The History of Shaving and Beards
Five o’clock, Goatee, Franz-Josef, Chin Curtain, Royale,
Toothbrush Mustache, Victor Emmanuel, Handlebar, Van Dyke and Verdi.
Written with barber Simon
If you have heard some of these terms before, you will probably realize that we are referring here to style studies from the rather varied and extensive catalogue of beard fashion. Just as shaving techniques and tools have undergone a historical development, so too has male facial hair gone through different phases over the centuries. Here, we will follow both.
Fashion and beauty in all their forms have traditionally been associated with women in modern times, but a quick look through history shows that fashion has at least equally often targeted men, and that men in earlier times were frequently the ones who shaped different trends. Hairstyles, clothing, wigs, beard styles and even makeup in more or less extravagant and flamboyant styles in historical portraits show how outward attributes were used to manifest power, identity or self-definition.
Way back in time, during prehistoric times, there was an awareness and concern for appearance among men that was often rooted in spirituality. Makeup and hairstyles contained religious and ritual symbolism, which for example found expression in the body painting of ancient cultures. We do not really know why people began shaving as early as around 30,000 BC, but it is assumed that cavemen at some point discovered that pieces of flint could be sharpened and used as razor blades. Attempts were also reportedly made with seashells, until metalworking began around 3000 BC, giving access to new materials and methods for removing beard growth. They were perhaps not exactly producing Gillette or Feather, but it was a beginning.
Makeup and hairstyles contained religious and ritual symbolism.
During ancient times, the form and length of beard growth increasingly came to define status and social belonging. In ancient Egypt, the long, square-shaped chin beard – henna-dyed, woven with gold thread, wool and palm leaves, and perfumed – became a sign of belonging to the nobility and the most prominent classes. If you were of royal blood, and therefore divine, you wore a false beard of shining metal fastened to the chin with a golden band, preferably with the lower part curled upward to emphasize your godlike status. It could hardly get any finer than that.
Otherwise, the Egyptians were almost obsessed with shaving away every trace of hair. The highest-ranking members of society were also the only ones allowed to wear beards, while the masses and slaves were expected to be clean-shaven. Not only was the head shaved, but all imaginable body hair had to give way to the razor (an ideal that seems to have had a renaissance today). Instead, they wore headscarves to protect their bald heads from the scorching sun. Those of higher rank wore impressive wigs, richly decorated with similar materials to those used in their beards. The reason for this orgy of shaving was naturally also partly practical: long or overgrown hair in such a hot climate would have meant vermin, lice and poor hygiene, even though bathing was common in Egypt.
Moses is often referred to as the archetype of the bearded, wise and powerful leader, and even in the Bible one can read that God’s chosen should wear a beard. Moses, who in his youth must once have been clean-shaven like the other “mortals” in Egypt, must have provoked Pharaoh Ramses II tremendously when one day he stepped forward demanding freedom for his people, wearing long hair and a full beard (which alone was an insult). After Moses, the beard came to gain greater and greater significance as a sign of power and leadership, something that can also be seen in ancient India, where a long, well-groomed beard signalled wisdom. Having one’s beard publicly cut off was also the most humiliating punishment for various serious crimes.
The Egyptians were almost obsessed with shaving away every trace of hair.
Just as in India, beards were cared for with extreme attention and precision in the ancient Middle East, where in Assyria among other places they were oiled and curled into the most fantastic creations and patterns (the Persians and Babylonians are said to have been early inventors of tools for this purpose – think about that, those of you who use curling irons and teasing tools!). It is also from Babylon and Emperor Hammurabi that we have the first references to the barber profession, around 1700 BC.
In ancient Greece, the beard indicated high status, wisdom and sexual power, and shaving was rare. The beard was to be well kept, treated with oil and preferably curled, and we can get an idea of its appearance and significance thanks to the many statues and busts produced by the Greeks. But with the Macedonian emperor Alexander the Great, everything changed. The vain Alexander was the first to carefully cultivate a clean-shaven look, which also came to have practical importance during the military campaigns he led so successfully. Alexander had seen that Persian warriors often grabbed beards in battle to more easily kill or behead an enemy, and he soon demanded – to the shock and horror of his soldiers – that everyone in the battle line should be clean-shaven. The results on the battlefield were clear, and from that time portraits of royal figures without beards also began to appear, as can be seen on several coins from the period, and the ideal was even officially established through a beard ban. If you had a beard during this period, you were either a philosopher or a teacher. Or you were simply not to be trusted.
Take care of your beard
The Romans initially continued along the same line, and in ancient Rome after 300 BC, beard growth was considered directly ungroomed (only in connection with mourning and death did the Romans refrain from shaving and grow beards). The first shave of a 17-year-old youth was transformed into an initiation rite symbolising entry into manhood, and the shaved beard hairs were sacrificed to the gods. But later under Roman rule the wind would change once again: soon emperors began to wear beards again, first by only shaving partly and trimming and oiling the areas where beard growth was kept (sideburns and so on), until they went all the way and adopted full beards. Emperor Hadrian was the first known Roman emperor to turn the tide in favour of the beard and create an ideal that spread to later rulers. Full beards were now in fashion, and the root of the new trend can be found in the Romans’ imitation of Greek high culture before Alexander. But malicious tongues claim that the main reason Hadrian actually began growing a beard was to hide problem skin. And as we know, Clearasil did not exist in Roman times.
Russia’s Tsar Ivan the Terrible, on the other hand, was a pragmatic supporter of beards.
The medieval view of beards was, to say the least, chaotic and shifted between facial hair and clean-shaven faces depending on where in the world you were and during which period. William the Conqueror did not look kindly upon the English Saxon population’s love of moustaches, while Russia’s Tsar Ivan the Terrible, on the other hand, was a pragmatic supporter of beards. It was not until Tsar Peter the Great that the climate shifted in Russia and the beard was shaved off (the stubborn members of the nobility who still refused to shave were punished with fees and higher taxes).
The church in the early Middle Ages had a confusing and changeable attitude toward beards: monasteries and cathedrals were full of priests who were sometimes bearded, sometimes clean-shaven. But in 1096, the fun came to an end when the Bishop of Rouen made short work of all “sinful” facial hair in the Western Christian world, and those who refused to shave were excluded from the church (a social catastrophe in the deeply religious Middle Ages). In the East, however, things were seen differently: among Greek Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews, hair growth and beards, like those of Moses, were seen as signs of wisdom and divine symbolism – bringing out the razor was therefore the same as castrating oneself both religiously and in terms of status (the same fondness for beards as a religiously charged attribute can also be found throughout history, for example among Sikhs and within Islam).
Knights during the High Middle Ages were almost always clean-shaven, so forget the pointed beards and long thin moustaches you have seen in films or book illustrations. Facial hair for a knight was practically unthinkable in combination with the visor of armour, and it would not be until the late Middle Ages that beards once again began to become fashionable, even in ecclesiastical contexts.
With such fluctuating conditions on the fashion front, the situation naturally became both unstable and sensitive to economic cycles for the hard-pressed barbers, who instead had to expand their business with services otherwise associated with today’s surgeons and dentists – a step made easier by the fact that monks and church men (who traditionally dealt with healthcare) were no longer allowed by papal decree to carry out impure tasks involving bloodshed or contact with bodily fluids. Therefore, as a barber you were now expected not only to wield the razor as usual, but also to perform amputations – often with devastating (and not infrequently fatal) results – as well as bloodletting (where blood was drawn from the body to cure diseases) and simple dental operations. The travelling battlefield surgeons of the 18th and 19th centuries were basically barbers, and if you were unlucky as a soldier, you could begin the day with a nice shave and have the pleasure of ending it after a session on the battlefield by having your leg cut off below the knee – by the same person.
You have probably seen the classic red-and-white barbershop sign. Few people know that the red stripes on a white background are said to originate from this period, when the barber’s white towels were stained red by the patient’s blood. An example of how decorative and effective design can sometimes carry symbolic and historical meaning beyond what one might expect.
The red stripes on a white background are said to originate from the time when the barber’s white towels were stained red by the patient’s blood.
When we reach the Renaissance, male fashion and vanity bloom in full among royalty and the upper classes. Study portraits of figures such as Gustav Vasa, Erik XIV and England’s Henry VIII and see how power and wealth are consciously reflected in the most flamboyant and fantastic garments and creations – a display of pure boasting and pride. In the midst of this indulgence in silks and colourful accessories, facial hair also enjoyed a full-blown renaissance, with men going all out to outdo one another in the most elaborate moustaches and pointed (and sometimes also longest) beards – “less is more” would hardly have worked as a motto during this period. The trend continued into the 17th century, when carefully groomed pointed beards and twisted moustaches were often combined with long natural hippie-like hair that looked as if it had come straight out of the Woodstock era of the 1960s and 70s.
Then something happened during the 18th century: wigs (which had already made their entrance in the late 17th century with the Sun King Louis XIV) became just as obligatory in noble and bourgeois salons as speaking French, and they grew ever larger, curlier and more extravagant. Once the wig took over as the fashionable status symbol, the beard became somewhat superfluous and was also seen as totally inappropriate with powdered faces. Tanned skin and facial hair during this androgynous, salon-snobbish century were, by the way, associated only with peasants and poor drifters, and those were hardly social categories one wanted to be connected with. Moustaches, however, could still occur among officers in the army, and that trend would continue in military circles for a couple of centuries to come.
At the beginning of the 19th century, and after the collapse of the French Revolution, men’s powder boxes and wigs were thrown onto the rubbish heap, and an astonishing renaissance period for beards and facial hair began anew. It started with sideburns, which in extreme cases in the 1830s could grow all the way to the corners of the mouth and cover the entire cheeks and down onto the neck (especially common among those who held power and influence, but also among literary figures). We have now reached the so-called Romantic era, and everything was supposed to be exaggerated. This was soon reflected in a veritable forest of moustaches and beards in all sorts of imaginative varieties. If you did not have a beard or moustache in some form, you were finished and out of date. Think Abraham Lincoln (who was the first American president with a beard), Johann Strauss the Younger, Johannes Brahms, Charles Dickens and Karl Marx – to name a few famous examples. The trend continued toward the end of the 19th century and the late Victorian era, but now in a somewhat subtler style where the full beard lost ground in favour of the bush above the upper lip. Study photographs from the 1870s onwards toward the turn of the century 1900 and you will notice that virtually all adult men wore moustaches (either a larger bushier version or a thinner, more elegant and waxed one) – you might think they were cloned.
In 1907, an attempt was made to introduce a “beard tax”.
Then came the First World War, and the gas mask soon became a household item. Fashion changed again, and people realised the practicality of being clean-shaven, especially if you did not want to risk a gas mask failing to seal properly because your beard was in the way. Around the same time, the modern razor blade was invented and the safety razor increasingly began to replace the straight razor, making shaving both easier and more comfortable. From the 1920s onward, moustaches also disappeared completely, and all one saw everywhere were clean-shaven cheeks and upper lips. If you do not believe us, just check photos from the Roaring Twenties or old gangster films. The interwar period and the years around the Second World War were also marked by a “hygiene hysteria”, and all kinds of arguments (sensible as well as absurd) were put forward against beards and facial hair. As early as 1903, an article in the Chicago Chronicles claimed that a beard could contain an average of 200,000 (!) microbes – in other words, beards were considered both disgusting and unclean. In New Jersey, the aversion and paranoia knew no bounds, and in 1907 an attempt was made to introduce a “beard tax”: if you wore a beard, you were not only dirty but also had something to hide, it was claimed. Shaving became a “moral act” that should be encouraged (and enforced) through propaganda.
Perfect products for shaving
During the freedom-loving and commercial 1950s (when the car, the television and American culture came to shape both fashion and everyday life throughout the Western world), however, a cautious change was soon underway. For the first time, it was no longer authority figures and royalty who set the style, but we people found new icons to be inspired by: actors, rock stars and other kinds of celebrities. On the silver screen, male idols such as Errol Flynn and Clark Gable inspired many men to grow elegant moustaches, but from the 1950s onward youth culture truly began to create trends for facial hair on a broad and far-reaching scale.
The first subtle tendencies could be seen in Elvis’s long and broad sideburns reaching down over the cheeks (often refined with sharp pointed edges), and later in the 1960s goatees framing the mouth as well as moustaches once again found their place, not least among cultural figures and jazz musicians. With the breakthrough of the Beatles, people definitively broke with decency as hair began to grow, and in connection with the Vietnam conflict and the rise of the protest movement during the late 1960s and early 70s, beards and facial hair came to symbolise the striving for freedom from old conventions and a rejection of the clean-shaven, stubbled style associated with soldiers in the army. During the pacifist hippie period – John Lennon coined the expressions “hair peace” and “beard peace” – one could therefore see total anarchy regarding both hair length and beard styles. There was total freedom, and “naturalness” was what mattered.
If you were a yuppie, you could also wield the electric razor with the speed and elegance of a puma.
During the glamorous and “superficial” 1980s, the pendulum swung drastically to its direct opposite. The long hair came off and it once again became popular to be clean-shaven. If you were a yuppie, you could also wield the electric razor with the speed and elegance of a puma, you had expensive cars and teased, bleached hair. Naturally, the clothes had to be genuine designer items, not cheap copies, to show that you had money. The style was supposed to be slick and youthful – and in such a climate, the beard had no natural place. But with grunge in the 1990s, the beard – and especially the goatee (see Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain) – began to break new ground again, and since then the view of beards has changed; being bearded no longer necessarily needs to carry symbolic, political or religious meaning, it can also simply be attractive. It has become increasingly acceptable to wear day-old stubble or a full beard in all its forms (also in more formal contexts), while it is equally fine to be clean-shaven.
Today, the full beard has enjoyed a fantastic renaissance among both younger and older men, but the choice is freer now than it has been over previous centuries. Just as a music artist no longer needs to be extremely tied to one particular musical style in order to be “in”, fashion and appearance are also characterised by great personal freedom. Artists and media still influence us, surely at least as much as before, but you are freer to follow the line that suits you best. Whatever style you choose, it should feel right for you as a person, and since fashion is constantly changing, that is without doubt the most important lesson we can draw from history.
