After many years, the beard is finally coming back. After making several failed attempts at reemergence and the moustache years, it looks like it is finally back. We have to thank music, namely hip hop for bringing back the real. Fitting, that musicians and poets who were generally considered rebels would bring back the beard; the socially unaccepted mark of manhood. Hip hop has once again popularized something once relegated to the social outer limits.
While the beard is celebrating a resurgence, there are still many who believe that it is a look not to be worn in the corporate environment. There is now evidence that this way of thinking is simply personal and preferential. There is no rule, or code that clearly states that beards are unacceptable in the work place. After all, the world has accepted Steve Jobs and his 5 o'clock shadow, chairman of the Fed. Ben Bernanke and former UN secretary general Koffi Annan. Granted, some of these powerful men have always worn facial hair, but this has never impeded their ability to rise far above the expected levels of social norms and many of their clean shaven counterparts.
I am not against clean shaven men or men who wear moustaches. What I am against is the idea that men who wear a beard of any form are unemployable, not upwardly mobile, artists and musicians, free spirits, vegans or raw foodists. These ideas are what those hiding in the shadows are watching and waiting to capitalize on. It is really no different than the idea that a Black kid dressed in a hoody and running an evening errand is a criminal who is running from the scene of a crime must be eliminated. What does a criminal look like?
B&T
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