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