How facial hair styles have changed through history
How facial hair styles have changed through history
Where did this mustache come from?
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Transcript
Dr. Christopher Oldstone-Moore: Hungarian cavalry men who wore these great long black mustaches. And they had an elaborate outfit with the bearskin caps and the feathers and the leopard pelt, saddles.
They looked fabulous. They looked fantastic. They looked fearsome as they charged forward on their horses. Fabulous. Fantastic. Fearsome. Words that certainly describe this mustache. But where do unique facial hair trends like this come from? Chris: The basic thing that needs to be recognized is that facial hair is a form of social communication.
Its changes over time have indicated new messages
that men collectively, in a social context, are trying to express. Chris: It's not a matter of style. It's not a matter of technology. It's a matter of those social changes. And they happen relatively rarely. So rarely that our expert identifies only four major facial hair movements in all of Western history. In between, the default style always goes back to shaving. It all started in second-century Rome with Emperor Hadrian, whose decision to grow a beard got pretty deep. Chris: There was a philosophical reason to have a beard, and that was that, he's following the dictates and laws of nature. Hadrian wasn’t just saying he looked good. To him, not shaving was a nod of respect to the natural world. Hadrian also started a trend. For the next few hundred years, everyone who was anyone in the Roman world had a beard. Our second beard movement skips ahead to the Middle Ages, when two major powers tried to distinguish themselves through style. Get ready for a battle of knights vs. clergy. Chris: There was a kind of a definitive move to beards among the laity, the knights, the kings, the lords, to have beards in the Middle Ages.
But not the clergy. Because the clergy had carried forward the Roman tradition of shaving and made that a distinctive mark of the priesthood.
And so you had two patriarchies, each with their own facial hair style. This era ends up influencing the next beard trend a few centuries later. The Renaissance was an era of art, science—and new ideas about facial hair. Chris: In the late Renaissance, there’s another move back to beards. Chris: Because they are saying we have a new, more secular idea of manliness. And we're moving away from the values of the church.
And we're adopting our own secular ideals and we’re going to mark that by growing beards. Chris: And then finally there's a last major return to beards in the late 19th century. That’s when we get facial hair styles like this—and this—and even this. Ready to get political? Chris: One of the main reasons to grow a beard in the 19th century is because political rights were defined as the rights of men.
This is the very very moment, it's EXACTLY the same moment, men are growing beards that women are saying 'we need rights.'
Men are trying to defend their territory, they're trying to assert their exclusive right to that zone. Now, we’re not saying that everyone with facial hair wants to stop women from voting. Some trends have more to do with certain jobs or social groups than one specific beard movement. And people can decide to grow facial hair for all sorts of normal, non-ideological reasons. But maybe rewatch this video before trying no-shave November, just in case.
They looked fabulous. They looked fantastic. They looked fearsome as they charged forward on their horses. Fabulous. Fantastic. Fearsome. Words that certainly describe this mustache. But where do unique facial hair trends like this come from? Chris: The basic thing that needs to be recognized is that facial hair is a form of social communication.
Its changes over time have indicated new messages
that men collectively, in a social context, are trying to express. Chris: It's not a matter of style. It's not a matter of technology. It's a matter of those social changes. And they happen relatively rarely. So rarely that our expert identifies only four major facial hair movements in all of Western history. In between, the default style always goes back to shaving. It all started in second-century Rome with Emperor Hadrian, whose decision to grow a beard got pretty deep. Chris: There was a philosophical reason to have a beard, and that was that, he's following the dictates and laws of nature. Hadrian wasn’t just saying he looked good. To him, not shaving was a nod of respect to the natural world. Hadrian also started a trend. For the next few hundred years, everyone who was anyone in the Roman world had a beard. Our second beard movement skips ahead to the Middle Ages, when two major powers tried to distinguish themselves through style. Get ready for a battle of knights vs. clergy. Chris: There was a kind of a definitive move to beards among the laity, the knights, the kings, the lords, to have beards in the Middle Ages.
But not the clergy. Because the clergy had carried forward the Roman tradition of shaving and made that a distinctive mark of the priesthood.
And so you had two patriarchies, each with their own facial hair style. This era ends up influencing the next beard trend a few centuries later. The Renaissance was an era of art, science—and new ideas about facial hair. Chris: In the late Renaissance, there’s another move back to beards. Chris: Because they are saying we have a new, more secular idea of manliness. And we're moving away from the values of the church.
And we're adopting our own secular ideals and we’re going to mark that by growing beards. Chris: And then finally there's a last major return to beards in the late 19th century. That’s when we get facial hair styles like this—and this—and even this. Ready to get political? Chris: One of the main reasons to grow a beard in the 19th century is because political rights were defined as the rights of men.
This is the very very moment, it's EXACTLY the same moment, men are growing beards that women are saying 'we need rights.'
Men are trying to defend their territory, they're trying to assert their exclusive right to that zone. Now, we’re not saying that everyone with facial hair wants to stop women from voting. Some trends have more to do with certain jobs or social groups than one specific beard movement. And people can decide to grow facial hair for all sorts of normal, non-ideological reasons. But maybe rewatch this video before trying no-shave November, just in case.