Retrospective / Autobiography of a face

One year ago today, we moved into our new house. After a few hectic days of packing and painting and paperwork, assisted by our gracious friends, we finally moved everything into our townhouse and officially became homeowners. Your first home is a life-changing experience, the kind of achievement you mark for the rest of your life.

But we're not here to celebrate that anniversary. Houses are great and all, but a much more momentous change came upon me that day. For on July 31st, 2009, I began growing a beard. Those of you fortunate enough to see me regularly in person know the glory of which I speak. Some of you may even be jealous. Never mind that; today is a day for celebration. My beard has accompanied me through much life in the past 365 days. It saw me across the finish line of my first marathon, journeyed with me on a South African safari, and yes, grew with me as I settled into becoming a homeowner. It may be my truest friend.

Yet it is hard, even for me, to go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about the unfathomable wonder of my facial hair. Instead, allow me to turn this moment of celebration into a public service: a how-to guide, written for all of you—and I trust it is indeed all of you—who secretly yearn to emulate my success.

When I first set out upon my beardly quest there were few references available. Esquire had a useless article, and I found a YouTube video or two, but I could not find sufficiently specific information, and I was forced me to make it up as I went. And I made some bad mistakes. Fortunately, after a year of experimentation I have become a fully qualified beardologist. Allow me to share with you my wisdom, lest you fall into the same traps that so ensnared me.

Preliminaries

Before discussing technique, let's first talk about why you should grow a beard. It's imperative that I dispel the all-too-common myth of beard teleology: you need no specific reason to grow a beard. You need no rebellion against the draconian standards of your youth. You need no desire to augment your manliness. These are lesser justifications, put forward by lesser men growing lesser beards. The true beard-wearer grows his beard simply because he wants to. He is nothing more than a dude with an adventurous spirit and a desire to let his hair follicles in on the adventure.

It's also imperative that you maintain confidence through the early stages of beard growth. The neophyte beard-grower is often disheartened by the time necessary to grow out a fully magnificent beard. I will not sugar-coat the truth: as much as a month without shaving will be required to grow a respectable beard, and in the meantime your proto-beard will not be an attractive testament to testosterone but a sparse, scruffy embarrassment. Take courage, friend; all who would achieve beard-dom must pass through this ordeal. Given time, your paltry prickles will blossom into a majestic mane.

Once your follicles have produced the raw material, it must be molded into beardly greatness. I will devote the remainder of my words to introducing the three core principles of beardology: shape, contour, and blend. Each corresponds to one of three tools you will need: razor, trimmer, and scissors. Let's discuss each one individually.

The instruments of beardology. All photos courtesy Amanda.

I. Shape

The first step in growing a beard is choosing the shape, as defined by the portion of your face you choose not to shave. One of the benefits of having a beard is that you won't have to shave as much or as often, but it's still important that you keep your beard's shape well-defined by shaving—with a razor—the area around your beard.

While this chart does a pretty good job of ranking beards from best to worst, shape is ultimately a personal decision determined by the natural coverage of your facial hair and your personal sense of facial aesthetics. For example, I have pretty full coverage (as well as classic, timeless aesthetic), so I grow a standard full beard. Villainous folks will be interested in goatees and soul patches, and those of you looking to make use of your aviators will want to grow a mustache.

Don't grow a mustache.

For a full beard, shape is defined primarily by the neckline. There are a few schools of thought on proper neckline position. Esquire mandates a neckline at one inch above the adam's apple. Others suggest a neckline that closely follows the jawline, resulting in a mostly bare underjaw. I prefer to place my neckline at the corner where the underjaw intersects the neck; it results in a clean, anatomically-defined line rather than one arbitrarily and artificially imposed.

There is room for honest disagreement on this issue. A lower neckline, for example, can accentuate the turkey-neck, so a higher neckline may be preferable. On the other hand, I have seen successful necklines that stretch well below the neck/underjaw corner. Regardless of position, the key to a successful neckline is geometry. Draw an imaginary line from the bottom of your ear down to whatever point you've chosen above or below your adam's apple. The line should curve slightly to accommodate the shape of your neck, but it must be smooth. Shave along this line. This can be difficult, as part of the line will likely be obscured by your jaw, so it's often helpful to pull back the skin around your jaw so you can clearly see where you are shaving.

Some beard-growers will also define an upper shave-line on the cheeks. I think this is typically a bad idea: artificial lines make your face look evil and should be kept to a minimum. Instead, the occasional stray hair on your upper cheek can be shaved or plucked individually, preserving the beard's natural contours. However, if your beard ends raggedly on your upper cheek, you may be forced to define an upper boundary with your razor. In either case, allow your beard to define itself as much as possible.

If you aren't growing a full beard, the shaping principles will be different. In general a goatee's neckline will be much closer to the jaw, and a "philosopher's" beard is best grown with no neckline whatsoever. But for specifics you'll have to look elsewhere.

Left: the corner-defined neckline. Right: a natural upper boundary. There are a few individual hairs that probably could be plucked to clean up the boundary without making it look artificial.

II. Contour

To maintain a beard, you will need to purchase a beard trimmer. They aren't terribly expensive, and they are indispensable for a clean-looking beard. A beard should look classy, not sloppy. Your poorly-maintained beard ruins it for the rest of us.

Decide how closely you want to trim your beard. In general, shorter beards look cleaner and younger, while longer beards look serious and distinguished. Let your age and relative awesomeness be your guide. However: do not, under any circumstances, consider a stubble beard. No, it doesn't look good on you. No, you don't look rugged or roguish or dangerous or debonair. You just look like an ass.

My worst rookie move was to assume that I should trim all of my beard to the same length. This is a mistake. Part of the reason for this is evenness: different parts of your beard have different coverage densities, and trimming at different lengths allows you to create an illusion of uniformity across your face. In general, the more dense the coverage, the shorter you should trim the hair. The other part is aesthetics: some portions of your beard (such as your underjaw and neck) are unattractive on their own, and others (such as your mustache and soul patch) have evil connotations. By trimming these portions shorter than the rest of your beard you can de-emphasize them, resulting in a beard whose components fit together in a unity of form.

Contour is tricky to get right, and ultimately you'll simply have to experiment. It's useful to pay attention to photos of yourself, particularly ones taken from odd angles. This allows you to see your beard as others see it—instead of what you see in the mirror. In my case, I set the trimmer to 11 for most of the beard. I turn it down to 8 for the neck/underjaw, 5 for the mustache, and all the way down to 3 for the soul patch. It's nearly impossible for an honest man to trim his soul patch too short.

III. Blend

On the whole, your trimmer will do most of the heavy lifting of getting your facial hair the length you want it, but it is not a precision instrument. To finish the job you will need a decent pair of barber's scissors. Go out and buy a pair; you can get one at Target for $5 or so.

You need the scissors for two reasons. First, no beard trimmer works perfectly. Since your face is irregularly shaped, there will be sections of beard that your trimmer is not nimble enough to handle. My trimmer, for example, has a particularly hard time with the area just under the hinge of my jaw. Your trimmer will also leave the occasional stray hair. This looks particularly bad on the mustache; mo-hairs encroaching on the lip are particularly unsightly. In either of these cases, you'll need to go in manually with scissors. There's no magic technique to scissor-trimming, and unfortunately it's a bit clumsy at first, but it isn't difficult to get the hang of it.

Second, we've trimmed different sections of beard to different lengths as prescribed by Contour. To forge these disparate sections into a coherent unit of magnificence you must blend them together with your scissors. The trick is to look along the section boundaries for mismatched hair lengths. Most of my blending efforts are spent either fading my jawline into my underjaw or matching my mustache into the rest of my face. Again, there's no trick to blending, but fortunately it's easy to get into a quick rhythm. Be bold; an accidental short patch will grow out quickly.

Left: my trimmer can't get at these hairs under my jaw, so I go at them manually with scissors. Right: notice the individual hairs drooping onto my lip. Not attractive.

Conclusion

There you have it. This guide, while incomplete, gives you the tools and knowledge necessary to traverse the path to beard-dom. Go forth, o my brothers, and make majesty of your faces.