About

Of Beards and Broadening Horizons

What started out as basically a hobby is slowly warping into a lifestyle. I wasn't always a beard enthusiast, I like many of the unenlightened masses, was unaware of the glory and freedom that beards represent. I was repressed and held back my pursuit in perfection of what is basically summarized as the clean shaven, 1950s corporate America produced, standard that all men must obtain in order to achieve acceptance in today’s society. Or so I thought.

It wasn’t until I finished my first yeard attempt (growing your beard for a year) that I realized the fundamental changes in the way I approached my appearance and how others approached me. I cast away the mold of androgyny and poured myself anew, finally bursting out from the casting as a new man, a better man, a bearded man!

No longer was I tied to someone’s preconceived notion of how a man should look, I was no longer tied to my own preconceptions, I was free to do, say, dress, and think how I pleased. Granted I could of done all this before. But it wouldn’t have meant anything (at least in my mind) without the drastic change, not just in appearance, but in my daily routine.  Nothing is more liberating than doing something for yourself and yourself only, especially when that thing only requires one task and one task only, just being who you are (and proper beard oil application).

Reasons and Reality

I think it’s weird in a day and age where you can travel almost anywhere in the world, where in the blink of an eye you can be connected to global community of people from all walks of life. From multitudes of different cultures and lifestyles, where it’s socially acceptable to be who you want, how you want, when you want, that we change, morph, and condense ourselves into bite-sized, conditioned, “market” acceptable norms, and completely ignore, destroy, delete, (and shave off) the things that make us who and what we are.

There’s nothing technically wrong with it, we all want acceptance; but often times though, we’re just looking for that acceptance in the wrong places. It seems weird we choose to do that to ourselves. Ok, ok, it’s getting a little too tumblr sjw up in here.

The Point

The point I’m trying to make is that beards are awesome! They are a defining feature of a “man.” And not just in the heteronormative middle aged white male sense, but in the sense that facial hair is something that defines a man as his own person, just as no two sets of eyes are the same, no two beards are alike, and that fact is fucking awesome to me! It’s that reason exactly why I decided to start mrbeard.com. I wanted to share that insight with other like-minded, like-bearded individuals.

There’s a whole movement out there, full of people who feel the same way as I do. I wanted to help inform, cooperate, and cultivate that movement and hopefully in some way influence it for the betterment of all beards and beard enthusiasts. Mrbeard isn’t just about a brand, or a lifestyle, it represents something more, a journey and not just the journey of this one man, but a journey of an entire movement, an entire global ecosystem, a vibrant, rich and ever evolving culture that I want to be continuously contributing to, that I’m a part of.

Beards!

Beer!

Bacon!