You ever wondered what the society thinks about your beard and what it says about you in the eyes of the general masses?
Well, we did too. And as Kings Grooming, we decided to uncover the studies and facts behind the real significance of beards.
Symbol of dominance & status
What is in a beard? Well, other than approximately 30,00 hairs of course! It is now becoming an ever increasingly held belief that men with beards are perceived as older, stronger and more aggressive than others. A group of Australian researchers ran a study where they showed their 450 adult subjects pictures of happy and angry bearded men, along with pictures that had happy and angry clean-shaven men. As to be expected, the bearded men were rated higher on the scale of masculinity and aggressiveness.
Surprisingly enough, some evidence suggests that the evolutionary reason for beard growth might not be to appear more attractive in the eyes of women, but instead to show dominance and social status to other men.
This would in part explain the modern-day phenomenon called “beard envy” in which beardless men feel anger, low self-esteem, and jealousy towards their bearded peers.
Patience & self-restraint
Considering that the average facial hair growth rate is ½-inch per month, it really takes months, even years to grow a big beard. Growing a beard shows surprising strength of character to lay down the razor and not shave your face when everyone expects you to shave – and the early growth usually looks unkempt and bad – it takes a lot of self-restraint and patience to carry on and let your facial hair grow in month after month.
For this reason, many people associate big beards with being patient and having the ability to hold back instead of following the masses.
Patience is a virtue, and self-restraint is considered a respectable act. Facial hair thus signals that you’re capable of both of these, and that really is one of the big subconscious benefits of beards.
Masculinity & manliness
The religious significance of a beard suggests that facial hair would be a symbol of man, and one of the most evident differentiation between masculine and feminine. From a non-religious evolutionary perspective, the beard also symbolizes masculinity, as it grows in response to the male hormones or androgens; testosterone and DHT. No matter what kind of belief-system you live in, you can’t ever really disassociate the beard from its connection to masculinity and the man.
Attractiveness
Do women like bearded men more than clean-shaven men?
The answer is that it depends highly on the individual. Some women prefer clean-shaven men, others like the rugged look of stubble, and some dig full beards.
In a study by Neave et al. women rated men with varying degrees of beardedness as more attractive than clean-shaven men. The winner in this study was the heavy-stubble of about 10-days of growth.
Perhaps the most interesting study comes from Dixson et al. which manipulated men’s images from four different beard lengths in either to be more feminine or more masculine and then showed them to women to rate for attractiveness. What they found out was that the heavy-stubble was again reported as the most attractive facial hair style, followed by a full beard and light-stubble.
There is, however, one study which suggests that women may prefer clean-shaven faces over bearded kind, so it’s not all set in stone.
A questionnaire by Braun showed that men seem to think themselves that facial hair makes them more attractive and confident with facial hair
Beards are freaking awesome, and you should grow one ASAP
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