Facial Hair

As archaeological evidence confirms, the Germanic groups who established kingdoms in northwest Europe during the Age of Migrations were participants in a broad cultural zone extending well into Eurasia. Elements of Anglo-Saxon culture in particular have precedents among the semi-nomadic peoples of the steppes. This paper explores these connections with an eye to the Huns as a catalyst of change.

KEYWORDS: Myths of origin, funerary archaeology, animal style art, epic song, personal adornment.

How did new technologies inform conceptions of masculinity in Enlightenment Britain? This article explores the practice and material culture of shaving as an expression of polite masculinity. The eighteenth-century masculine ideal was clean-shaven. New types of steel meant sharper and more durable razors, in turn affecting the practice of shaving. Men at this time increasingly began to shave themselves rather than visit a barber. But razor-makers advertised their wares using carefully constructed discourses, linking razors – and shaving – to a broader male interest in science. Razors were thus simultaneously a product of, and a vector for, Enlightenment ideas.

Converging evidence suggests men's beards, like many androgen-dependent masculine secondary sexual traits, communicate masculinity and dominance intra-sexually while effects of men's beardedness on attractiveness ratings are more equivocal. Beards may enhance perceived masculinity and dominance via amplifying aspects of underlying craniofacial masculinity, particularly the size of the lower face and jaw. Here we tested these predictions across two studies. In Study 1, we tested how three facial metrics - objectively measured craniofacial masculinity, facial-width-to-height ratio (fWHR), and jaw size - calculated while clean-shaven impacted on ratings of attractiveness, masculinity and dominance of 37 men photographed when clean-shaven and with full beards. Results showed that beards exerted significant and positive effects on masculinity, dominance and to a lesser extent attractiveness. However, fWHR did not significantly interact with beardedness to influence the directions...

I had to give up my day job due to bowel cancer. Fortunately I did not take up a career in the music business. I created this video Rockstar Beard, a pastiche of Nickelback's Rockstar, to launch my Bowel Cancer UK #Decembeard fundraiser. Please share far and wide. Please donate if able. Thank you. mike-jones.uk/Decembeard

Converging evidence suggests men's beards, like many androgen-dependent masculine secondary sexual traits, communicate masculinity and dominance intra-sexually while effects of men's beardedness on attractiveness ratings are more equivocal. Beards may enhance perceived masculinity and dominance via amplifying aspects of underlying craniofacial masculinity, particularly the size of the lower face and jaw. Here we tested these predictions across two studies. In Study 1, we tested how three facial metrics - objectively measured craniofacial masculinity, facial-width-to-height ratio (fWHR), and jaw size - calculated while clean-shaven impacted on ratings of attractiveness, masculinity and dominance of 37 men photographed when clean-shaven and with full beards. Results showed that beards exerted significant and positive effects on masculinity, dominance and to a lesser extent attractiveness. However, fWHR did not significantly interact with beardedness to influence the directions of any of the ratings, and while some linear and nonlinear interactions were significant between objective craniofacial masculinity and beardedness as well as between jaw size and beardedness, they tended to be subtle and dwarfed by the large main effect of beardedness on perceptual ratings. In Study 2, we measured ratings of attractiveness, masculinity and dominance for composite clean-shaven and bearded stimuli experimentally manipulated in facial shape to represent ±50% the shape of a beard, essentially manipulating the size of the lower face and jaw of the stimuli. We found a strong main effect whereby bearded stimuli enhanced dominance and masculinity ratings over clean-shaven stimuli. Increasing the size of the lower face and jaw augmented ratings of masculinity and dominance in clean-shaven stimuli but did not exert strong effects within bearded stimuli. Attractiveness ratings were highest for bearded faces with smaller jaws followed by bearded and clean-shaven faces with larger jaws and lowest for clean-shaven faces with small jaws. Taken together, our findings suggest that beards exert main effects on masculinity and dominance possibly by amplifying male typical facial shape. Attractiveness ratings of facial hair may reflect a compromise between overly dominant looking faces with larger jaws and the additive effects beardedness has on these ratings.