My God-Given Right or How I Learned to Love My Stubble
The Internet has been a catalyst for a lot of changes in American society.
People are able to share more things with larger groups of people than ever
before. The biggest change? Seems pretty obvious, of course: now we can
all share our love of trivia. In a world full of people with things to say,
we finally have a place to say them. And, as crazy as it seems, the drive
to esoterica is virulently contagious. Popular culture hasn't had so wide a reach since the invention of the telegraph when cranky mothers could finally harass their children from across the world.
Allan Peterkin supports his chronology and analysis of the hairy arts with
research culled from popular websites as though they represented an
authoritative history of the world. He may be right in this, he may be
wrong, but the passion with which he approaches the task is rewarding in
itself. The book's finest moments are both anecdotal and utilitarian.
Peterkin is not a historian. This much is clear, but he offers information
that is both useful and amusing. The final sections, packed with useful
information on beard types and facial hair technology, are reason enough to
buy his book. Included are such useful gems as "How to strop a razor,"
"Where to order false facial hair," and how to grow an "Amish (Dutch)
Beard."
As a self-proclaimed Amish Watcher, I've heard many theories on the birth
and maintenance of the signature neckwarmer and chapped upper lips. They
range from the need to keep the neck warm to a reaction against the ubiquity
of the military 'stache in the 1880's when the pacifist Amish Schism took
place. One Thousand Beards left me hanging on this front, but the
chapter on "The Female Beard" left the doors of praise open.
The earliest citation of a book about the history of any kind of hair in
this book is Once Over Lightly: The Story of Man and His Hair by
Charles de Zemler (New York: self-published, 1939), and certainly Peterkin
owes some debt to pioneers like him, but this project is clearly his own. I
doubt, for example, that de Zemler had much to say about the history of
female facial hair. And why should he have? Men are stubbly, women are
smooth. But of course, few of us believe that and suddenly the categories
break down: what if you're a man who can't grow a full beard ("follicularly
challenged," quips Peterkin)? Or worse: what if you are a woman with
"unsightly facial hair?" Not that there are any of those out there, mind
you, but just what if?
In its finest chapter, One Thousand Beards does clean justice to
female troubles throughout history, citing anecdotal evidence of painful
procedures (pumice, tweezing) and unusual solutions (P. T. Barnum's bearded
ladies and Hatshepsut's Postiche -- a ceremonial beard made of gold). He
aptly points out that historical distinctions between the smooth and the
rough are difficult to maintain and that there are always people interested
in upsetting the fruitbasket (There is a wonderful sidebar about Clarissa
"CJ" Lagartera, a.k.a. Carlos Las Vegas a.k.a. Karmalita Las Vegas, a
Canadian queer activist/Drag King, whose gender-bending performances draw
out the thinly veiled spectrum of male to female).
Taking into account Peterkin's recipes for hair styling and the strong
theoretical chapters dealing with gay culture, women and psychoanalysis, the
collection of information from un-cited websites is less problematic than
frustrating. Like the medium from which it is spawned, however, its
strengths are not in its longevity or its comprehensive nature. I'm tempted
to believe that Allan Peterkin wouldn't have written this book without the
Internet, and the world would certainly be a less entertaining place without
this book. In spite of his tendency to think about hairstyles as if they
didn't mean something completely different 10 years ago, this book is a
pleasing discourse on a subject that most men (and probably most
women) will find entertaining and worth looking into during a spare moment.
