Monday, March 23, 2009

The Wolverine Van Buren: Adventures in Dubious Facial Hair

I like changing up my facial hair. It's not that I especially like having a beard, or being scruffy, or whatever. It's no one thing in particular. I just like being able to change my appearance easily. Just knowing that something is mutable makes me like it more. A given thing doesn't have to change, but knowing that it can be changed seems nifty to me.

So, I mess about with my facial hair a lot.

Most of the time, I grow a beard, shave it off, and grow a beard again. Rinse, repeat. I've experimented with sideburns and goatees, and had a solitary mustache for about twenty four hours. (One co-worker told me that the 'stache made me look like a plumber, and another told me that I looked like a porn star. Either way, the lip rug was gone the next day.) For the past two and a half years, though, I've lived a life of enforced clean-shaven-ness. GEOS did not allow facial hair in it's dress code, and I dutifully shaved myself every day.

As I was shaving before my last teaching day, I thought "This is going to be the last time I shave my entire face in a while..." And it was. I grew a full beard for about a month.

Until today.

I got the itch to shave off my beard once I got used to it, and should probably be clean shaven anyway as I'm trying to land a teaching gig later this week. So, I took razor to face this morning and did the following:



I call it the Wolverine Van Buren, named, obviously, for the eighth president of the United States. I might shave it off tomorrow. Maybe.

3 comments:

  1. Okay, I've shaved it off. I wouldn't want to be going into any sort of professional setting with that thing on my face. It was fun for a while, though.

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  2. dude I love it..Facial hair has always stood for anti-Establishment .. Beards often are grown by men that are artistic and look at the world a little differently.. A bold Beard style is also a great conversation starter!! and It looks like five presidents had full beards, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield and Harrison.

    Presidents with facial hair:

    Martin Van Buren - large mutton-chops
    Abraham Lincoln - beard
    Ulysses Grant - beard and mustache
    Rutherford Hayes - beard and mustache
    James Garfield - beard and mustache
    Chester Arthur - mustache and sideburns
    Grover Cleveland - mustache
    Benjamin Harrison - beard and mustache
    Theodore Roosevelt - mustache
    William Taft - mustache

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