Shifts in Medical and Cultural Traditions About Beards
After generations of being out of fashion in the West, beards have become stylish lately, thanks in no small part to hipsters. It is not the first time that beards fell out of fashion, then made a comeback. In archaic and early classical Greece, beards were stylish, but they went out of fashion in the Hellenistic era. Early Roman Republic leaders rocked beards, but within a few generations, Romans adopted the clean-shaven look. That endured for centuries, until Emperor Hadrian made facial hair fashionable once again.
In the Middle Ages, beards fell in and out of fashion. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical opinions deemed facial hair to be bodily waste. To shave one’s beard was to rid the body of a potentially harmful substance. In the eighteenth century’s Enlightenment, men went about clean shaven. The ideal enlightened gentleman’s face was smooth, youthful, with a clear countenance that suggested an equally clear and open mind. Then came the nineteenth century when, beards roared back into style in a big way. As seen below, the renewed popularity was helped by a change in medical opinions, that now came to see facial hair as good for men’s health.