RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31480, 21 September 1967, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

BLOW FOR BEARDS

Not for the first time, we stand rebuked. At the end of last month, we pondered. in this column, about why people grew beards. We have been knocked back, on two counts. First, we should have asked why people let their beards grow. Submission fall. Then our correspondent quoted to us an article written by James Coe in the Wellington Polytechnic students’ newspaper WEPSA. It goes: •"The psychologist claims that the artist, being a person of greater than average sensitivity, an attribute that society considers female, grows his beard to prove his masculinity. Why, then, do artists invariably choose classically feminine wives? Throughout historyman has indulged in the mutilation of his body. Twentieth century man ascribes this practice to the primitive peoples of

the earth. He would, for instance, abhor the normalcy of skewering his nose with a bone, but with the hypocrisy of modern society he would be mortally offended if the barbarian was to criticise his civilised cult of twice a day scraping and nicking certain hirsute areas of his visage with a ceremonial blade.

“Like all cults, shaving as a mass imposition had its origins in expediency. It belongs to the trench warfare of this century. In World War I, shorn heads and shaven faces made filth and lice more controllable and head wounds easier to treat. Unlike the convict’s shorn head and shaved face, signs of social degradation, the bristled scalp and raw red jaws became the mark of loyalty and high morale. With peace in the twenties, the purpose was gone but the

image of the young hero became a fetish. Males young and old strove with the aid of foam, blades and lotions (only manly pinescented perfumes of course) to retain the smooth skins of young boys. Some managed to look like old women.” There is much more of it, mainly about how women had to cope with this hermaphrodite situation by looking as male as possible. The proportions of classic woman, and the beards, were .in the art schools.

Our correspondent adds that if women do not like kissing men through all that prickly fuzz (our phrase) do men like smooching the walking grease-pot-powder - cabinet that masquerades as modem woman? We would like to assure him, with all gravity, that they do.