Women prefer men with full beards & heavy stubble over clean-shaven guys!

Beardedness or non-beardedness?  A bit puzzling.

It seems that full beards and heavy stubble edged out the light, clean-shaven look.

The conclusion is based on a study of women’s judgments of attractiveness, health, masculinity, and parenting abilities, from photographs of clean-shaven men, lightly or heavily stubbled, and fully bearded.

How about non-beardedness?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, men rat­ed full beards and heavy stub­ble as most attrac­tive, fol­lowed close­ly by clean-shaven and light stub­ble as least attrac­tive. Well, a dose of male nar­cis­sism is to be expect­ed here.

Men and women agree on male beard­ed­ness, i.e., mas­culin­i­ty rat­ings increased lin­ear­ly as facial hair increased.

I’m afraid there’s a social side-effect the study is over­look­ing. Remem­ber that our cul­ture pro­motes and rewards a “clean” male image over its beard­ed coun­ter­part (which may explain why beard­ed­ness is a less com­mon trait than non-beard­ed­ness).

How does that prove the study’s con­clu­sions regard­ing female courtship behav­ior?  Should­n’t women reflect/influence cul­tur­al mores?  West­ern cul­tur­al andro­cen­trism notwith­stand­ing, one would expect beard­ed­ness to fig­ure more promi­nent­ly.

Let’s fol­low the study: sup­pose a beard­ed male gets many more females than a non-beard­ed one.  Should­n’t beard­ed­ness then, in time, become a pre­ferred social male trait, which would, as a con­se­quence, increase the pop­u­la­tion of beard­ed males?  If so, would such a pre­dom­i­nant trait remain a favorite amongst females?  We don’t know.  The arti­cle does­n’t explain why beard­ed­ness con­veys attrac­tive­ness, mas­culin­i­ty, or parental abil­i­ties.  Only that it just hap­pens.  Accord­ing to evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, mod­els of sex­u­al selec­tion sug­gest that a trait does not need any under­ly­ing selec­tion advan­tage.  Females have to demon­strate an under­ly­ing sen­so­ry process favor­ing the stim­u­lus.

But we knew that sex­u­al pref­er­ence was redun­dant!

Are wom­en’s incli­na­tions wired to our fur­ry ances­tors?  It gets more nuanced.

Researchers believe that a thresh­old of den­si­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion may be nec­es­sary for beards to func­tion as an attrac­tive sig­nal,

In oth­er words, women, by con­trast, may balance…a com­pet­i­tive mas­cu­line part­ner against the costs of mat­ing with a too-mas­cu­line part­ner.

(on the oth­er hand, stand­alone mus­tach­es are gen­er­al­ly less appeal­ing; recent fash­ion com­men­tary even dubs them “a major mis­step” when done alone).

As such,

Too masculine?

Here’s a mul­ti­ple choice:

a) As Niet­zsche declared, the West has become a non-beard­ed deca­dent cul­ture.
b) Jews, Mus­lims, Rasta­far­i­ans & Sikhs look sex­i­er.
c) We should pre­scribe more testos­terone for our beard­less youth.
d) Wall Street CEO’s are unat­trac­tive peo­ple.
e) All of the above

You women & why not, men, be the judges. Which is sex­i­er?

The Thoreau? Sparse and stub­born, the beard of a man who mea­sures beans and mis­trusts soci­ety. Its charm lies in its refusal of charm: a naturalist’s whiskers, like moss on a stone. Odd­ly appeal­ing if one loves ascetic inten­si­ty. The Castro? The rev­o­lu­tion­ary beard par excel­lence. Thick, mil­i­tary, unyield­ing — emblem rather than an orna­ment. Seduc­tive in its viril­i­ty, but quite author­i­tar­i­an. The Asimov? Trimmed, pro­fes­so­r­i­al, self-aware. This beard arrives late in life as a badge of ven­er­a­ble geek­dom. More avun­cu­lar than erot­ic: the beard one lis­tens to while it explains the laws of robot­ics.

The Melville?

A beard full of storm and sea-spray, bib­li­cal in its thun­der. It frames eyes that have seen whales breach­ing in the mind’s abyss. Seduc­tive in the way of doomed voy­agers and unread man­u­scripts.

The Whitman?

The demo­c­ra­t­ic beard: abun­dant & ten­der. Whitman’s beard wants to kiss the world, to brush against every cheek and shoul­der of human­i­ty. A bit erot­ic, mater­nal, and fra­ter­nal at once (per­haps the most tru­ly lov­able of the lot).