Life with a beard

[lotus0kid]

Hello! I have a main character who is not going to shave for a full year. He's a white man in his forties, living in a medieval setting, previously suffering from malnutrition but with regular access to food and water for this year, a bit scruffy but not bearded at the start. I've done some Google searches ("what is it like having a beard," "

Comments

[haldane]

Okay, I don't have a beard, but my husband has for the last 30 years, only taking it off once (for the World's Greatest Shave). He mainly grew it because shaving every single day is really annoying.

So, it's really good in the cold, since it acts like a scarf and keeps the cold air from his skin. He has to trim his moustache hairs regularly since they will grow down over his upper lip until they get in his mouth. Also the hairs that grow from just below the lower lip in the centre tend to get split ends, so they need trimming too. Some men still shave every day to keep a specific beard shape, but he just gets it trimmed back when he has a hair cut. As he's gotten older there are random follicles starting to grow outside of the normal beard locations, such as on the end of his nose. Those I trim back, since otherwise I have to look at them.

[doccy]

I have been Heavily Bearded a few times in the past, so I'll do my best

[ffutures]

I've had a beard for the last 44 years. I'm so used to it that I don't notice it much, the main concerns are pretty much what doccy said. Also, if it gets too long around the mouth you have to watch out for hairs getting stuck between your teeth. Biting off the ends is not a good idea, you can end up with hairballs in your stomach.

[doccy]

Ooh! I'd forgotten the hairs getting caught - I'm sorry to say I did used to bite the ends off, although the worst side-effect I had was getting the bits caught between my teeth (this occasionally happened if I didn't bite them off as well, which was an... unpleasant surprise when I first found my cheek tethered to my teeth!)

[kehlen]

Thank you for making me laugh with the plaything comment :-)

[sandwichwarrior]

That sounds more like a personal issue.

Poor hygene is poor hygene.

[anonymous]

Sometimes the cats groom my beard. Also, they tend to terrify babies.

[ldymusyc]

Also, they tend to terrify babies.

Unless the baby is very familiar with a man who has a beard! Usually Dad, but other close/frequent contact helps. My father likes to remember the one time he shaved off his beard when my brother and I were under five. We screamed and screamed because that clean-shaven man Was Not Daddy. He started growing it back the next day.

Other minor points

[anonymous]

My husband has always had facial hair, and it is noticeable how the beard grays differently from the head hair. For a period of time he had dark hair on top and a gray beard. Now that he's gone gray all over it's not so odd, but when he was bi-colored it did look strange. He discovered that you can't use "Just for Men" on your beard hairs -- the skin around the lips is too sensitive and breaks out.

Beard hairs are also distinctly a different texture than the hair on top.

Re: Other minor points

[anonymous]

It's not just a graying issue. I had a classmate who, at 19 years of age grew a beard. He had curly blond hair (which on an over 6 feet tall, athletic dude named Michael looked rather angelic), but the beard grew in as this diabolically red thing. It just looked very odd.