swords and axes
and uh, you know, on up to our modern weaponry. Okay,
So a lion who is being attacked the other lion
who was attacking the line with a magnificent main would
(21:47):
get a mouthful of hair, right, and it would be
a little bit harder to get to the throat region.
So if you're talking about humans then striking each other
on the chin, then you've got the beard that kind
of buff or the impact of that, right right, And
of course they don't really go into a much in
the study, but humans today are not above biting into
(22:08):
a foe so or an ear. Yeah, so I can
only imagine that would have played apart as well. Indeed,
I'm sure. And naturally Blanchard brings up something called the
glass chin phenomenon. She says it's well known in boxing,
and direct blows to the front and sides of the
neck as well as the area just under the nose,
can be particularly lethal, and that both are particular targets
of attack and unarmed combat techniques, and that this is
(22:31):
a protective feature of human beards, and that this is interesting.
The technical and competition rules of the International Amateur Boxing
Association prohibit beards and boxing matches. So I'm assuming that's
to level the playing field, right, I guess, because then
you know, otherwise someone with a particularly great beard is
going to be that much more protective. Now, you don't
(22:52):
see those rules, if I'm not mistaken, and mixed martial arts,
because you do see bearded individuals partaking combat there, I
guess the mainly thing ing of I only know older dudes,
but like a little like Dan Sefron, he had an
awesome mustache. I don't know that wasn't really protecting the
jaw and neck. But but it seems like there are
a few other bearded guys that were thrown down. Well, no,
(23:13):
I'm just thinking about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, of course
he describe the wrestler, and he had the beard going on.
But for sure macho man, Randy Savage, professional wrestler, but
that he had a great beard. Um, you know. And
it also ties in kind of interestingly with some other
studies we're looking at where the theory was to that
a large beard and also large eyebrows contribute to the
(23:35):
way that the face is perceived. They make the jaw
look stronger and more intimidating. Um and uh. And when
you couple that with a brow, I can't help but think, like,
what Peter Gallagher, the actor, who already had like amazing eyebrows,
what if he had ever grown a beard? Because I
did a quick Google search and I never found an
image of him with a beard, So I think missed opportunity.
(23:57):
He could have been the ultimate alpha male. Well, maybe
he's doing that just for everybody's benefit. I mean, I
bet that every time he furrows his brow that the
earth trembles. Right, So if he were to grow a beard,
it could be catastrophic. It could be someone set him
down once said, Peter, you have amazing eyebrows, and that
you must promise, must swear a blood oath and never
to grow a beard. All right, let's take a break
(24:20):
and when we get back, we are going to discuss
why Billy mays Is beard made him the success that
you want. All right, we're back, and uh, we said,
We're going to talk about Billy Mays, the infomercial superstar,
the pitchman. Pitch man. Yeah, um, a huge beard, I mean,
(24:45):
glossy black beard, the fullest beard I think I've ever
seen in my life. Not wizardy really, not like long,
but very very thick and prominent. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He
was a pitchman for a bunch of different household cleaners,
and I think that his beard contributed to his success.
And this is why A two thousand intense study in
the Journal of Marketing Communications found that men with beards
(25:07):
were deemed more credible than those who were clean shaven,
and the studies showed participant pictures of men endorsing certain products. Now,
the products were kind of key to whether or not
there was any correlation of increased trust. So it turns
out that men with beards had great We're seen as
having greater expertise and more trustworthy when they were hawking
(25:28):
things like cell phones and toothpaste. Okay, so they were
doing much better than the clean shaving guys in that area,
but not tidy Whitey's okay. Uh, Participants preferred clean shaven
men when it came to underwear. I was thinking, perhaps
subconscious the association of you know, a lot of hair
(25:49):
with underwear. And I know we're getting into mercan territory here,
but that might have something to do with it. And
I've never thought about this before, about who do I
prefer selling the underwear? UM? I guess I would prefer
someone without a beard. Um, But but not so much.
I mean, I guess it comes down to if are
you talking about an underwear model or just an underwear pitchman,
(26:10):
and is the pitchman wearing UM? I think that they
were talking about the pitchman as the model. Okay, well
I would I guess that's a good question. That's a
very good question. Well maybe I'm just more attracted the
beardless guys because I would I would want to be
sold by underwear by you know, they beardless underwear model,
but a man with a beard who is selling the underwear.
(26:31):
But on the package there was a clean shaven man.
And now remember the why is the bearded man there
at all? Is he the other underwear models fathers in
a department store? He has a stack of underwear, and
he is next to the clean shaven pitchman. They're both
trying to sell you underwear. I don't know. Now, that's
(26:52):
just a tough decision. I'm going to go with a
clean shaven because I still stand by that. I think
it's something subconscious about a lot of hair and underwear.
And then other regions you may have something there. Somebody
needs to do a study. Clearly, there are enough people
researching beards and what beards mean. There's got to be
room out there and some available funding. Let's get out
(27:15):
of this uncomfortable territory and into beards and how they
can contribute to one's health. Yes, now this is pretty awesome.
This uh, this is some relatively new UH info that
we have to work with here, two thousand twelve study,
UH French study. And they had an interesting theory here.
All right, so we're growing these beards, and we've talked
about how the beard, of course may provide some amount
(27:38):
of protection against punches to the face, how the beard
may mask our ability to communicate via our our facial
features with are the members of our species make us
a little more aggressive than we actually maybe? But then
to what if, to what degree could they possibly be
shielding us from horrible U V ray? So this study
(28:01):
decided to test it out. So what they what do
they do? They went and they bought three mannequin heads,
put them out in the sun. On one of them
they just left it beardless. On the other they gave
it a short beard, you know, mild beard. And then
the other one they gave a long beard, big long,
thick beard. To see how these mannequins are affected by
the UV rays based on their level of facial hair.
(28:25):
And they found that beards block of UV UV rays. Yes, okay,
so of course that would reduce your exposure to those
rays and decrease your chances of having skin cancer, so
a huge health benefit, right, Yeah, And certainly it brings
me back to the you know, Tom hankson Castaway, so
(28:45):
he's getting baked by the sun and growing that beard
was probably his only real choice at the time, but
he you know, it worked out for the best because
it probably gave him just a leg a little leg
up on avoiding skin cancer. Yeah, so I mean you
can see how this would be a protective cover throughout
the h right. Yeah, if you're you're making your your
life on the beach out in the sun, maybe you
should grow a beard. Maybe that would help because you
(29:07):
think about it that you think of like pictures you've
seen of particularly I'm thinking of like snowboard borders and
the like. You know, they'll have have the big beard
and then they'll have the big goggles and then the
hat and that's basically it. All you have to do
is worry about the nose. And if you were to
wear or say a pair of you know, gratual March
glasses or Humpty Hump glasses on top of that, you
would have complete coverage and while what image you would
(29:30):
be projecting, Yeah, pretty fag, especially if you went with
the humpy, hump up nose and you know, glasses instead.
You know, I was thinking about the study in the
mannequin heads, and I was thinking about them in a field,
and I immediately began to imagine, instead of body farms,
we would have these mannequin head farms with various growth
(29:51):
patterns of facial hair on them, and how disturbing that
might be to walk up upon and say, Oh, well,
you know, I've been I've been watching the new Hannibal
Electter TV show, which there are things I really like
about it. Um. I think that the acting is great.
I think the look of the show is great. I'm
I'm less into some of the writing and the monster
(30:13):
of the week scenario that they have. So each episode
seems to have to have a new crazy invented serial killer. Yeah,
they're gonna eventually start running to start running out of
ideas though, So I think this could be one a
killer who's who is inspired by this survey, I mean,
the study and finds the heads of clean shaved, mildly bearded,
and super bearded men and then cut their heads off
(30:35):
and leaves them out in the field. Oh, like a
researcher who was like, you know, it's not enough to
see what you know, chemically based substance would absorb in
terms of the Sun's TUV rays. I want the real thing. Yeah,
I don't want any polymer in the subject. And so
therefore I'm going to take this study to the you know,
(30:56):
the inst degree in terms of I was going to
see integrity. Yeah. And then also there's not really this
would be a great mad scientist too, because we're used
to models of mad scientists where they get into morally
ambiguous territory. They or they start using human test subjects.
But but generally they're trying to go for something big.
But you know, this would be a great one because
(31:17):
it's this is some low hanging fruit. There's really no
reason to go cut the heads off of people for it.
But hey, they're mad, that's what they do. Yeah. And
if you for some reason, if maybe you skipped ahead
in the podcast and you just got to this part,
this is why are you listening to podcasts that way?
It's not you're not going to get the full spectrum
there of information. Uh, but yeah, this's this is just
(31:38):
the marriage imaginary circumstance here. Yeah, but nobody is cutting
off heads to really see what the UV absorption example is.
But if you if you look up any of the
articles about this study, you do get to see a
picture of these three mannequin heads with their beards out
in the middle of the sunny field, and it's, uh,
it's a little creepy. Alright. Well, researchers barn and b. J. Dixon,
our friend that we mentioned before and Roberts photographed ten
(32:01):
men at four stages of beard growth. We're talking about
clean shaven, five day light stubble, ten day heavy stubble,
and then fully bearded. Okay. Then they took three hundred
and fifty one women and one hundred and seventy seven men,
had them view photos and rate each face for attractiveness, masculinity, health,
(32:22):
and parenting ability. Here's the deal. Women ranked heavily stubbled
faces as the most attractive. Really, so that just that
just that level of I'm sort of growing a beard.
I think they think it's really sexy, but they don't
know how itchy it actually is. I think maybe it's
where it's it's full enough, not quite a full grown beard,
(32:44):
but uh, grown out enough where it starts to soften. Okay,
I'm gonna guess because that then that also yeah, because
also it didn't like really scratchy. It's like a burliopath
the worst. It seems like it's bad for everyone. It's
gonna scratch the woman's face and then the man eaching
like crazy and thinking, why am I trying to grow
beard again? This is why I shaved every couple of days,
(33:05):
although I'm sure for women there there are some exfoliation fits. Um, okay,
So participants said that the clean shaven men, the participants
meaning the men and the women, thought the clean ship
and then looked about as healthy and attractive as those
with a full beard, but they rated the bearded men
higher for perceived parenting skills. That was fascinating. Light stubble
(33:29):
got the shaft like yeah, just in general, so if
you've got some light stubble, um, you got the short
in the step here. When I say light stubble, that's
that five day growth not quite there kind of spotty
yah uh yeah, low scores exactly like are you hungover?
Are you what are you doing here? Is there your
(33:50):
homeless well, although homeless beards can grow to a great volume.
So anyway, those are the results of that particular study. Interesting. Um, yeah,
and it's one of those things where it gets so
complicated when you start thinking of beards as you know,
just from from a purely biological standpoint, and then from
a cultural standpoint, and then when we factor other things
(34:12):
on top of it, because sometimes people will grow a beard.
Is again part of that idea that I am changing
or I want to change who I am, and I'm
going to make an outward show of this, uh and
somehow tell the world that I'm doing something, you know,
like because somebody will go through uh, you know, like
a bad breakup and then maybe they'll shave their head
or they'll grow out of beard, you know that that
(34:33):
kind of thing. Um. So, so it gets complicated with humans. Well,
it's just Sampson into a lot tho, right, didn't right
when when he was clean shaven, it was gone. Well
then that goes into some very old ideas. I was looking.
I was reading in the Brewer's Dictionary phrase and fable
about the beards, and um, you know, various cultures there
are all sorts of sayings about like you know, if
(34:54):
you take grab somebody by the beard, it's like the
ultimate insult. And certainly if you if you cut someone's beard.
Then it's just just an enormous upfront in in varying
beard heavy cultures. All right, So just as as a
little mental abstract here, think about Zach galifin Nakis if
he were to shave his beard, how would you perceive
(35:16):
some of these characters who have been childlike? Uh, would
get into creepy territory? Or is it? I mean, does
the beard kind of helped him to git some of
the weirdness of those characters. I mean, it's such a
part of his look. It's it's I don't know that
I've ever seen a picture of him without it. I
was thinking that too, Yeah, but but I think maybe
it does. It does contribute to the act um fear
(35:38):
to shave his beard off. I don't know how I
would take it. I mean, also some you know, some
faces just work better with a beard. I think that's
it goes without saying true. Um. This is one of
the little tidbit that I found that thought was really interesting,
and it is that some men who grow out a
beard or a mustache are surprised that their facial hair
(35:59):
is ginger colored. They're surprised if they're not red headed, right,
And that is because facial hair allows expression of the
normally recessive jeans for red hair and very red skin. Interesting,
so I can pop up in those areas of your face,
but not on your head. Well, and then of course
a lot of times it will grow out gray. When
you don't that isn't really doing that, and we'll reveal
(36:20):
your secrets. And then the rare individual will have the
blonde beard, which I've always found kind of fascinating because
in a in a way it's almost invisible. At first,
I think of that as a very California beard. Yeah,
there was a dude in my high school. I don't
remember his name, but this is a high school, and
he had like a full blonde beard. It was very impressive,
I'm sure. Yeah, alright, so here's some interesting research for
(36:44):
you guys to ponder out there. But just to be clear,
this is not a free pass to grow a Gangs
of New York style handlebar mustache. Well you know that's
it's gonna be pretty triby in some areas. I mean,
walk into Brooklyn with that, and GE's the right end.
I just feel like that best left to Daniel day Lewis. Oh,
you're right. Some people, I you know, I'm sorry, I
(37:05):
should probably not uh tell someone not to do that. Well,
the thing about just a very specific choice, Well, the
mustache isn't is an interesting bit of facial hair because
it really almost seems like there's you got to take
it out a case by case situation. There are people
who grow a mustache and you're like, that was absolutely
the right call. Or they shave off their mustache and
you're like, that is wrong. Grow it back, um, Jimmy Buffett,
(37:29):
because you just don't look right without it. Um. So yeah,
it's really gotta be a case by case It's true.
Perhaps it's just my association with Bill the Butcher, Like
if I see that mustache, I think there's a bit
of a menace to it. Yeah, it's a menacing mustache
for sure. Um alright, so there you go. Um. I
can't help but think though about some animals with facial hair.
(37:51):
And I was thinking that Grumpy Cat would totally sport
whole Cogan. You think the whole Cogan beard, which which mustache,
the mustache. We'll see he for a while and maybe
he still has this. He had the blonde mustache and
then but then he had stubble a stubble beard that
was dyed black. So it was it was you know,
(38:12):
the combo diabolical. Well, there's also an older image I
found of him once where he in this when he
had a different moniker I think, but um he had
he was not waxing his chest and he but he
did have a heart shaved into his chest. So hairy
chest except for the shape of a if that is
the ultimate act of hyper masculinity right there, right Like
(38:34):
I have such a hairy chest that I can now
actually assume some femininity here in my expression of emotions
via a heart. Yeah, well, there are a lot of
There are a lot of interesting manscaping choices in the
world of pro wrestling. I tell you a beard we
didn't mention. Have you seen the Hunger Games movie? You know,
the west Entley beards that he has in that with
(38:55):
all the flames and curls. That one is. That one's
one to think about. I'm not sure where I stay
in on that. I guess it's a future all right.
So there you have it. Beards, the world of beards,
the defensive and offensive merits of having one. Once again,
we'd love to hear your comments on this, if you
ever been in a scrape and that beard has saved
(39:16):
your life as a beard ever allowed you to intimidate
those around you or ingratiate yourself towards them. Also, if
you're worried about the whole peak beard thing, well don't
worry about it, because author James Vincent, writing for The
Independance says, Hey, these trends usually move in thirty years cycles,
so I'll have to use Wait just thirty years from now. Yeah,
you think that beards great? Now thirty years it's gonna
(39:38):
be amazing, full on wizard beard. Yeah. So Hey, in
the meantime, come to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's the place to get your stuff to blow your mind.
Fix all of our blog posts, all of our podcast episodes,
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we are mind Stuff Show and Julie, what is the
final method? That method would be email and you can
(40:00):
employ it by emailing us below the mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics,
Does it How stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff to Glow your Mind from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to bow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
we both have full beards today. But but but I
fear that we may have gone too far. Yeah, it's possible.
I mean, we got all excited about growing them out,
(00:24):
at least I did, worked online for months only to
find out that quote scientists warn we've hit peak beard.
The more people grow facial hair, the less attractive it is.
What are you talking about? In a very straightforward way,
this would seem to just to be a matter of
beards are unique and cool until everyone has them, and
then a clean shaven face is unique and weird. Well,
(00:46):
let's just yeah, a clean shaven face is weird kind
of right. Anyway, this topic brought up beards again with us,
and we thought, hey, let's go ahead and replay our
episode on beard, the merits of them, the demerits of them,
and why they may be important enough this fight. Yeah,
because we have a lot of bearded individuals out there,
you might be thinking about shaving that beard. I think
(01:10):
twice about it, and listening to this episode Julie named
for me your favorite beards, and then the world out
there of bearded faces, which which one's called you the most?
You mean the wearer of it? No, I'm just saying
like beards that you I mean. I guess it's hard
to have you separate the wearer from the beard. How
(01:31):
do you separate the beard from the bearded? I don't know.
I'm staring at our producer right now, Noel, who has
a wonderful beard? Does? It's a good beard, It's a
friendly beard. It's it's a coron. That was an awful
pronunciation of very current. Um, it's a good it's a
solid beard. But you know, one of my favorite beards
(01:51):
of all time, all pretty gray. Yes, this is the
biogere intologence. Yes, he has a straight, straight up wizard beard,
a long beer that you look at it and you're like,
this is a man with with wisdom. This is a
man um of experience that I can trust to help
me live forever. Yeah, And you know what I kind
of had wondered. You know, I think I made a
comment before in another episode when we were discussing some
(02:14):
of his ideas about living forever. Um. You know, there
was this idea of, well, if he shaved his beard,
would he look twenty years old or would he look
a hundred and twenty. I don't know. There's that much
facial hair going on. Yeah, and off the top of
my head, I don't know how old he is either,
so you can't even factor that into it. No, But
after sort of looking at some of this research, I
(02:35):
have a new view of Opportugray that I will discuss
later on in the podcast because I don't want to
give anything away. Okay, um, it's interesting you sent this
um this infographic around the trustworthiness of beards that ranks
all these varying degrees of beards from from the very
trustworthy to the disastrous, and there's there's like a dozen
(02:56):
of them on here, and uh, on the far end
of the very trustworthy s we have like to the
two beards that are closest to the end. One basically
looks like Noel's beard and the other one looks like
Aubrey do Gray's beard. If you go on the other
end of the spectrum, then you have to encounter a
hitler mustache and a pencil thin mustache. Say the pencil
(03:18):
fan always says Villain to me or John Water. I
don't think of John Waters as a villain. Well, I
think a benevolent villain. I think he would would term
himself at you know, possibly possibly he's a provocateur. But
also funny on this particular infographic is that the the
Hitler mustache and the John Waters mustache right below that
(03:38):
is a full werewolf. So I'm glad that hyperdricosis made
the list. Yeah. Um, and I'll tell you one beard.
There's so many great beards out there, um, so many
great beards from science history alone, which I'm hoping we'll
do a little gallery to go with this online. Now
I have to mention before we launch into beards and
we really look at the science find them, um, that
(04:01):
I feel like, in part we should owe this episode
to your own facial hair. Yes, oh, the sideburns. Burns,
You've got nice chops there. Yeah, well let's they go
from the sideburn level to the chocolate which I was
I was looking at where those rank on this particular
trustworthiness of beards, and certainly the chops that the chops
(04:23):
are a little more in the neutral zone, whereas the
sideburns are are a little more towards the trustworthy side.
So if I can actually go buy anything that this
infograph has to say about the matter. Well, just as
a side note, you have a great photo gallery sideburns
of science, sideburns of science. Yeah, I'm thinking we'll do
one about beards as well to go with this episode.
(04:45):
One beard that I that I am seeing a lot
of recently because I'm watching um the current season of
Madman is the actor who plays the character stand j R.
Ferguson has this huge beard. I don't know if you're
up to that point. Yeah, and so illustrator, the illustrator
massive beard, and uh I was looking up I found
an interview with him and he says that when he
(05:06):
after he came in, um, you know, ready to do
the show, grew out this beard that they wanted him
to have for this season. He said it was actually
a bit too much. It was like a cross between
Jeremiah Johnson and Tom hankson Castaway, and they actually had
to trim it down to its to the state that
you see it in on that So so virile was
his beard. Yeah, I had to tame it back. You
(05:28):
know what's interesting about that, and we'll get into this,
is that as a character. He he usually says some
pretty loudish things, like loudish like um, you know, he
says some inappropriate things, sexually charged, now clean shaven, super creepy.
But the beard I actually think softened that a bit. Yeah,
I think you're right. Yeah, because yeah, he's he's a
(05:50):
far more lovable character with the beard. Well, also you
see a little bit more character development of him my
fields the show progresses, so you know him a little
better by the time as the beard. But yeah, like
earlier on you're like, who is this this guy's guy's
kind of awful, and now you're like, this is one
of the better gentlemen in the office. Yeah, you're right,
this guy's got personality. Yeah, and he I guess it's
the only I can't think of any of other characters
(06:11):
that current that are currently on the show that have
a beard. So no, but there is a lot of
facial hair going on for sure. No, let's look back
here in the time machine ancient Greece, where the beard
was big, right, it was a sign of virility, and
it was an advertisement that you were not a Unich. Yes,
because presumably or this was the thought actually that if
(06:33):
you were a Unich you wouldn't have the ability, would
not have the hormones to produce that the massive glorious
beards on your wisdom. And certainly in olden days, various
societies this was there were enough Unix around that this
was actually something to think about. There were actually a
fair number of units playing varying roles in society, sometimes
very important roles. Um. Which reminds me we do need
(06:56):
to do an episode on Unix. Was that because the
history of Unix and some of the science of Unix
is is really, um, really fascinating. Um. But yeah, yeah,
go back to the Greeks. The Greeks loved them, at
least until Alexander the Great came along and he said, actually,
we don't need beards. We need to shave these beards
off if we're going into combat, because somebody could grab
(07:16):
me by my beard and start slicing at my face exactly.
And I imagine that at some point too, if you
are in a situation where you don't have access to
clean water and so want and so forth, that that
little beard could get quite contested. Yeah. And certainly we've
been shaving beards for a while. Um. I mean we
(07:38):
well before we were shaving beards presumably we're you know,
there were situations where one would pluck out the facial hair,
especially if you if you weren't stay capable of growing
like a full beard anyway, maybe you just decided to
go clean cut on it and you would be you
would have to to plug at the hairs or find
out some of their method. But we have found archaeological
evidence dating back to one thousand BC of endo edual
(08:00):
shaving their beards clearly with some sort of flint instruments,
so you know, the first razors if you will. Indeed, um,
it should not go unnoted that bearded ladies make appearances
throughout history, right um. I wanted to point out that
some of this is due to something called hair sudism,
which is a variant of hypertrocosis also known as the
(08:21):
werewolf syndrome, when there's an abnormal amount of hair growth
on the body. Uh, though with hair sudism, it's usually
due to increased levels of androgens or male hormones. Now,
bearded ladies would show up in sideshow acts in the circus, right,
or freak shows as they were called. Most of the time,
those weren't actually ladies. They were just dudes to put
(08:43):
on a little with beards that put on a little
makeup and address. Yeah, but that's been going on since
Shakespeare's time, right, no ladies on the stage. Um. I
also want to point out the cultural significance of the
term beard, which is also slang for um, A person
who is a cover for a gay friend or a partner. Yes,
and apparently sometimes too, it would be a cover for
(09:06):
somebody who's having an affair in a mixed gender situation
as well. Yeah. Yeah, although I would say that the
actually i've heard it more used as a way to
sort of negate someone's homosexuality in public. Feel like that's
the usage that sticks with us more these days. Yeah,
it's sort of this idea that you could give this
(09:26):
heteronorm appearance of a couple knowing that one of them
was gay the other was not. Um, But I do
I think it's fascinating because the term, again, when you're
talking about heteronorms, you talk about masculinity. And in the
instance where there is a male who is gay who
is with a woman, she the beard gives him masculinity.
(09:48):
I'm not saying that she gives him real masculinity. I'm
saying that from society's perspective, she's imbuing him with this power.
But it always makes me anytime or the term beard
used in those scenarios, it makes me think of money.
Python's the Life of Brian where there's a scene where
someone someone's going to be stoned to death and punishment
(10:10):
for some sort of infraction, and and only the men
are allowed to come and witness this, but only the
women are really interested in attending it. So they're all
buying these fake beards from a vendor outside the stoning area,
and uh, and they're all, you know, there to participate.
I love that bit because on so many different levels,
(10:31):
I think it's a commentary and society is. It's some
wonderful commentary thrown in to what is still a very
silly sketch. But that's a Python for you. All right, Well,
let's talk a bit about the evolution of the beard
and this sort of powers I said that is imbued
by this mass official hair. So needless to say, the
beard grows on the face. And it's really interesting when
(10:54):
you start thinking about the face. What is the human face? Right?
Because certainly it is a bunch of skull meat. It
is uh, it's a place where we keep our eyes,
in our nose, in our mouth. So it's it's kind
of this uh, frontloaded sensory array that allows us to
take in the sense world around us. But then it
is also something a bit more too, It is also
(11:17):
a communications array. Now, all this is complicated by the
fact that, of course we end up thinking of our
face as ourselves, right, like I am my face to
a certain extent, or at least my face is an
expression of who I am. Or you're saying that some
people allow how they look to color their personality. Well,
people end up augmenting their face and to varying degrees.
And the varying degrees may include, um, growing a beard,
(11:38):
it may mean wearing makeup. It may mean piercings, it
may mean tattoos, it may mean cosmetic surgery. All of
these things are done because we see the faces an
expression of who we are. But then the but then
it's also tied in with the fact that the faces
a means of communicating. Um. Obviously, we make expressions. There
seven primary expressions and then various um micro expressions that
(12:03):
appear for just you know, fractions of a second, and
some of the best. Yeah, that allow you to get
gain some insight into what's going on, what emotions are
we feeling, what emotions are recovering. And there's actually a
two thousand and eight check study that found that facial
expressions alone can speak a thousand words. So we get
into this idea of the face is not just you
(12:25):
know who we are, but but a means of communicating
with other members of our society. And uh. And so
there was another study that I found that plays into this,
and this is a two thousand twelve study from a
team of U. C L a biologist, and they started
thinking about the evolution of the human face and the
evolution of the primate face and and how does facial
diversity um factor into all of this. So they looked
(12:46):
at a hundred and twenty nine different adult male primates
from Central and South America. And the study included this
great wheel that that graph that had all these different
to monkey faces on it, and they ranged, uh pretty wildly.
There's you know, there there are some very conservative looking
monkey faces that it's just like, oh, well that is
that is a monkey. If you saw a picture of
you be like, well, look at that monkey. There is
(13:07):
and then others are you know, like crazy red faced, mustachioed,
you know, crazy eyebrow like you know, crazy monkey pictures. Yeah,
like very like punk rock monkeys. And so you would
look at these and if you look at these thinking, um,
all right, some of these monkeys are gonna be more
solitary than others, and some are gonna be a little
more society driven, a little more you know, social and
(13:29):
prone to live in in packs and small groups. Um.
And so what is the correlation between facial complexity uh
and uh and in social activity? As it turns out,
the crazier the face on the primates in this study,
the more solitary the monkey, whereas the planer faced monkeys
were more likely to live in in some sort of
(13:51):
a close knit society and in a group of some
courts sort. And so the theory here is that since
our face is the communications of race, since our faces
means of communicating with other members of our species, the
plane or the faces, the better the communication system. It's
in a large community, yeah, it's like, you know, this
is the poster that I'm going to use, or you know,
(14:12):
this is the billboard I'm going to use to communicate
with people, and the more graffiti I have on it,
the you know, I have drapes up on it and
all sorts of crazy stuff. It's it's getting in the
way of my ability to use that to communicate the clearest.
So that the crazy faces they're standing on their own
because they don't have to to use this. But the
planer faced monkeys, they're using this as a communication system.
(14:32):
And it's like a like a satellite dish. If you
want to pick up a signal, you want to have
it cleaned off. You don't wanta have a bunch of
brush on it and drying clothes and what have you. Yeah,
it makes total sense because if you are in a
large community and you've got to read each other's facial expressions,
than the plane or the face the easier to read.
But if you are just hanging out with one or
two people, not a big deal. If you put on
(14:52):
as much of the makeup exactly nature's makeup as possible. UM,
I do you think it's really interesting in the human context,
because conservative estimates say that UM communication is perceived by
up I think upboards of six of nonverbal cues. Okay,
(15:13):
so it would make sense that whatever is crossing your
face is really going to inform another person about how
you feel, and particularly when you blush. I just looked
at some research on blushing, and it turns out that
the way that our vision is constructed, the cones in
our eyes they think, Uh, scientists and researchers think that
it was constructed in a way that we could really
(15:35):
see the variances in skin color and humans, so that
we could perceive things like blushing as a subtle way
of saying, oh this, you know, the person um across
from me feels ashamed about this or regretful for doing something.
And again this plays into this idea of nonverbal cues
letting us know what is truly going on between humans.
(15:58):
So what does always have to do with facial hair? Well,
if you dress up this canvas that you display your emotions,
you are certainly trying to say something with your beard,
or rather there are some subconscious things going on with
the beard. Well, to a certain extent, you're growing a mask.
You're growing this thing out of your face that covers
up uh, you know, at least like half your face.
(16:20):
It's so it's it's it can be used as a
means of masking what you're actually feeling well, And I
like this idea of UH putting on a mask of
power to write. And if you look at the writings
of Barnaby J. Dixon, he's a postdoctoral researcher in the
Evolution and Ecology Research Center at the University of New
(16:42):
South Wales. He has a lot to say on this topic. Um.
He has a couple of different studies out right now.
And in fact, if you go to his website, he's
Dixon with a s by the way, d I X
S O N to see himself of a beard. Yes,
and he go to his website, not only will you
see his glorious beard, which is um, you're not did
with a mustache, by the way, you will also be
(17:02):
able to participate in a couple of online studies and
see some images of people with beards or men with
beards and then without beards, and go through the process
of rating them on their attractiveness. So let me get
back to Barnaby though Uh. In the paper published in
Behavioral Ecology quote beards augment perceptions of men's age, social steps,
(17:25):
and aggressiveness, but not attractiveness. Dixon and Paul L. Vacy
take a look at the power and structure of vis
via beard. And in the abstract he says, or they say,
Darwin positive that beards evolved in human ancestors via female
choice is a highly attractive masculine adornment. This is Darwin's theory. Yes,
this is they're saying. You know, Darwin put this out there,
(17:47):
who himself had a big beard later in life, after
earlier in life having glorious beard. But they go on
to say that they think it's not necessarily um an
element of attractiveness. Here is more of power. And he
said that they show that women from two very different
ethnic groups a group of women um that are Europeans
from New Zealand and Polynesian women from Samoa, they don't
(18:10):
rate bearded faces as more attractive than clean shaven faces.
In fact, women from both of those groups judge bearded
faces to be older and ascribe them higher social status
than men who are clean shaven. Yeah. I mean, of course,
one of the things with all this, you have to
take into account all the human complexity of any of this.
You know, if you're in a society where the beard
(18:31):
is more important and more established, and you know that's
gonna that's gonna weigh weigh in on things. Uh. But
but most of the the studies that we were looking
at here, they were we were seeing that the beard
has a stronger role in intra sexual signaling than in
any kind of female mate preferences. And in other words, guys,
you're growing that beard because you have something to say
(18:52):
to the other guys, not because or you know, you
may you may think otherwise, but ultimately your beard is
speaking to the other men. Well, and what's interesting about
the Polynesian women and the women from New Zealand is
that they then saw that men who were acting aggressively
with beards were deemed to be more aggressive than the
clean shaven brethren. So there's this idea again that it's
(19:13):
a sort of a sort of suiting up, a manning
up and again assuming a power roll. And if you
look at a paper by D. Carolyn Blanchard which was
published in Behavioral Neuroscience, um, you begin to see the
animal world being pulled in in the form of lions
in their means. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. This was
(19:34):
an interesting study that you came across. And the idea here,
the theory here is that all right, so why does
the lion have a main because it looks cool because
it's since the signal. Or does the lion have the
main because all of this extra hair protects some some
some very important parts of the neck and face. True,
and she says that lions with prominent means are like
(19:58):
men with beards, with the ideas that both began to
grow facial hair at puberty. Both the main and the
beard helped the single out gender in a crowd. And um, yes,
the beard, like the main, would give the wear a
more imposing silhouette and serve to blunt any attacks. Yeah,
because one thing you have to to think about here too,
if this theory holds up, you have to think about
(20:21):
the way humans have evolved. Um, what are natural weapons?
Are natural weapons? Are fists? The first things we're using
to hurt each other, you know, aside from you know,
the the odd bite and maybe you know, you know,
at some point someone relies. Hey, we can kick things too,
but for the most part, we our hands have evolved
to punch people in the face. I did a blog
in a video about this a while back, and the
(20:41):
idea is that when you make a fist, and and
certainly we are the only species that makes fists and
punches other members of our species, or if you're Lia Nissa,
maybe a wolf with your with your fist. When you
make a fist, it's uh, you know, certainly you can
hurt your hand still when you you know, make contact,
but it's structured so that you're actually protecting a lot
(21:04):
of the more fragile parts of the hand, the bones
and muscles when when you ball up. So the idea
here is that that we have we've evolved over time
to use these as weapons. So in the course of
evolution to it makes a certain amount of sense that
we might also develop some sort of protective feature against
(21:25):
people punching us in the face. And then later in
early developments, clearly some of our first weapons are going
to be blunt instrument weapons as well, before we eventually
get to where we're creating spears and swords and axes
and uh, you know, on up to our modern weaponry. Okay,
So a lion who is being attacked the other lion
who was attacking the line with a magnificent main would
(21:47):
get a mouthful of hair, right, and it would be
a little bit harder to get to the throat region.
So if you're talking about humans then striking each other
on the chin, then you've got the beard that kind
of buff or the impact of that, right right, And
of course they don't really go into a much in
the study, but humans today are not above biting into
(22:08):
a foe so or an ear. Yeah, so I can
only imagine that would have played apart as well. Indeed,
I'm sure. And naturally Blanchard brings up something called the
glass chin phenomenon. She says it's well known in boxing,
and direct blows to the front and sides of the
neck as well as the area just under the nose,
can be particularly lethal, and that both are particular targets
of attack and unarmed combat techniques, and that this is
(22:31):
a protective feature of human beards, and that this is interesting.
The technical and competition rules of the International Amateur Boxing
Association prohibit beards and boxing matches. So I'm assuming that's
to level the playing field, right, I guess, because then
you know, otherwise someone with a particularly great beard is
going to be that much more protective. Now, you don't
(22:52):
see those rules, if I'm not mistaken, and mixed martial arts,
because you do see bearded individuals partaking combat there, I
guess the mainly thing ing of I only know older dudes,
but like a little like Dan Sefron, he had an
awesome mustache. I don't know that wasn't really protecting the
jaw and neck. But but it seems like there are
a few other bearded guys that were thrown down. Well, no,
(23:13):
I'm just thinking about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, of course
he describe the wrestler, and he had the beard going on.
But for sure macho man, Randy Savage, professional wrestler, but
that he had a great beard. Um, you know. And
it also ties in kind of interestingly with some other
studies we're looking at where the theory was to that
a large beard and also large eyebrows contribute to the
(23:35):
way that the face is perceived. They make the jaw
look stronger and more intimidating. Um and uh. And when
you couple that with a brow, I can't help but think, like,
what Peter Gallagher, the actor, who already had like amazing eyebrows,
what if he had ever grown a beard? Because I
did a quick Google search and I never found an
image of him with a beard, So I think missed opportunity.
(23:57):
He could have been the ultimate alpha male. Well, maybe
he's doing that just for everybody's benefit. I mean, I
bet that every time he furrows his brow that the
earth trembles. Right, So if he were to grow a beard,
it could be catastrophic. It could be someone set him
down once said, Peter, you have amazing eyebrows, and that
you must promise, must swear a blood oath and never
to grow a beard. All right, let's take a break
(24:20):
and when we get back, we are going to discuss
why Billy mays Is beard made him the success that
you want. All right, we're back, and uh, we said,
We're going to talk about Billy Mays, the infomercial superstar,
the pitchman. Pitch man. Yeah, um, a huge beard, I mean,
(24:45):
glossy black beard, the fullest beard I think I've ever
seen in my life. Not wizardy really, not like long,
but very very thick and prominent. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He
was a pitchman for a bunch of different household cleaners,
and I think that his beard contributed to his success.
And this is why A two thousand intense study in
the Journal of Marketing Communications found that men with beards
(25:07):
were deemed more credible than those who were clean shaven,
and the studies showed participant pictures of men endorsing certain products. Now,
the products were kind of key to whether or not
there was any correlation of increased trust. So it turns
out that men with beards had great We're seen as
having greater expertise and more trustworthy when they were hawking
(25:28):
things like cell phones and toothpaste. Okay, so they were
doing much better than the clean shaving guys in that area,
but not tidy Whitey's okay. Uh, Participants preferred clean shaven
men when it came to underwear. I was thinking, perhaps
subconscious the association of you know, a lot of hair
(25:49):
with underwear. And I know we're getting into mercan territory here,
but that might have something to do with it. And
I've never thought about this before, about who do I
prefer selling the underwear? UM? I guess I would prefer
someone without a beard. Um, But but not so much.
I mean, I guess it comes down to if are
you talking about an underwear model or just an underwear pitchman,
(26:10):
and is the pitchman wearing UM? I think that they
were talking about the pitchman as the model. Okay, well
I would I guess that's a good question. That's a
very good question. Well maybe I'm just more attracted the
beardless guys because I would I would want to be
sold by underwear by you know, they beardless underwear model,
but a man with a beard who is selling the underwear.
(26:31):
But on the package there was a clean shaven man.
And now remember the why is the bearded man there
at all? Is he the other underwear models fathers in
a department store? He has a stack of underwear, and
he is next to the clean shaven pitchman. They're both
trying to sell you underwear. I don't know. Now, that's
(26:52):
just a tough decision. I'm going to go with a
clean shaven because I still stand by that. I think
it's something subconscious about a lot of hair and underwear.
And then other regions you may have something there. Somebody
needs to do a study. Clearly, there are enough people
researching beards and what beards mean. There's got to be
room out there and some available funding. Let's get out
(27:15):
of this uncomfortable territory and into beards and how they
can contribute to one's health. Yes, now this is pretty awesome.
This uh, this is some relatively new UH info that
we have to work with here, two thousand twelve study,
UH French study. And they had an interesting theory here.
All right, so we're growing these beards, and we've talked
about how the beard, of course may provide some amount
(27:38):
of protection against punches to the face, how the beard
may mask our ability to communicate via our our facial
features with are the members of our species make us
a little more aggressive than we actually maybe? But then
to what if, to what degree could they possibly be
shielding us from horrible U V ray? So this study
(28:01):
decided to test it out. So what they what do
they do? They went and they bought three mannequin heads,
put them out in the sun. On one of them
they just left it beardless. On the other they gave
it a short beard, you know, mild beard. And then
the other one they gave a long beard, big long,
thick beard. To see how these mannequins are affected by
the UV rays based on their level of facial hair.
(28:25):
And they found that beards block of UV UV rays. Yes, okay,
so of course that would reduce your exposure to those
rays and decrease your chances of having skin cancer, so
a huge health benefit, right, Yeah, And certainly it brings
me back to the you know, Tom hankson Castaway, so
(28:45):
he's getting baked by the sun and growing that beard
was probably his only real choice at the time, but
he you know, it worked out for the best because
it probably gave him just a leg a little leg
up on avoiding skin cancer. Yeah, so I mean you
can see how this would be a protective cover throughout
the h right. Yeah, if you're you're making your your
life on the beach out in the sun, maybe you
should grow a beard. Maybe that would help because you
(29:07):
think about it that you think of like pictures you've
seen of particularly I'm thinking of like snowboard borders and
the like. You know, they'll have have the big beard
and then they'll have the big goggles and then the
hat and that's basically it. All you have to do
is worry about the nose. And if you were to
wear or say a pair of you know, gratual March
glasses or Humpty Hump glasses on top of that, you
would have complete coverage and while what image you would
(29:30):
be projecting, Yeah, pretty fag, especially if you went with
the humpy, hump up nose and you know, glasses instead.
You know, I was thinking about the study in the
mannequin heads, and I was thinking about them in a field,
and I immediately began to imagine, instead of body farms,
we would have these mannequin head farms with various growth
(29:51):
patterns of facial hair on them, and how disturbing that
might be to walk up upon and say, Oh, well,
you know, I've been I've been watching the new Hannibal
Electter TV show, which there are things I really like
about it. Um. I think that the acting is great.
I think the look of the show is great. I'm
I'm less into some of the writing and the monster
(30:13):
of the week scenario that they have. So each episode
seems to have to have a new crazy invented serial killer. Yeah,
they're gonna eventually start running to start running out of
ideas though, So I think this could be one a
killer who's who is inspired by this survey, I mean,
the study and finds the heads of clean shaved, mildly bearded,
and super bearded men and then cut their heads off
(30:35):
and leaves them out in the field. Oh, like a
researcher who was like, you know, it's not enough to
see what you know, chemically based substance would absorb in
terms of the Sun's TUV rays. I want the real thing. Yeah,
I don't want any polymer in the subject. And so
therefore I'm going to take this study to the you know,
(30:56):
the inst degree in terms of I was going to
see integrity. Yeah. And then also there's not really this
would be a great mad scientist too, because we're used
to models of mad scientists where they get into morally
ambiguous territory. They or they start using human test subjects.
But but generally they're trying to go for something big.
But you know, this would be a great one because
(31:17):
it's this is some low hanging fruit. There's really no
reason to go cut the heads off of people for it.
But hey, they're mad, that's what they do. Yeah. And
if you for some reason, if maybe you skipped ahead
in the podcast and you just got to this part,
this is why are you listening to podcasts that way?
It's not you're not going to get the full spectrum
there of information. Uh, but yeah, this's this is just
(31:38):
the marriage imaginary circumstance here. Yeah, but nobody is cutting
off heads to really see what the UV absorption example is.
But if you if you look up any of the
articles about this study, you do get to see a
picture of these three mannequin heads with their beards out
in the middle of the sunny field, and it's, uh,
it's a little creepy. Alright. Well, researchers barn and b. J. Dixon,
our friend that we mentioned before and Roberts photographed ten
(32:01):
men at four stages of beard growth. We're talking about
clean shaven, five day light stubble, ten day heavy stubble,
and then fully bearded. Okay. Then they took three hundred
and fifty one women and one hundred and seventy seven men,
had them view photos and rate each face for attractiveness, masculinity, health,
(32:22):
and parenting ability. Here's the deal. Women ranked heavily stubbled
faces as the most attractive. Really, so that just that
just that level of I'm sort of growing a beard.
I think they think it's really sexy, but they don't
know how itchy it actually is. I think maybe it's
where it's it's full enough, not quite a full grown beard,
(32:44):
but uh, grown out enough where it starts to soften. Okay,
I'm gonna guess because that then that also yeah, because
also it didn't like really scratchy. It's like a burliopath
the worst. It seems like it's bad for everyone. It's
gonna scratch the woman's face and then the man eaching
like crazy and thinking, why am I trying to grow
beard again? This is why I shaved every couple of days,
(33:05):
although I'm sure for women there there are some exfoliation fits. Um, okay,
So participants said that the clean shaven men, the participants
meaning the men and the women, thought the clean ship
and then looked about as healthy and attractive as those
with a full beard, but they rated the bearded men
higher for perceived parenting skills. That was fascinating. Light stubble
(33:29):
got the shaft like yeah, just in general, so if
you've got some light stubble, um, you got the short
in the step here. When I say light stubble, that's
that five day growth not quite there kind of spotty
yah uh yeah, low scores exactly like are you hungover?
Are you what are you doing here? Is there your
(33:50):
homeless well, although homeless beards can grow to a great volume.
So anyway, those are the results of that particular study. Interesting. Um, yeah,
and it's one of those things where it gets so
complicated when you start thinking of beards as you know,
just from from a purely biological standpoint, and then from
a cultural standpoint, and then when we factor other things
(34:12):
on top of it, because sometimes people will grow a beard.
Is again part of that idea that I am changing
or I want to change who I am, and I'm
going to make an outward show of this, uh and
somehow tell the world that I'm doing something, you know,
like because somebody will go through uh, you know, like
a bad breakup and then maybe they'll shave their head
or they'll grow out of beard, you know that that
(34:33):
kind of thing. Um. So, so it gets complicated with humans. Well,
it's just Sampson into a lot tho, right, didn't right
when when he was clean shaven, it was gone. Well
then that goes into some very old ideas. I was looking.
I was reading in the Brewer's Dictionary phrase and fable
about the beards, and um, you know, various cultures there
are all sorts of sayings about like you know, if
(34:54):
you take grab somebody by the beard, it's like the
ultimate insult. And certainly if you if you cut someone's beard.
Then it's just just an enormous upfront in in varying
beard heavy cultures. All right, So just as as a
little mental abstract here, think about Zach galifin Nakis if
he were to shave his beard, how would you perceive
(35:16):
some of these characters who have been childlike? Uh, would
get into creepy territory? Or is it? I mean, does
the beard kind of helped him to git some of
the weirdness of those characters. I mean, it's such a
part of his look. It's it's I don't know that
I've ever seen a picture of him without it. I
was thinking that too, Yeah, but but I think maybe
it does. It does contribute to the act um fear
(35:38):
to shave his beard off. I don't know how I
would take it. I mean, also some you know, some
faces just work better with a beard. I think that's
it goes without saying true. Um. This is one of
the little tidbit that I found that thought was really interesting,
and it is that some men who grow out a
beard or a mustache are surprised that their facial hair
(35:59):
is ginger colored. They're surprised if they're not red headed, right,
And that is because facial hair allows expression of the
normally recessive jeans for red hair and very red skin. Interesting,
so I can pop up in those areas of your face,
but not on your head. Well, and then of course
a lot of times it will grow out gray. When
you don't that isn't really doing that, and we'll reveal
(36:20):
your secrets. And then the rare individual will have the
blonde beard, which I've always found kind of fascinating because
in a in a way it's almost invisible. At first,
I think of that as a very California beard. Yeah,
there was a dude in my high school. I don't
remember his name, but this is a high school, and
he had like a full blonde beard. It was very impressive,
I'm sure. Yeah, alright, so here's some interesting research for
(36:44):
you guys to ponder out there. But just to be clear,
this is not a free pass to grow a Gangs
of New York style handlebar mustache. Well you know that's
it's gonna be pretty triby in some areas. I mean,
walk into Brooklyn with that, and GE's the right end.
I just feel like that best left to Daniel day Lewis. Oh,
you're right. Some people, I you know, I'm sorry, I
(37:05):
should probably not uh tell someone not to do that. Well,
the thing about just a very specific choice, Well, the
mustache isn't is an interesting bit of facial hair because
it really almost seems like there's you got to take
it out a case by case situation. There are people
who grow a mustache and you're like, that was absolutely
the right call. Or they shave off their mustache and
you're like, that is wrong. Grow it back, um, Jimmy Buffett,
(37:29):
because you just don't look right without it. Um. So yeah,
it's really gotta be a case by case It's true.
Perhaps it's just my association with Bill the Butcher, Like
if I see that mustache, I think there's a bit
of a menace to it. Yeah, it's a menacing mustache
for sure. Um alright, so there you go. Um. I
can't help but think though about some animals with facial hair.
(37:51):
And I was thinking that Grumpy Cat would totally sport
whole Cogan. You think the whole Cogan beard, which which mustache,
the mustache. We'll see he for a while and maybe
he still has this. He had the blonde mustache and
then but then he had stubble a stubble beard that
was dyed black. So it was it was you know,
(38:12):
the combo diabolical. Well, there's also an older image I
found of him once where he in this when he
had a different moniker I think, but um he had
he was not waxing his chest and he but he
did have a heart shaved into his chest. So hairy
chest except for the shape of a if that is
the ultimate act of hyper masculinity right there, right Like
(38:34):
I have such a hairy chest that I can now
actually assume some femininity here in my expression of emotions
via a heart. Yeah, well, there are a lot of
There are a lot of interesting manscaping choices in the
world of pro wrestling. I tell you a beard we
didn't mention. Have you seen the Hunger Games movie? You know,
the west Entley beards that he has in that with
(38:55):
all the flames and curls. That one is. That one's
one to think about. I'm not sure where I stay
in on that. I guess it's a future all right.
So there you have it. Beards, the world of beards,
the defensive and offensive merits of having one. Once again,
we'd love to hear your comments on this, if you
ever been in a scrape and that beard has saved
(39:16):
your life as a beard ever allowed you to intimidate
those around you or ingratiate yourself towards them. Also, if
you're worried about the whole peak beard thing, well don't
worry about it, because author James Vincent, writing for The
Independance says, Hey, these trends usually move in thirty years cycles,
so I'll have to use Wait just thirty years from now. Yeah,
you think that beards great? Now thirty years it's gonna
(39:38):
be amazing, full on wizard beard. Yeah. So Hey, in
the meantime, come to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's the place to get your stuff to blow your mind.
Fix all of our blog posts, all of our podcast episodes,
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(40:00):
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