User:TheHumbucker/Beard

The power of beard compels you!

“There is a reason why my voice is so compelling.”

~ Morgan Freeman

A beard is a sacred facial marking of great power, given only to the blessed few chosen by the gods. While it is most common for pubescent or adult males to grow beards and attain this holy life force, women have been known to develop beards, particularly towards the end of their life. This sex-based discrepancy in who can grow a beard was a driving force in the Woman's Rights Movement of the 1910s. To this day, beards remain a powerful object of persuasion, allowing male wielders to bend women and lesser men to his will, and female wielders to be mocked to eternity.

History

Mythology

The origins of the beard are varied and many, but all steeped in reverence for its awesome might.

The Bible recounts the story of God bestowing upon Adam a beard of his own, made in the image of the Beard of God:

“ And on the eighth day, God said, Let there be a Beard in Our image, after our likeness: and let it have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every lesser man that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created the Beard in His own image, in the image of God created He it; yet only male He created them, for the Lord God said, Behold, the woman posses wiles as a snake, to sway the minds of man to her whims: and now, lest she put forth her beard, and take also of his heart, and own him entirely: Therefore the Lord God withheld the beard from Eve.

And God blessed the beard, and God said unto it, Be fruitful, and lengthen, and astound the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. - Genesis 1:36-38

”

The Greeks believed that Prometheus gave man the gift of the beard after plucking Zeus's great white beard from his chin in the night. Zeus, in a fit of cold-chinned rage, punished Prometheus by chaining him to a cliff, where eagles would tear out his beard every morning, only for it to fully grow back during the night.

Antiquity

A bust of the center of the universe and the man wearing it

The Ancient Greek civilization was well-endowed with well-bearded ones, such as Plato, Euripides and Aristotle. Their high ratio of magnificent beards per capita is widely believed to be the source of their greatness and influence on subsequent Western Civilization. Achievements were made in all walks of life in Ancient Greece: Plato set out his Theory of Facial Hair Forms, demonstrating the greatness of full beards - with hairs connecting goatee to mustache - the stupidity of the goatee or the mustache alone, and the blasphemy of the misplaced beard, which he termed the "unibrow." He further hypothesized the benefits of shaving one's nether regions, though this is widely recognized as an attempt to placate the incensed razor blade lobbyists. Euripides first performed his epic metal rap You Rip 'a 'Dis Beard in 408BC, topping the Alternative Charts for 3 years in a row and winning him a Golden Lute Award. Aristotle discovered that the motions of the stars and planets could be explained if his great beard was fixed at the center of the universe, a theory that lasted several hundred years before Copernicus' blasphemies gained wide acceptance by ignorant lay people.

The greatness of the Ancient Greeks was brought about by the conquests of the clean-shaven Alexander the Great, whose thirst for plunder and a new empire were likely the result of his inability to grow facial hair, suggesting an insecurity in his manhood. Such an insecurity would likely have been exacerbated by the magnificence of the beard of his tutor, Aristotle.

With the fall of the unmanly conquests of Alexander in the 3rd century BC came the rise of the equally unmanly Roman Empire, a nation of large noses and a distinct lack of hair follicles beneath them. For several centuries, the world sat in stagnation before the Celts, Huns and Visigoths tore the empire to pieces behind the uncouth magic of their ginger beards, a color only rarely bestowed on mortal men, and endowed with great and devilish powers of strength, bravery, and loud, raucous yelling, in addition to a godlike alcohol tolerance.

Middle Ages

King Henry VIII and his "beard." This style has never gained popularity, partially because it is often called the "Dog's Butt-Apron."

While the years of antiquity proved to be a showcase of the power of the beard in feats of conquest and world domination, the Middle Ages were a time when the magical prowess of beards were used almost exclusively in the seduction and the impregnation of women. This was quickly discovered to be something that beards were especially adept at. It was a shame, then, that so few men of the times were able to produce facial hair of a density adequate to attract women. Further, it was unfortunate how many women of those years found themselves with such luscious face carpets to arouse only the envy of all the men of their hamlets. The men, angered that it was only their envy that could possibly be aroused by such a sight, gathered in groups of five to ten and together participated in what today would be called a hate crime. In the process, they invented the sport of Witch Hunting, which has been immortalized in plays like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, in films like The Blair Witch Project, and in children's games like Hide-and-Go-Seek.

The sexual tension created by facial hair follicles came to both a figurative and literal head in the reign of King Henry VIII of England. The King's struggles to grow an acceptable beard showed a lack of the manliness adequate to create a son with his lawfully wedded wife. The fact that, at the time, only the penis-sporting offspring of a queen could be a king's heir (provided, of course, the child looked remotely like the male monarch) proved to be a frustrating inconvenience for King Henry VIII, and made him the butt of many of the jokes of Anne Boleyn, his feisty wife. In an attempt to redeem his sense of machismo, Henry begat sons off several women that were not his lawfully wedded wife. This made for awkward dinner conversation and, when the devout Mrs. Boleyn told her priest of her husband's cheating in confession, for incessant nagging from the Catholic clergy. The King sent both wife and clergy packing - all of the priests, bishops and cardinals got a one-way carriage ticket to Rome, while Mrs. Boleyn was sent to the Tower of London. There, she was the unfortunate victim of an accident involving a low and especially sharp ceiling beam.

Modern era

Civil War was the time of excess

How to Grow A Beard

Growing a beard requires dedication and lots of extra manly hard work. Moses only accomplished his beast beard after forty years in the desert. Here's how to do it in a series of steps that may eventually become a stairway.

Shave

Shaving is to your beard what tilling the soil is to gardening. Shave a lot. Shave all the time. Shave every day, and twice on Tuesdays, or three times on Saturdays if a member of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Wait

Once your face is clean shaven nearly every day, you wait, while continuing to shave and pray. One day, a beard will magically be birthed from your face by the beard seeds that have been dropped by birds flying overhead.

Famous Bearded People

Many are those who have used the magical powers of a beard for good, evil, or purely neutral purposes.

Those Who Used Beards for the Forces of Good

The magnificence of the beard is naturally aligned to fight for the forces of Good, and against the unnatural and un-beardly works of the nether lords. I mean, just look at these follicles of fortitude. Stroke them - feel their forgiving, yet firm fury against all things evil. How could they further a purpose other than that of all-goodness? For this reason, it is without surprise that history is littered with those wondrous kings, thinkers and leaders who faces sported such hairy hides.

Those Who Used Beards for the Forces of Evil

Despite the lengthy lists of those who have used the magical powers of their beards for the forces of good, yet there are also those whose incredible powers went awry, bringing destruction, ruin and pain to the world. Some think that such evil intent was the product of an imperfect mind and soul. Nearly all others, however, agree that it was the result of an imperfect (or even absent) beard, and point to the numerous examples from history.

Hitler

Hitler's utter inability to grow facial hair was well documented, and he was known by those close to him to stretch and comb his nose hairs to cover his ineptitude.

Those Who Used Beards for the Forces of Neutral

Joseph Palmer

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	Famous People with Famouser Facial Hair
	Abraham Lincoln ~ Adolf Hitler ~ Blackbeard ~ Bluebeard ~ Brian Blessed ~ Epic Beard Man ~ Frank Zappa ~ Freddie Mercury ~ Frida Kahlo ~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~ Grigori Rasputin ~ John R. Bolton ~ Joseph Stalin ~ Karl Marx ~ Sal Fasano ~ Salvador Dalí ~ Stan Lee ~ Wilford Brimley ~ ZZ Top