You've seen them, they're everywhere. Grinning and smirking from behind their bristly shield. Jawline etched with facial topiary. Shaggy lower lip and sprouting chin. Whiskers carved and sculpted into a variety of unfeasible shapes. The effortlessly hirsute. Men with facial hair. I shall never be one of them.
These things go in cycles. One decade clean-shaven is the way to be, and the next a naked chin is the quickest route to social oblivion. It doesn't take much to shift fashion, just a few goateed celebs with a steady drip of well-trimmed profile shots, and suddenly it's essential to be hairy. Today's mainstream male grows his sideburns, germinates his tache and faces the world from behind thick-whiskered skin. Oh yes, in 2008, beardy's in.
I'm old enough to remember the last time facial hair was hip. It was the 1970s, and cutting-edge men went to great lengths to grow themselves big bushy moustaches and thick muttonchop sideburns. Crooked teeth shone forth from within a frame of barely-trimmed bristle. Kissing a trendy uncle goodnight meant risking friction burns to burrow my way through thick keratinous forest. Real men had fuzz everywhere, and woe betide the naked jawline. But I was too young to partake, and the testosterone outburst passed me by.
What to plump for thirty years later? The fashion world's moved on from Starsky & Hutch, so maybe now's the time to do a Beckham. Light cheek-to-cheek beard, or 24/7 five o'clock shadow? Close cropped sharp lines, or unkempt grown-out bulk? Or how about extended sideburns meeting below the chin in a flurry of debonair modern style? Ah, so many choices, so many winning disguises, so many heads to turn. But not for me.
I've never been a hairy man. My facial follicles are sparse and ineffective, and what little hair they churn out is thin and weedy. My babysoft skin is incredibly hard to darken, even three decades after the onset of puberty. My five o'clock shadow's more like an overcast day in January than a blazing heatwave in June. Shaving's still a doddle, not a chore, and if I forget to razor my chin in the morning then nobody at work even notices. Me and stubble, we just don't get on.
I could grow a tenuous mini-goatee, of sorts, but it'd have gaping holes and wouldn't join up across or down. I think I could grow a tache, given a month, but my coverage after a week is still so meagre that I've never had the guts to try for longer. I might just manage to extend my sideburns down to about earlobe level, patchily, although no further. But no way could I grow a beard. There are vast expanses across my cheeks where no thick hair has ever grown, neither do I expect that one ever will.
Hell, why worry? My low-testosterone genes may not be in fashion, but I at least I don't suffer from razor-burn and carpet-chin. I have the natural look much vaunted in the nineties, not trademark 21st century masculinity. I'm not cut out for the current unshaven vogue, but it'll pass.
Meanwhile, I'm also still waiting for my first chest hair. Pray the Baywatch look never returns.
