The young, blond man is sitting near me in the subway, at the end of a chilled & sunny summer day.
Gut feeling about that? Hell, yes.
He's tall and he is hot and he's wearing glasses and... I surprise myself at doing it again.
While sitting absolutely motionless and apparently distracted near him and looking somewhere else in front of me, I am actually undressing him on my mind.
Yes, exactly. I am imagining him without his huge hipster beard and, virtually, undressing his beautiful face and asking myself if he would be even more handsome without a beard.
["Rire dans sa barbe", a popular French idiomatic expression
not directly translatable into English,
as depicted by Auckland-based designer Anjana Iyer...
with a huge hipster beard, of course]
Gut feeling about that? Hell, yes.
Sorry for not being sorry about that.
And I'm on tonight
You know my hips don't lie
And I'm starting to feel it's right
All the attraction, the tension
Don't you see baby, this is perfection
Shakira, Hips Don't Lie
(Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, 2006)
And... I can't help asking myself and wondering and struggling about... why.
Sometimes amused, sometimes curious, sometimes depressed, while seeing just another man that without a beard would be awesome and way more attractive and that unfortunately with his beard looks just like... Rasputin.
[Yep, we are talking about this guy.
Does he look like the hipster near you?
I thought so too]
Over time, as the hipster hype has grown bigger and bigger in Berlin in the last five to six years, I started to think that most of those men wear a beard in order to look more wild, grown-up and masculine. To be taken seriously. To be treated like big guys.
How far can someone go, with his own facial hair, in order not to feel reduced to "just" a pretty baby face?
A shaven, interesting man I met at some point suggested that maybe today's beards are something like those big-ass sunglasses that women used to wear some years ago, just a way to hide their faces so that no one could think that they are ugly or that something important is missing...
Or are they just lazy? Uhm...
[Hipster beards? There's no place for laziness here, sir.
We are talking about serious beard business, no doubt about that]
It would not really make sense, since a well-groomed hipster beard is a serious business, and it requires a lot of care, attention, and (apparently, at least in Berlin...) specialized barbershops and fancy products.
Vulnerability is critical for both intellectual and emotional intelligence. When people are not willing to be vulnerable, they don’t get what they need, both intellectually and emotionally.
Ben Michaelis, PhD
Therefore, if they can't really be considered lazy...
If they are not just sheeplessy following the latest beauty trend... What's the point of all that trimming and beard buttering?
Are they trying to hide something instead? What exactly?
To be perceived differently from who they really are? Or are they just lying to themselves, with that?
Can I beard lie in an effective way?
I will focus on this important question, the next time that I will be about to undress yet another (maybe...) beautiful bearded face.
This one is for Vincent.
And for Tal H., the one and only that looks even hotter with a beard.
And for Tal H., the one and only that looks even hotter with a beard.
Tags: Beards, Berlin, Hipster, Lyrics, Quotes, Male beauty
What to read next:
