Gentlemen, Stop your Razors

Welcome to the official start of Beard Season 2009!

Beard season, if you’re unaware, is the longest contiguous time period during a calendar year in which a man can grow his beard before his wife or girlfriend insists that he shave it off. Officially Beard Season begins each year in the week following Valentine’s Day and lasts through Good Friday, allowing almost two full months of beard growth.

Granted these aren’t the only two months in which a man can grow a beard. The seasoned beard veteran knows of the two other prime beard-growing seasons during the year. In the fall, there’s Beard Training Camp. Training Camp lasts from November 1st until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Next comes Beard Pre-Season, starting on New Years Day and lasting most of January. After that comes full on Beard Season, which has just begun.

There are two key factors why these time periods were selected as prime beard growing months. First is the temperature. Beards are generally warm and itchy, so the last thing you want during the scalding hot days of summer is a hair mask insulating half of your face. The moderate to cold months of late fall through early spring are best suited for beard growth.

The second factor is the lack of family holiday gatherings. Generally family gatherings require family group photos, and no one (i.e. your wife) wants it to look like a shiftless drifter wandered into the picture with the family. During the next two months men will have hardly any external pressure to look presentable, and many of us plan to take full advantage of it.

Whether you’re a rookie or a haggard veteran of many past seasons, there are many bearding options to consider this Beard Season. If you are still undecided as to which beard you’ll grow this year, perhaps one of the following will find a place on your chin in the coming weeks:

The Evil Twin

Level of difficulty: Easy

Also known as the Goatee or the token Russian bad guy beard, the Evil Twin is a good starter beard for the bearding novice. This is the favored beard of young professionals who don’t want to shave everyday yet aren’t comfortable enough with their status on the job to risk growing a full beard.

Advantages: Your plans for world domination will finally be taken seriously.
Disadvantages: Increased odds of finding your name on the terror no fly list.

The Seacrest

Level of difficulty: None

The Seacrest, formerly known as The Timberlake, which was formerly known as The Crockett, has long been the favored beard of Hollywood heartthrobs, hobo clowns, fratboys, and crooked landlords. The wearer of this beard is generally comfortable enough with his status not to care about his appearance. Either that or he is just plain lazy.

Advantages: Overly simplified grooming techniques (Step one: roll out of bed. There is no step two).
Disadvantages: Odds of appearing on an episode of Cops wearing a ribbed white cotton undershirt and jean shorts are increased by a factor of ten.

The Whitman

Level of difficulty: High

Rookie beard growers need not apply, for the Whitman is advanced level bearding. A beard of this magnitude it too big for one beard season; the Whitman requires months, if not years of dedication and cultivation. Choosing to grow the Whitman beard is a way of making a bold social statement, that statement being, “I choose to never be found sexually desirable for the rest of my life”.

Advantages: Men with this type of beard can pretty much walk around all day in pajamas and a bathrobe and nobody would care. Also, soaking this beard in hot water creates a rich, savory broth.
Disadvantages: Complete strangers referring to you as “Pappy”, nesting sparrows, and the passive vow of abstinence one takes when growing this beard.

The Lucas

Level of difficulty: Moderate

The Lucas is a favored beard of stout men who suffer from the malady known as “chinneck”, a condition where excess neck girth obscures the delineation between where the chin stops and the neck starts. To give the appearance of a jawline, the beard is trimmed in a manner to outline where the chin would be had it not been annexed by the neck.

Advantages: People will forgive you for having a neck like a pelican.
Disadvantages: People will never forgive you for having created Jar Jar Binks. Ever.

The Pensive Art Critic

Level of difficulty: High

This beard is the beard of choice for the sensitive man with a keen attention to detail and style. A well-versed appreciator of indie films and musicians, the wearer of this beard is in touch with his emotions and exhibits a keen interest in political causes, celebrity gossip, and drinking coffee beverages that take at least two breaths to explain when ordering.

Advantages: Hot girls will probably talk to you openly and freely.
Disadvantages: Hot girls will probably think that you are gay.

The Chuck Norris

Level of difficulty: Legendary

If ever there were a manly beard, this is it. Saturated from follicle to tip with pure testosterone, the Chuck Norris is the beard equivalent of Sampson’s hair with one key difference: the wearer of this beard would’ve roundhouse kicked Delilah square in the teeth before she got within an inch of shaving it.

Advantages: The Chuck Norris beard is bulletproof, flame resistant, and has a black belt in judo.
Disadvantages: You cannot grow The Chuck Norris; The Chuck Norris grows you.

Which ever beard you decide to grow, here’s hoping that Beard Season 2009 is a good one. And hopefully a fast one; I don’t know about you, but it’s been two days and this thing is already starting to itch.