Beards?

Why in the 19th century did beards get popular in Europe and in America? Just something I'm wondering about; but I read it had something to do with survivors of the French armies only being allowed to grow mustache, forbidding newer recruits from growing facial hair.:confused:
 
What I'm wondering about is why beards went out of style. Seriously, they're damn awesome!

But I think it was something about hygiene. Beards are unsanitary, apparently.
 
Thats just how fashion works, things go in-style they go out of style, then they come back.
 
Why in the 19th century did beards get popular in Europe and in America? Just something I'm wondering about; but I read it had something to do with survivors of the French armies only being allowed to grow mustache, forbidding newer recruits from growing facial hair.:confused:

There's a good article on this subject, from the perspective of fashion in the United States, here.
 
I had a teacher back in high school tell us that WW1 and the image of the clean-cut soldier helped kill the beard. ...But maybe I'd better read that article.

I grew a beard toward the end of college. I was persuaded to shave for my wedding, and consequently all my wedding pictures make me look like a little boy - to me, anyhow.

[edit] Great article! Not a whole lot after 1940-ish, though. Facial hair definitely was in vogue in the 70s, and there have been some subtle ebbs & flows since then. All the secondary characters in "Office Space" have moustaches and glasses with sidebars for a reason - moustaches were unfashionable by then, but still worn by the kind of people satirized in the movie. And nothing whatsoever about black Americans, who continued to sport moustaches throughout the whites' Age of Shaving. Two black Congressmen from my area - Bobby Rush and Danny Davis - wear goatees similar to mine (albeit gray); I'd be very surprised if any white men in Congress did that. Certainly none with gray hair. (Al Gore had one for a while, though, didn't he.) Moustaches also have had greater currency among homosexual men, isn't that right? I guess it's complicated.
 
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In his autobiography, Stefan Zweig gives two arguments for beards, specifically for Austria in the very late 19th and beginning 20th century:

1. To make men look older, or to obscure their youth.
This seemed to refer primarily to Austria. He describes at length how Austrian society was all about stability and reliability; youth was a sysnonym of potential trouble-making ideas, while old age promised "experience" and calmness.

2. A more universal argument:
Everything reminding of sexuality was usually hidden. This included (though mainly for women) the obscuration of all bodily details (quotation: "A bridegroom could not even remotely guess the physique of his future companion during the wedding dinner; he could not tell whether had grown straight or buckled, whether she was long- or short-legged").
So this rose the question with what to cover all individual details. And fashion selected a caricature of a standardized man and of a stan woman respectively which all had to converge to. This involved a corsaged wasp waist for women, and voluminous beards for men.
Ironically, the timidity of everything sexual lead to underlining sexual attributes.
 
Basically, it was a nascent trend that happened to match up with the Crimean War. And then during the war, beards proved tremendously useful during the harsh winter, so the British Army suddenly flipped from officially disapproving of facial hair to officially encouraging it. From British soliders, the fashion trend spread to both the British public and American soldiers, and when the Civil War broke out, beards became a symbol of masculinity in general in America.
 
About a year ago I grew a moustasche and a 1cm broad string from my
lower lip down to my chin, I look like a musketeer, it is rather fun
having it though it demands constant maitenance not to mention
wax.
 
That's also how Hitler got his trademark Charlie-Chaplin-moustache. He had a bigger one before the war (there are some photos of him, but I don't have them now), but then... so yeah.
 
I had a teacher back in high school tell us that WW1 and the image of the clean-cut soldier helped kill the beard. ...But maybe I'd better read that article.

Yes, and the propagation of electric hair clippers helped make soldier-short hair the norm. Actually, the period from the mid teen to the mid sixties will be remembered as the "short hair only era." Since the eighties, there has been practically no "wrong" way for men to wear their hair.

That's also how Hitler got his trademark Charlie-Chaplin-moustache. He had a bigger one before the war (there are some photos of him, but I don't have them now), but then... so yeah.

According to a documentary, Hitler wanted a distinctive "look" in the twenties. He noted that the newly emerging art of cinema depicted heroes with a young "ladies' man" look. Yet real-world national heroes like Lincoln and Lenin had very different but very distinctive looks. So, he cut his mustache and hair to assume a distinctive look.
 
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