May 21, 2013 • 39 mins
The Science of Beards: Why do human males have beards? Do they protect us? Do they make us more fearsome? Better looking? More trustworthy? Find out in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
named for me. Your favorite beards. And in the world
out there of bearded faces, which which one's called you
(00:23):
the most? You mean the wearer of it? No, I'm
just saying, like beards that you I mean. I guess
it's harder. How do you separate the wearer from the beard?
How 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. It's a good beard. It's
a friendly beard. It's it's a coron. That was an
(00:43):
awful pronunciation of very current. Um, it's a good it's
a solid beard. But you know one of my favorite
beerds of all time, a pretty gray Yes, this is
the biogere intelligence. 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
(01:05):
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 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 enough to
(01:27):
him 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
have a new view of Arportugray 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
(01:48):
all these varying degrees of beards from from the very
trustworthy to be disastrous. And there's there's like a dozen
of them on here, and uh, on the far end
of the very trustworthy scape, 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 grays beer. If you go on the other end
(02:08):
of the spectrum, then you have to encounter a Hitler
mustache and a pencil fin mustache. Say that pencil 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
(02:30):
funny on this particular infographic is that the the Hitler
mustache and the John Waters mustache right below that is
a full werewolf. So I'm glad that hyperdricosis made the list. Yeah. Um,
and I'll tell you one beerd 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
(02:54):
to go with this online. Now I have to mention
before we launch into beer and we really look at
the science be find them. Um that 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
(03:16):
at where those rank on this particular trustworthiness of beards
and certainly the chops that the chops 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, you know, 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,
(03:40):
sideburns of science. See, I'm thinking we'll do one about
beards as well to go with this episode. 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 Stan j R. Ferguson
has this huge beard. I don't know if you're up
to that point. Yeah, And so illustrator yea, the illustrator
(04:00):
massive beard, and uh, I was looking up I found
an interview with him and he says that when he
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
(04:21):
you see it in on that So so virile was
his beard. Yeah, I had to tame it back. You
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.
(04:45):
The beard I actually think softens that a bit. Yeah,
I think you're right. Yeah, because yeah, he's he's a
far more levable 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 about it than me 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,
(05:06):
this guy's got personality. Yeah, and he I guess it's
the only I can't think of any of other characters
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 at 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,
(05:29):
because presumably or this was the thought actually that if
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 actually a fair
number of Unix plays, varying roles in society, sometimes very
(05:53):
important roles. Um. Which reminds me we do need 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
(06:13):
off if we're going into combat, because somebody could grab
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 on and so forth, that that
little beard could get quite contestive. Yeah, and certainly we've
(06:34):
been shaving beards for a while. Um, I mean we
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 methods. But we have found archaeological
(06:56):
evidence dating back to one thousand BC of into dual
shaving their beards clearly with some sort of flint instruments,
you know, the first razors if you will. Indeed, um,
it should not go unnoted that bearded ladies make appearances
throughout history, yes, right. Um. I wanted to point out
that some of this is due to something called hair sudism,
(07:18):
which is a variant of hypertrichosis, also known as the
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,
(07:39):
those weren't actually ladies. They were just dudes to put
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,
(08:03):
and apparently sometimes too, it would be a cover for
somebody who's having an affair in a nixed 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. Public feel like that's the
usage that sticks with us more these days. Yeah, it's
(08:24):
sort of this idea that you could give this 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. I'm
(08:49):
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 I hear of 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
(09:10):
and punishment 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, I think it's a commentary society is.
(09:33):
It's some wonderful commentary throwne in to what is still
a very silly sketch. But that's 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
(09:54):
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, front loaded 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
(10:16):
also 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,
(10:38):
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
(11:03):
appear for just you know, fractions of a second and
some of the best, Yeah, that allow you to get
gains an 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
(11:25):
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 sin. This is the two thousand and 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
(11:46):
they looked 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 and they arranged uh,
pretty wildly there's you know, there there are some very
conservative looking monkey faces that it is 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. And then others are you know, like
(12:08):
crazy must red faced, mustachioed, you know, crazy eyebrow like
you know crazy monkey pictures. Yeah, like very like punk
rock monk 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 prone to live
(12:30):
in in packs and small groups. Um. And so what
is the correlation between facial complexity uh and uh and
and social activity? As it turns out, the crazier the
face on the primates in the study, the more solitary
the monkey, whereas the planer faced monkeys were more likely
to live in in some sort of a close knit
(12:52):
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 face is a 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,
this is the billboard I'm going to use to communicate
(13:13):
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 the crazy faces they're standing out on their own
because they don't have to use this. But the planer
faced monkeys, they're using this as a communication system. And
it's like a like a satellite dish. If you want
(13:34):
to pick up a signal, you want to have it
cleaned off. You don't want to 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 to put on as
much of the the makeup exactly nature's makeup as possible. Um.
(13:58):
I do 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,
so it would make sense that whatever is crossing your
face is really going to inform another person about how
(14:18):
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
see the variances in skin color and humans, so that
(14:38):
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.
So what does allays have to with facial hair? Well,
(15:01):
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 you know, at least like half your face. It's
so it's it's it can be used as a means
(15:23):
of masking what you're actually feeling. Well, and I like
this idea of uh putting on a mask of power
to right. 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 South Wales.
He has a lot to say on this topic. Um.
(15:45):
He has a couple of different studies out right now.
And in fact, if you go to his website, he's
at Dixon with an S by the way, d I
X S O N. Does he himself of a beard. Yes,
if you go to his website, not only will you
see his glorious beard, which is um, you're not with
a mustache, by the way, you will also be able
to participate in a couple of online studies and see
(16:06):
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 status,
and aggressiveness, but not attractiveness. Dixon and Paul L. Vacy
(16:30):
take a look at the power and structure of vis
via beard and an 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,
who himself had a big beard later in life after
earlier in life having glorious beard. But they go on
(16:54):
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
rate bearded faces as more attractive than clean shaven faces.
In fact, women from both of those groups judge bearded
(17:18):
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
is more important and more established, and you know, that's
gonna that's gonna weigh weigh in other things. Uh. But
but most of the the studies that we were looking
(17:40):
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. In other words, guys,
you're growing that beard because you have something to say
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
(18:01):
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
a sort of sort of suiting up a manning up
and again assuming a power roll. And if you look
at a paper by D. Caroline Blanchard which was published
(18:24):
in Behavioral Neuroscience, UM, they begin to see the animal
world being pulled in in the form of lions and
their means. Yeah, yeah, you know, this was 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
(18:45):
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 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,
(19:08):
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
the way humans have it 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
(19:30):
you know, the the odd bite and maybe you know,
you know, at some point someone realizes, 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 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
(19:50):
you're lion 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 of the more fragile parts of the hand,
the moans and muscles when when you ball up. So
(20:11):
the idea here is that that we have we have
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 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,
(20:32):
before we eventually get to where we're creating spears and
swords and axes and 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 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
(20:55):
striking each other on the chin, then you've got the
beard that kind of buffers the impact of that, right right.
And of course they don't really go into a mention
in the study, but humans today are not above biting
into the foe, son or an ear. Yeah, so I
can only imagine that that would have played apart as well, indeed,
I'm sure. And naturally Blanchard brings up something called the
(21:17):
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
a protective feature of human beards, and that this is interesting.
The technical and competition rules of the International Amateur Boxing
(21:39):
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
see those rules if I'm not mistaken in mixed martial arts,
because you do see bearded individuals partaking in combat there.
I guess I mainly thinking of I only know older dudes,
(22:02):
but like like Dan Severn, 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, I'm just
thinking about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln of course describe the wrestler,
and he had the beard going on for sure, macho man,
Randy Savage, professional wrestler, but that he had a great beard, um,
(22:25):
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 way that the face is perceived and
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 you have. Peter Gallagher,
(22:47):
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. He
could have been the ultimate alpha male. Well, but 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,
(23:09):
it could be catastrophe. It could be someone set him
down once said Peter, you have amazing eyebrows, and that
you must promise himust swear a blood oath and never
to grow a beard. All right, let's take a break
and when we get back, we are going to discuss
why Billy nays Is beard made him the success that
you are. All right, We're back, and uh, we said,
(23:35):
we're going to talk about Billy Mays, the infomercial superstar,
the Pitchman. Pitchman. Yeah, um, a huge beard, I mean,
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,
(23:59):
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
were deemed more credible than those who were clean shaven,
and the study 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
(24:21):
out that and then with beards had great We're seen
as having greater expertise and more trustworthy when they were
hawking 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 huh. Okay uh. Participants
preferred clean shaven. Then when it came to underwear, I
(24:44):
was thinking, perhaps it's subconscious the association of you know,
a lot of hair 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? U. I
guess I would prefer someone without a beard, um, but
but not so much. I mean, I guess it comes
(25:04):
down to if are you talking about an underwear model
or just an underwear pitchman, and is the pitchman wearing Um,
I think that they were talking about the pitchman as
the model. Okay, well I would, I guess, or maybe
that's a good question, that's a very good question. Well
maybe I'm just more attractive to beardless guys, because I
would I would want to be sold by underwear by
(25:24):
you know, they beardless underwear model, but a man with
a beard who is selling the underwear. 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
(25:45):
to the clean shaven pitchman. They're both trying to sell
you underwear. I don't know that. Now, that's 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
(26:06):
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 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.
(26:29):
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 of protection against punches
to the face, how the beard may mask our ability
to communicate via our our facial features with the members
(26:49):
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 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,
(27:12):
mild beard. And then the other one they gave it
long beard, big, long, thick beard. To see how these
mannequins are affected by the u V rays based on
their level of facial hair, 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
(27:35):
your chances of having skin cancer. Yeah, so a huge
health benefit, right, Yeah, And certainly it brings me back
to the you know, Tom hankson Castaway and 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
(27:57):
this would be a protective cover throughout the ages, 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 think about it that
you think of like a picture 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
(28:19):
yet all you have to do is worry about the nose.
And if you were to wear say a pair of
you know, gradual Marx glasses or humpy hump glasses. On
top of that, you would have complete coverage and while
what image you would be projecting, Yeah, pretty faculty, 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
(28:40):
about them in a field, and I immediately began to
imagine instead of body farms, we would have these mannequin
head farms, various growth 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 Electric TV show, which there are
(29:03):
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 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
(29:25):
by this survey. I mean, this study and finds the
heads of clean shaved, mildly bearded, and super bearded men
and then cut their heads off 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
(29:46):
UV 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, the
inst degree in terms of I was going to the integrity. Yeah.
And also 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
(30:09):
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 it's this is some low
hanging fruit. There's really no reason to go cutting 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 doing that, why are you
(30:31):
listening to podcasts that way? That's not you're not going
to get a full spectrum there of information. Uh but yeah,
this this is just an a 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
(30:52):
sunny field, and it's, uh, it's a little creepy. Alright. Well,
researchers barn and B. J. Dickson, our friend that we
mentioned before, and Robert C. Brooks photographed ten 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
(31:12):
one women and one hundred and seventy seven men, had
them view photos and rate each face for attractiveness, masculinity, health,
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.
(31:34):
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,
but uh, grown out enough where it starts to soften.
I'm gonna guess because that didn't that also, yeah, because
also isn't like really scratchy. It's like a burliopath. It's
the worst. It seems like it's bad for everyone. It's
(31:55):
gonna scratch the woman's face and then the man is
itching like crazy and thinking, why am I trying to
grow a beard again? This is why I shaved every
couple of days, although I'm sure for women there there
are some exfoliation benefits. Um. Okay, So participants said that
the clean shaven men the participants meaning the men and
the women, thought the clean shoven men looked about as
(32:18):
healthy and attractive as those with a full beard, but
they raided the bearded men higher for perceived parenting skills.
That was fascinating. Light stubble got the shaft, like, yeah,
just in general, so if you've got some white stubble, um,
you got the short of the step. Here. When I
say light stubble, that's that five day growth not quite
(32:39):
there kind of spotty. Yeah, uh yeah, low scores exactly
like are you hungover? Are you what are you doing here?
Is there your 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
(33:01):
of those things where it gets so complicated when you
start thinking of beards, as you know, from from a
purely biological standpoint, and then from a cultural standpoint, and
then when we factor other things 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
(33:23):
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 kind of thing. Um. So,
so it gets complicated with humans. Well, it's just Sampson
And although right didn't right when when he was clean shaven,
it was gone. Well then that goes into some very
(33:44):
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 you take grab somebody about
a beard, it's like the ultimate insult. And it certainly
if you if you cut someone's beard, then it's just
the just an enormous upfront in in varying beard heavy cultures. Yeah, alright,
(34:05):
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 some of his characters who have
been childlike? Uh, would get into creepy territory? Or is it?
I mean, does the beard kind of helped him negate
(34:25):
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 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
(34:47):
of the little tidbit that I found. I thought was
really interesting, and it is that some men who grow
out a beard or a mustache are surprised that their
facial hair is ginger colored. Oh, 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
(35:08):
and very red skin. Interesting son pop up in those
areas of your face, but not on your head. Well,
and then of course it's a lot of times it
will grow out gray when you don't. Isn't really doing that,
and we'll reveal 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.
(35:29):
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
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
(35:53):
that's gonna be pretty treby in some areas. I mean,
walk into Brooklyn with that and gets the right in.
I just feel like that's best left to Daniel day Lewis. Well, oh,
you're right some people. I you know, I'm sorry, I
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
(36:15):
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,
because you just don't look right without it. Um. So yeah,
it's really gotta be a case by case It's true.
(36:35):
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,
and I was thinking that Grumpy Cat would totally sport
whole Cogan. You think the whole Cogan beard, which which mustache?
(36:59):
The mustache 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, 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
(37:21):
his chest and he but he did have a heart
shaved into this chest. So hairy chest except for the
shape of a That is the ultimate act of hyper
masculinity right there, right like I have such a hairy
chest that I can now actually assume some femininity here
in my expression of emotions. He a heart? Yeah, well,
(37:44):
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? I have you know the West
Bentley beard that he has in that with all the
flames and that one is that one's one to think about.
I'm not sure where I stand on that. I guess
it's the future. So all right, well, there you go.
There's a little insight into the science of the beard. Uh.
(38:06):
There are a lot of cool studies out there, and
we highlighted some of the more interesting ones we think.
But if you've come across anything, let us know. There's
always new science brewing, uh, growing to the surface and uh.
And also we'd love to hear your thoughts about beards
in your life, your own beard, if you have one,
how do you feel it alters the value proposition of
(38:28):
of you the human? How does it alter your interactions
with those around you? Or if you are you're not bearded,
or even if you are, then then then how do
you take in the beards in your life or in
popular media or in fiction? What are some of the
best beards? What are some of the worst. We'd love
to hear from you. Let us know. You can find
us all over the place. Our main website, of course,
(38:49):
is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, but we're
on Facebook where we are Stuff to Blow your Mind.
We're also stuff to Blow your Mind on Tumbler, were
below the Mind, on Twitter and on YouTube. Our channel
is minds Stuff Show. And if you want to tell
us a little story, about how you are perceived with
or without a beard. If you've had the experience of both,
you can always send us a note at below the
(39:09):
mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
named for me. Your favorite beards. And in the world
out there of bearded faces, which which one's called you
(00:23):
the most? You mean the wearer of it? No, I'm
just saying, like beards that you I mean. I guess
it's harder. How do you separate the wearer from the beard?
How 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. It's a good beard. It's
a friendly beard. It's it's a coron. That was an
(00:43):
awful pronunciation of very current. Um, it's a good it's
a solid beard. But you know one of my favorite
beerds of all time, a pretty gray Yes, this is
the biogere intelligence. 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
(01:05):
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 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 enough to
(01:27):
him 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
have a new view of Arportugray 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
(01:48):
all these varying degrees of beards from from the very
trustworthy to be disastrous. And there's there's like a dozen
of them on here, and uh, on the far end
of the very trustworthy scape, 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 grays beer. If you go on the other end
(02:08):
of the spectrum, then you have to encounter a Hitler
mustache and a pencil fin mustache. Say that pencil 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
(02:30):
funny on this particular infographic is that the the Hitler
mustache and the John Waters mustache right below that is
a full werewolf. So I'm glad that hyperdricosis made the list. Yeah. Um,
and I'll tell you one beerd 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
(02:54):
to go with this online. Now I have to mention
before we launch into beer and we really look at
the science be find them. Um that 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
(03:16):
at where those rank on this particular trustworthiness of beards
and certainly the chops that the chops 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, you know, 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,
(03:40):
sideburns of science. See, I'm thinking we'll do one about
beards as well to go with this episode. 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 Stan j R. Ferguson
has this huge beard. I don't know if you're up
to that point. Yeah, And so illustrator yea, the illustrator
(04:00):
massive beard, and uh, I was looking up I found
an interview with him and he says that when he
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
(04:21):
you see it in on that So so virile was
his beard. Yeah, I had to tame it back. You
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.
(04:45):
The beard I actually think softens that a bit. Yeah,
I think you're right. Yeah, because yeah, he's he's a
far more levable 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 about it than me 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,
(05:06):
this guy's got personality. Yeah, and he I guess it's
the only I can't think of any of other characters
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 at 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,
(05:29):
because presumably or this was the thought actually that if
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 actually a fair
number of Unix plays, varying roles in society, sometimes very
(05:53):
important roles. Um. Which reminds me we do need 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
(06:13):
off if we're going into combat, because somebody could grab
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 on and so forth, that that
little beard could get quite contestive. Yeah, and certainly we've
(06:34):
been shaving beards for a while. Um, I mean we
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 methods. But we have found archaeological
(06:56):
evidence dating back to one thousand BC of into dual
shaving their beards clearly with some sort of flint instruments,
you know, the first razors if you will. Indeed, um,
it should not go unnoted that bearded ladies make appearances
throughout history, yes, right. Um. I wanted to point out
that some of this is due to something called hair sudism,
(07:18):
which is a variant of hypertrichosis, also known as the
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,
(07:39):
those weren't actually ladies. They were just dudes to put
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,
(08:03):
and apparently sometimes too, it would be a cover for
somebody who's having an affair in a nixed 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. Public feel like that's the
usage that sticks with us more these days. Yeah, it's
(08:24):
sort of this idea that you could give this 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. I'm
(08:49):
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 I hear of 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
(09:10):
and punishment 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, I think it's a commentary society is.
(09:33):
It's some wonderful commentary throwne in to what is still
a very silly sketch. But that's 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
(09:54):
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, front loaded 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
(10:16):
also 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,
(10:38):
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
(11:03):
appear for just you know, fractions of a second and
some of the best, Yeah, that allow you to get
gains an 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
(11:25):
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 sin. This is the two thousand and 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
(11:46):
they looked 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 and they arranged uh,
pretty wildly there's you know, there there are some very
conservative looking monkey faces that it is 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. And then others are you know, like
(12:08):
crazy must red faced, mustachioed, you know, crazy eyebrow like
you know crazy monkey pictures. Yeah, like very like punk
rock monk 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 prone to live
(12:30):
in in packs and small groups. Um. And so what
is the correlation between facial complexity uh and uh and
and social activity? As it turns out, the crazier the
face on the primates in the study, the more solitary
the monkey, whereas the planer faced monkeys were more likely
to live in in some sort of a close knit
(12:52):
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 face is a 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,
this is the billboard I'm going to use to communicate
(13:13):
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 the crazy faces they're standing out on their own
because they don't have to use this. But the planer
faced monkeys, they're using this as a communication system. And
it's like a like a satellite dish. If you want
(13:34):
to pick up a signal, you want to have it
cleaned off. You don't want to 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 to put on as
much of the the makeup exactly nature's makeup as possible. Um.
(13:58):
I do 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,
so it would make sense that whatever is crossing your
face is really going to inform another person about how
(14:18):
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
see the variances in skin color and humans, so that
(14:38):
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.
So what does allays have to with facial hair? Well,
(15:01):
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 you know, at least like half your face. It's
so it's it's it can be used as a means
(15:23):
of masking what you're actually feeling. Well, and I like
this idea of uh putting on a mask of power
to right. 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 South Wales.
He has a lot to say on this topic. Um.
(15:45):
He has a couple of different studies out right now.
And in fact, if you go to his website, he's
at Dixon with an S by the way, d I
X S O N. Does he himself of a beard. Yes,
if you go to his website, not only will you
see his glorious beard, which is um, you're not with
a mustache, by the way, you will also be able
to participate in a couple of online studies and see
(16:06):
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 status,
and aggressiveness, but not attractiveness. Dixon and Paul L. Vacy
(16:30):
take a look at the power and structure of vis
via beard and an 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,
who himself had a big beard later in life after
earlier in life having glorious beard. But they go on
(16:54):
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
rate bearded faces as more attractive than clean shaven faces.
In fact, women from both of those groups judge bearded
(17:18):
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
is more important and more established, and you know, that's
gonna that's gonna weigh weigh in other things. Uh. But
but most of the the studies that we were looking
(17:40):
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. In other words, guys,
you're growing that beard because you have something to say
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
(18:01):
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
a sort of sort of suiting up a manning up
and again assuming a power roll. And if you look
at a paper by D. Caroline Blanchard which was published
(18:24):
in Behavioral Neuroscience, UM, they begin to see the animal
world being pulled in in the form of lions and
their means. Yeah, yeah, you know, this was 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
(18:45):
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 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,
(19:08):
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
the way humans have it 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
(19:30):
you know, the the odd bite and maybe you know,
you know, at some point someone realizes, 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 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
(19:50):
you're lion 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 of the more fragile parts of the hand,
the moans and muscles when when you ball up. So
(20:11):
the idea here is that that we have we have
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 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,
(20:32):
before we eventually get to where we're creating spears and
swords and axes and 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 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
(20:55):
striking each other on the chin, then you've got the
beard that kind of buffers the impact of that, right right.
And of course they don't really go into a mention
in the study, but humans today are not above biting
into the foe, son or an ear. Yeah, so I
can only imagine that that would have played apart as well, indeed,
I'm sure. And naturally Blanchard brings up something called the
(21:17):
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
a protective feature of human beards, and that this is interesting.
The technical and competition rules of the International Amateur Boxing
(21:39):
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
see those rules if I'm not mistaken in mixed martial arts,
because you do see bearded individuals partaking in combat there.
I guess I mainly thinking of I only know older dudes,
(22:02):
but like like Dan Severn, 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, I'm just
thinking about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln of course describe the wrestler,
and he had the beard going on for sure, macho man,
Randy Savage, professional wrestler, but that he had a great beard, um,
(22:25):
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 way that the face is perceived and
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 you have. Peter Gallagher,
(22:47):
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. He
could have been the ultimate alpha male. Well, but 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,
(23:09):
it could be catastrophe. It could be someone set him
down once said Peter, you have amazing eyebrows, and that
you must promise himust swear a blood oath and never
to grow a beard. All right, let's take a break
and when we get back, we are going to discuss
why Billy nays Is beard made him the success that
you are. All right, We're back, and uh, we said,
(23:35):
we're going to talk about Billy Mays, the infomercial superstar,
the Pitchman. Pitchman. Yeah, um, a huge beard, I mean,
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,
(23:59):
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
were deemed more credible than those who were clean shaven,
and the study 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
(24:21):
out that and then with beards had great We're seen
as having greater expertise and more trustworthy when they were
hawking 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 huh. Okay uh. Participants
preferred clean shaven. Then when it came to underwear, I
(24:44):
was thinking, perhaps it's subconscious the association of you know,
a lot of hair 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? U. I
guess I would prefer someone without a beard, um, but
but not so much. I mean, I guess it comes
(25:04):
down to if are you talking about an underwear model
or just an underwear pitchman, and is the pitchman wearing Um,
I think that they were talking about the pitchman as
the model. Okay, well I would, I guess, or maybe
that's a good question, that's a very good question. Well
maybe I'm just more attractive to beardless guys, because I
would I would want to be sold by underwear by
(25:24):
you know, they beardless underwear model, but a man with
a beard who is selling the underwear. 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
(25:45):
to the clean shaven pitchman. They're both trying to sell
you underwear. I don't know that. Now, that's 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
(26:06):
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 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.
(26:29):
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 of protection against punches
to the face, how the beard may mask our ability
to communicate via our our facial features with the members
(26:49):
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 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,
(27:12):
mild beard. And then the other one they gave it
long beard, big, long, thick beard. To see how these
mannequins are affected by the u V rays based on
their level of facial hair, 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
(27:35):
your chances of having skin cancer. Yeah, so a huge
health benefit, right, Yeah, And certainly it brings me back
to the you know, Tom hankson Castaway and 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
(27:57):
this would be a protective cover throughout the ages, 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 think about it that
you think of like a picture 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
(28:19):
yet all you have to do is worry about the nose.
And if you were to wear say a pair of
you know, gradual Marx glasses or humpy hump glasses. On
top of that, you would have complete coverage and while
what image you would be projecting, Yeah, pretty faculty, 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
(28:40):
about them in a field, and I immediately began to
imagine instead of body farms, we would have these mannequin
head farms, various growth 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 Electric TV show, which there are
(29:03):
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 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
(29:25):
by this survey. I mean, this study and finds the
heads of clean shaved, mildly bearded, and super bearded men
and then cut their heads off 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
(29:46):
UV 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, the
inst degree in terms of I was going to the integrity. Yeah.
And also 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
(30:09):
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 it's this is some low
hanging fruit. There's really no reason to go cutting 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 doing that, why are you
(30:31):
listening to podcasts that way? That's not you're not going
to get a full spectrum there of information. Uh but yeah,
this this is just an a 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
(30:52):
sunny field, and it's, uh, it's a little creepy. Alright. Well,
researchers barn and B. J. Dickson, our friend that we
mentioned before, and Robert C. Brooks photographed ten 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
(31:12):
one women and one hundred and seventy seven men, had
them view photos and rate each face for attractiveness, masculinity, health,
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.
(31:34):
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,
but uh, grown out enough where it starts to soften.
I'm gonna guess because that didn't that also, yeah, because
also isn't like really scratchy. It's like a burliopath. It's
the worst. It seems like it's bad for everyone. It's
(31:55):
gonna scratch the woman's face and then the man is
itching like crazy and thinking, why am I trying to
grow a beard again? This is why I shaved every
couple of days, although I'm sure for women there there
are some exfoliation benefits. Um. Okay, So participants said that
the clean shaven men the participants meaning the men and
the women, thought the clean shoven men looked about as
(32:18):
healthy and attractive as those with a full beard, but
they raided the bearded men higher for perceived parenting skills.
That was fascinating. Light stubble got the shaft, like, yeah,
just in general, so if you've got some white stubble, um,
you got the short of the step. Here. When I
say light stubble, that's that five day growth not quite
(32:39):
there kind of spotty. Yeah, uh yeah, low scores exactly
like are you hungover? Are you what are you doing here?
Is there your 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
(33:01):
of those things where it gets so complicated when you
start thinking of beards, as you know, from from a
purely biological standpoint, and then from a cultural standpoint, and
then when we factor other things 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
(33:23):
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 kind of thing. Um. So,
so it gets complicated with humans. Well, it's just Sampson
And although right didn't right when when he was clean shaven,
it was gone. Well then that goes into some very
(33:44):
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 you take grab somebody about
a beard, it's like the ultimate insult. And it certainly
if you if you cut someone's beard, then it's just
the just an enormous upfront in in varying beard heavy cultures. Yeah, alright,
(34:05):
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 some of his characters who have
been childlike? Uh, would get into creepy territory? Or is it?
I mean, does the beard kind of helped him negate
(34:25):
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 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
(34:47):
of the little tidbit that I found. I thought was
really interesting, and it is that some men who grow
out a beard or a mustache are surprised that their
facial hair is ginger colored. Oh, 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
(35:08):
and very red skin. Interesting son pop up in those
areas of your face, but not on your head. Well,
and then of course it's a lot of times it
will grow out gray when you don't. Isn't really doing that,
and we'll reveal 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.
(35:29):
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
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
(35:53):
that's gonna be pretty treby in some areas. I mean,
walk into Brooklyn with that and gets the right in.
I just feel like that's best left to Daniel day Lewis. Well, oh,
you're right some people. I you know, I'm sorry, I
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
(36:15):
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,
because you just don't look right without it. Um. So yeah,
it's really gotta be a case by case It's true.
(36:35):
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,
and I was thinking that Grumpy Cat would totally sport
whole Cogan. You think the whole Cogan beard, which which mustache?
(36:59):
The mustache 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, 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
(37:21):
his chest and he but he did have a heart
shaved into this chest. So hairy chest except for the
shape of a That is the ultimate act of hyper
masculinity right there, right like I have such a hairy
chest that I can now actually assume some femininity here
in my expression of emotions. He a heart? Yeah, well,
(37:44):
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? I have you know the West
Bentley beard that he has in that with all the
flames and that one is that one's one to think about.
I'm not sure where I stand on that. I guess
it's the future. So all right, well, there you go.
There's a little insight into the science of the beard. Uh.
(38:06):
There are a lot of cool studies out there, and
we highlighted some of the more interesting ones we think.
But if you've come across anything, let us know. There's
always new science brewing, uh, growing to the surface and uh.
And also we'd love to hear your thoughts about beards
in your life, your own beard, if you have one,
how do you feel it alters the value proposition of
(38:28):
of you the human? How does it alter your interactions
with those around you? Or if you are you're not bearded,
or even if you are, then then then how do
you take in the beards in your life or in
popular media or in fiction? What are some of the
best beards? What are some of the worst. We'd love
to hear from you. Let us know. You can find
us all over the place. Our main website, of course,
(38:49):
is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, but we're
on Facebook where we are Stuff to Blow your Mind.
We're also stuff to Blow your Mind on Tumbler, were
below the Mind, on Twitter and on YouTube. Our channel
is minds Stuff Show. And if you want to tell
us a little story, about how you are perceived with
or without a beard. If you've had the experience of both,
you can always send us a note at below the
(39:09):
mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
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