WHY SHAVE?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20290, 24 December 1927, Page 7

WHY SHAVE?

A PLEA FOR BEARDS. Written for the Otago Daily Times. By R.J. Why shave? Why follow the custom of a misguided mankind and daily defile the beard Nature has given us, rasping it away as soon as it peeps from beneath the skin, mixing it ignominiously with soap suds and causing it to be thrown away ■with the offscourings of the house? But why ask these cpiestions? We all do it. We are all at great pains to shave regularly, and we do it unwillingly, knowing that we deprive ourselves of an ornament, and suspecting (when we think of it) that we are taking away from our faces something given to us for a purpose as indeed we do. But still we continue in spite of it all, treating our beards as so much dirt, to be removed daily simply because it is the custom among men. I am no friend to those foolhardy individuals who deliberately affect external oddity while internally they arc dull and commonplace. lam not disposed by wearing a beard to beard public opinion, but nevertheless I am sometimes moved to ask: “ Why shave?” But things may change. Wc were not always a nation of shavers. The time may yet come when “ ’Twill be merry hall when beards wag all,” and we shall no longer be slaves to the razor. Why arc we a bare-chinncd people.'' 1 have never read of savages who shaved themselves with flints, nor have I yet been able to find out who first introduced among civilised men the tonsure of the chin. Pope Anacletus is said to have been responsible for the shaven polls and faces of the early clergy, having doubtless introduced the custom on the same literal authority of Scripture that still causes women to wear their hats in church, that they may not pray uncovered, for is it not in the same chapter of Corinthians that St. Paul says “Docs not even Nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it js a shame unto him?” But shaving by laymen was a much more ancient .practice. The Greeks taught the Romans to shave, and Pliny records the fact that the first Greek barbers were brought to Rome by Publicus Ticiuius in the 4o4tn year after the building of the city. Beards were generally worn by the Greeks, and the upper lip was usually adorned with an ornament known as the “ mystax -the original form of the English “ moustache. History abounds with examples of freakish and absurd growths, but these are, of course, inconsistent with the mature dignity of boarded men. Let us have whisker, beard, and moustache reverently worn and trimmed discreetly and with decency. The appeal of the bizarre and unusual is short-lived at the longest. The average man, who attains the allotted span of three score years and ten, spends over twelve months of that short life shaving himself, and as it is estimated that the normally healthy man shaves off about sis and a-hnlf inches of beard a year, it is not difficult to calculate the length of hair mowed off in a lifetime. The more it is cut the more it grows. It is reasonable to say that at the end of a lifetime a man has chopped up about —ft of beard, or nearly 20ft more than would have sprouted had Nature been left to take her course, with, of course, as much occasional trimming as was compatible with cleanliness and comfort. What a difference it would make to our appearance if we decided to eschew the custom! Uniform sedateness of countenance would disappear, and in every assembly of bearded men there would be a variety and force of expressions which shaven face could never convey. What could be more portentious, for example, than to see the brow cloud, the eyes flash, and the nostrils dilate over a beard curling visibly with anger? How ill docs a smooth chin at any time support the character assumed by the remainder of the face except it be a character of sanctimonious oilipess that does not belong honestly to man, or such a pretty chin as makes the charm that should belong only to a woman or a child? Science classifies the definite functions of the hair we shave as mechanical and physiological. The formation of hair on the face provides one method of extruding carbon from the system. Another function is that of an auxiliary to the internal working of the lungs. Of course, shaving would not hinder the elemination of carbon from the body. Rather would it cause unnatural energy in this respect, because the effort to cover the chin with hair is increased in the vain struggle to remove the state of artificial baldness. The natural balance is thus destroyed. Maybe no harm is done, but the strict balance which Nature keeps between the production of hair and the action of the lungs is too constant and rigid to bo wholly insignificant. People with consumptive tendencies generally have an excessive growth of hair. How often are we saddened by the charm of the long eyelashes over the lustrous eyes of a girl so afflicted. The very anomalies of growth show that the hair must fulfil more than a trifling purpose in the system. The mechanical uses of the beard and the moustache are well known. They protect the opening of the mouth, filter the dusty, smoky air, act as a respirator, and prevent the introduction into the lungs of air that is too frosty, and in doing this they avoid morbid irritation in the air passages, with its attendant diseases, and, perhaps, premature death. Here, then, a question may be hinted, whether, since we are removing an appur tenance given to us for a purpose, we are not doubly wasting our time. The man who at the end of his days has spent an entire year of his life scraping off his beard has worried himself to no purpose; has submitted to a painful, vexatious, and not merely useless but actually unwholesome custom. He has disfigured himself systematically throughout life, and has swallowed dust and inhaled smoke and fog out of deference to the social prejudice that happens just now to prevail. We all abominate the razor while we use it, and would gladly lay it - down. Therefore, if we see clearly that the use of it is a great blunder, and if we are no longer such a slovenly people as to be afraid that, if we kept our beards we should not wash or comb or trim them in a decent way, why can we not put aside our morning plague and irritate our skin no more? It is not recommended to anyone to grow a beard unless everyone does, nor is a revolution suggested that might result in shaven chins becoming as singular as beards are now. Much preferable would be the old Roman custom which preserved the first beard of youth until it became comely, and then left it entirely a matter of choice whether the young man remained boarded or not. It is too late for most of us now, for we cannot expect to enjoy the silken beauty of a virgin beard after scraping away at our chins for years. The true beauty of the beard remains to be developed in the next generation on the faces of those who may be induced from the beginning to abjure the use of razors.