Does this beard make me look fat? You never quite know what to expect from an episode of the Real Brian Show, but you can expect to enjoy being dragged along to wherever we venture! I have the privilege of co-hosting with Brian, once again, and we go from what's in our cups to discussing the awesomeness happening at the Olympics to realizing some hard truths about social media. Join us for the fun!
The title of this week's episode comes from another conversation he and I had about two years ago! Randomness in the form of Emilee and Brian at its finest. Living in Minnesota, I see more than my share of beards. Some of them are epic, some of them need to be shaved yesterday. But when they're done right they really suit a man and I can appreciate them for their bizarre uniqueness. Not uniqueness in the way they're maintained or shaped, but uniqueness in just considering that human men naturally grow hair on their face. It's so awesomely weird, and still... totally natural.
But isn't it more weird to NOT have a beard? Maybe not in this day and age, but consider generations past. Consider a time before razors and blades. Today, shaving AND not shaving is a decision. It was Alexander the Great who sort of established the norm for shaving in western civilization, but shaving wasn't a concept he invented. Think about classic photographs of noble Egyptians, who strategically shaved their faces and their heads.
Back and forth, the scale was tilted in favor, then not in favor, of shaving. Alexander the Great established shaving as a norm in his time (300s BC), but then the leader of the Roman world, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, intentionally pushed back, grew a beard and established facial hair as a new form of manliness. Historical records account for the resurgence of beards in what they call "Beard Movements", which is interesting because I could find the inversion of that. I couldn't find "Shaving Movements".
It's fascinating. With just a little searching on the interwebs a learned a lot about beards I've never thought of. What side do you come down on? Beard. No beard.