Vancouverite:

Thanks for noticing these oversights -- well done. The corrections have been made.

Best,
Trish Mau, Copy Editor
TheTyee.ca

Nice little piece.

I grow a beard every winter as a built-in scarf.

These wispy, candy-ass moustaches which is about as boldly male as this current crop of status quo "centrist" politicians is prepared to go, is but a reflection of the mushiness, afraid to be male, feminized maleness and political timidity one should expect from this ambiguous in all regards "mugwamp centre". :-D

Needless to say, being from the mucho macho hinterland reaches of the left, my male facial countenance is always graced with copious male hair, like my entire body. But then, in order to earn this raiment of honour, one should be an actual primo male breeder and not of more dubious sexual lineage. :-D LOL

You girly-men hang in their with that Nair smeared all over your girly bodies. :-) It does go with the candy-ass character of the times and the dominant ruling class culture.

In Iran the president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sports a beard, and the leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh who won the Palestinian election does too. Although in Iran many political candidates were not allowed to participate in the election I do not recall reading about such restrictions in the elections for the Palestinian parliament. Both these men also wear suits. In Canada most leaders are clean shaven and wear dark blue suits. Considering electoral laws image is very significant there is no academic testing of political leaders or their candidates. None of the political parties in Canada has any academic requirements for their candidates to the best of my knowledge and this is also the case in many other democracies. Hezbollah won seats in the Lebanese election last year. Stephen Harper won an election in Canada and John Howard is the leader in Australia (and is running for re-election) even though neither of these men have taken
action with respect to global warming. Australia and Canada have good education systems but electoral laws do not require candidates to be tested on math or science and until they do so anyone in a dark blue suit can get elected.

C'mon Ranbir, just more elitist snob shitt. "Keep power in the hands of the "Educated and cultured classes", so that they can continue to shit upon we mere low caste mortals.

Take your Brahmin caste shit and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Sideways.

I'll take real "all inclusive" democracy any day over this driveling high caste view of the world.

There's "education" and then there is education, Brahmin Caste Ranbit. And it's amazing how many of the former "whiz kids" don't have a fuking clue about real life. Just enough to be dangerous know-it-alls.

Hell, if Steve P Nightybloom has facial hair, I'm going to have to reconsider here. One can't be walking around with their mouth looking like a vagina. :-)

On the other hand, the one brief time I did denude my face, my daughters all complained that I didn't look like their father. Can't have that either. :-)

There was an article in, probably the Globe and Mail of recent, being it's the only bourgeois rag around this place, that cited the results of one of those so-called "scientific studies" that "proved" better looking men and women produced significantly more girls than boys, especially as a first child.

Of course, being a male who produced four beautiful women as daughters, and no males at all, the evidence speaks for itself. I would certainly find bragging about such an achievement to be undignified. I'm much to modest to engage in such petty vanity. :-)

Even if it is clearly true.

I hada scroll through it, sorry. I just can't read a story about beards, which probably means I should just shut up and go read something else, but you know me, eh, Coyote....

Coyote, who the fuk died and made you god? You are the insult king of this site, why? When I was a kid out in the bush years ago, coyotes were shot on site with scoped hunting rifles cause they kept thier heads down, not like city coyotes. You are an uppity varmint. You seem like a fairly clever chap, maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer but still. Try and be a litle nicer to your fellow man, stop the insults, stick to the topics at hand, you old reprobate.

Ranbir, you seem to have faith that we're going to get better people in politics if we choose from the scientifically well-educated.

This puzzles me, because it suggests that you believe that the well-educated are somehow more ethically and morally motivated. I'm curious about your take on this because it seems to me that such people do not necessarily make better leaders than anyone else.

Have you done some research on this?

To quote Dave Frishberg, in song:

"I'm hip, but not weird
Like you notice I don't wear a beard.
Beards were in, but now they're out;
Just ask me if you're in doubt."

climber,

Not that your opinion of me, or coyotes, matters a rats ass really, but it's just that the cages around here need a good rattling every once in awhile. Too many "polite" folks around for what are really "impolite" times. And I like to rattle cages anyway-, such as yours, for example.

Get up on your hind legs and bare your teeth! Let's see what stuff you are really made of!

Pink candy floss, I suspect.

And my experience with coyotes, city and country, which is extensive, is that they survive and thrive in the face of all adversity, even all the human fuks with scoped rifles.

Tyee is changing. Too many politically correct and hoity toity snoots like Ranbir-, though at least he is open and honest about his opinion of we unwashed. He gets that much respect from me. But no more.

Others here think essentially the same Brahmin caste crap, but are too coy and cute to just spit it out.

And I'm a sharp enough knife in the drawer for you to cut yourself pretty good on, brother. :-) And that's only as sharp as I haf'ta t be.

Truman Green,

You bet I know ya. Only you've got enough good qualities that you get my respect anyway. :-) LOL.

Coyote, hows this-something close to home-I am sick and fuckin tired of a bunch of tree hugging, lazy sandal wearing bitches that can't even make thier women shave under thier armpits telling the decent, hardworking men of this fine province where to get off. Making up names from acid hallucinations, like this great bear rainforest bullshit, its called the central coast of British Columbia, owned outright by the Province of British Columbia, the trees there are decadent, they ain't making any money at all just standing there. We should go in there and log it, fuk the do-gooders, David Suzuki and all those weakassed, skinny, vegetarian mutts that couldn't even pack my oil and gas up a sidehill, never mind even start my saw. Motherfukers, all of them. Maybe one day I'll tell you how I really feel.

Wow. Beards really seem to stir up vitriolic rhetoric.

As a person who occasionally grows a beard for work (sometimes for work as an historical interpreter in BC parks, and as an actor), I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that you are treated differently with facial hair, and it's generally not perceived as positive, particularly if you live in a large urban center.

When I have the mondo beard, women (mostly at night) will actually cross the street to avoid me, and people will often approach me to buy drugs.

On the plus side, no-one ever asks you for spare change...

We are the "anti-bacterial", "run-off-to-emergency-at-the-first-scratch" society. Beards harbour all kinds of pestilence and ick. It's a no-go.

Interesting topic. The pathologization of the bearded male is part of a subtle misandry, a peculiar infantilization of the adult male, and a sublimated rejection of the law-giving Father archetype.

Shaving as an aesthetic practice among boy-men (as opposed to a military practice) began in Greece as a means of prolonging the period of time in which boy-men could accept the patronage of older men (a patronage with distinct erotic overtones). Such patronage by wealthy men was often an important part of a boy's social tutelage and elevation. It was socially scandalous for men of shaving age and older to accept the attentions of fawning pols.

Rome adopted Greek fashion, Roman legions mandated it, and the practice was promulgated it throughout conquered Europe. Shaving became the civilized thing to do, a mark of citizenship and culture.

It is fascinating that the return of the beard is being heralded most notably among non-Romanized religious minorities like Hassidim, Sikhs and Muslims.

Oh - and there was Peter the Great's punitive taxation on beards during his efforts to Westernize and modernize Imperial Russia in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The modernizers saw the orthodox Russian beard as a symbol of cultural backwardness and Eastern provincialism in their desire the immitate the dazzling cultural explosion then occurring in shaved, powdered and wigged Renaissance Europe.

Sounds more like a neocon wingnut above, Climber. You are obviously not very familiar with me at all. I actually admire David Suzuki, (which doesn't mean that I agree with everything he says) and I support social and economic policies of nature conservation (it being the real source of all so-called wealth), including of wild places, in conjunction with due acceptance that humans are a part of nature no less than other wild critters, and will use nature to meet their own particular needs. (The main problem in this area, as I see it, is excessive human population growth, including through reproduction and immigration, which the capitalist market place extravagantly encourages as a consequence of its constant growth and expansion needs, including markets, cheap labour and consumers. (i.e. The main problem faced by the environment is a run-away, out of control capitalist marketplace and the absence of a "deep and extensive" democracy model exercising control of the economy, its enterprises and the institutions of a currently ruling class controlled state .)

And, I hunt and fish, do wildlife photography, and live in a logging dependant community.

(And the useful part of "men who love men" is, in my book, that it leaves more breeding room for us "men who love women." There is likely to be an improved demand for out special "services", than if there are too many of us, especially of dubious breeding quality, running around. Nature seems to think that way too. :-)

So, you really don't know jackshit about me, you see. You're simply running off at the mouth and jumping to your own kind of "white-neck educated class" conlusions, without having done the appropriate homework. You keep climbing like that climber, you're going to fall "splat" on your face from your high perch.

Wrong again, honey.

Jesusbomb,

Hardly ever have been without serious facial hair in one configuration or another, I can't really be sure whether you are right or not. Though there does seem to be a slight status quo societal preference for "plucked chicken", "responsible", as in "easily controllable" males out there, especially in the city. Less so in "the country" and "small towns".

And you know what it is said about women, I presume. They tend to want a "traditional" macho caveman when they are "in heat", and a "sensitive" girly-man to help them raise "the product" of their lust afterwards. :-) LOL

If one can be "flexible" enough, in my experience, to fill both needs of the fair sex, a fellow will generally not go for want.

Now that's going to get me into a whole other pile of reprobate, male chauvantist shitt, I know. 8-D Chuckling.

But eh, we all have to call them the way we see them.

Coyote, don't be so vain, I wasn't talking about you, just showing I can call names as well and that it takes away from a meaningfull discussion.

The best looking men I've seen in a long while were strutting their stuff last Saturday at the Gay Pride Parade... buff and clean-shaven... (oh geez, hope Coyote doesn't read this!)

I guess that when you're out you don't need a beard.

That's alright. You're covered, Fii. 8-D LOL I believe I acknowledged above somewhere that "some" women do prefer "plucked chicken", "white-neck" and/or girly males. (A homosexual I once worked with told me "the community" refers to them as "fruit flies".) They feel "safer" with such males was the presumption, than more overtly "butch" males, if I recall.

You know, a "one of the girls" kind of thing. :-) (Perhaps they even have gender identity issues of their own? :-)

In any case, good to know you are still out there, Fii. :-)

Love 'n peace, gal.

Nahhh. Again it's just a matter of when you are "out", I guess, you want to look like "one of the girls." :-)

Facial hair comes with being a male, remember? LOL

I tend to go with stubble...about 3 or 4 days worth is right on..seems trendy and now..kind of Eurohip..works for me..gives you that..world weary look

Sounds cool, no doubt bobthecat. :-)

Three or four days without shaving sounds good too. The fact is, a beard, a honking set of handlebar moustachios, or a rather huge van dyke such I'm currently sporting takes more daily care, clipping, stroking and setting to flow just right than shaving everyday.

But eh, if you're a real man, flaunt it. :-)

'Sides, if it's too bristly, the old lady complains it's too hard on her nylons, or it whisker burns her inner thights.

And a fella does have to keep the ladies happy. When they're happy, you're happy. :-) (I ain't been married for 48 years out of mere luck alone , or just for my good looks and cooking. Though it all does help. You still have to know how to wield a mean main vein. LOL.)

Though with age, whereas the ladies just have to spread their legs, we males have more complex, delicate and not always reliable machinery to work with.

Now, I've really got to get back to that kitchen reno.

My understanding is that somewhere around the 8-11th century beards were a sign of power and prestige and that images of Christ there after were made showing him with a beard, can anyone with more religious knowledge confirm or refute this?

What are the odds that all this kerfuffle is nothing more than foolish overuse of our species' formidible pattern recognition abilities?

Surely nobody thinks that patterns of body hair have any significant effect on the character or qualities of a human? Otherwise one would change whenever one got a new do. And we don't.

It's as silly to pass judgements on people based on hairstyle or grooming as on skin colour, stature or gender.

It's a true thing that humans are so good at finding patterns in noise that we often find them when they aren't actually there.

I`m hoping Tyee does a piece on nose hair...now thats right up my umm alley

A piece on those hairs that grow out of the rims of the ears would be good...very gristly bristly hairs..I like twistin` `em when I`m watching T.V.
In India ear rim hair is a sign of male virility.

“I like twistin` `em when I`m watching T.V.”

ROTFLMAO! Thanks Bob the Cat!

First, Coyote should be given his own column on the condition that he quit fowling everyone else's posts. Half the comments here are from this peacock. And they're all about him. Pity those four daughters of this one-man population bomb.

Second, to return to the actual topic, the taboo on facial hair is an interesting microcosm of all the other ways politicians in western democracies are straighjacketed into professions of narrow "normalcy." Think of Naomi Wolfe being hired to advise Al Gore on his wardrobe. Ready to lead the free world but he can't dress himself. Think of John Kerry's protestations that he too was a man of deep faith. Is there one U.S. politician who dares say he or she relies on reason over belief.

So, the bandwidth for political thought and even appearance is, in Andy Warhol's phrase, "from A to B and back again."

Third, now for a Tyee piece on the straight and narrow path a woman politician must walk. Anyone remember the last woman Liberal cabinet minister who didn't appear in public always dressed in a mandatory red suit jacket? Cardinals have more choice in what they wear. Of course, they have more power to begin with.

"In India ear rim hair is a sign of male virility." And that's the best kind.

"Just me" has it right. Coyote, why not start your own blog; then we can tune in when we want to. Or not.
Back on topic, I think that forces at work on facial hair are similar to those at work in the shaping and abundance of mens' hats. As fewer men wear hats of their choice the hat brims have become smaller, until, for some, only the front has a brim. Adding insult to that injury, a lot of young men wear their caps backwards. I wonder if Reeves could put his considerable talent to work on the hat in mens' lives and Canadian politics?