Things people know: why shave?

Ben asks "Why do you shave?"* The beard and mustache are innovations that appeared at a fairly late stage in the evolutionary path that led to the modern man before asking "Why shave?" It should be checked why our ancestors decided to grow hair in a body part where it is not useful?

Exactly the same question, Ben, bothered me personally until I realized that if the old man insists on going back to the same piece of his face that he shaved off, he's probably good there and there's no point in fighting with him. Still, the bloody heroic war of many of my fellow members of the bristling gender is worthy of examination.

It is impossible to know when the first shaving took place, although blades sharp enough for shaving were prepared already in the Stone Age from volcanic glass (obsidian), or mesothelioma. A bushy wild beard is seen as natural and primitive, but the beard itself is a novelty. The faces of our chimpanzee relatives and in particular the upper lip and chin are smooth with hair. The beard and the mustache are innovations that appeared at a fairly late stage in the evolutionary path that led to the modern man before asking "why shave?" It should be checked why our ancestors decided to grow hair in a body part where it is not useful?

Hair in general is a unique characteristic of mammals and they grew it first of all to maintain body heat; The "natural" hypothesis is, therefore, that the beard is a natural scarf that wraps the face and neck. The beard grows with the encouragement of the male hormone testosterone which simultaneously causes us men to go bald. There was someone who measured and found that the area of ​​the skin covered by a beard is equal to the area exposed by male pattern baldness and concluded that the beard is a compensation for baldness: the heat that the man loses through baldness is saved through the insulation of the face. This explanation is far from convincing: somehow women manage to regulate their body temperature without baldness and without a beard, and like them young people whose beards have not yet grown. Other ideas for the evolutionary benefit of aging Both as a radiation shield: A beard reduces the intensity of harmful radiation (UV) from the sun that reaches the skin of the face 10 to 20 times at midday and 3-5 times at higher sun angles (lighting typical for morning or afternoon hours). And yet women manage well without this sunscreen and why exactly the male cheeks and chin need protection from radiation and not the shoulders or the back for example.

Other researchers have suggested thatThe male beard protects the lower jaw from blows and punches . Men are more quarrelsome, tend to punch each other in the face and such protection may have an advantage. Physical measurements revealed that a beard does indeed act as a cushion: it reduces the maximum force experienced by the impacted jaw by 16%. Yet strangely, boxing champions of their generation tend to be clean shaven or at most trimmed with short stubble.

Darwin (bearded himself) considered the beard, like the peacock's tail or the stag's antlers, a product of sexual evolution: a distinct characteristic of the male that signals to the female the potential mate's fitness. We have a beard because our ancient civilizations preferred bearded men. Like other male adornments in the animal world, the beard also grows under the influence of testosterone and similarly to the lion's mane It may burden those who flaunt it For it provides the opponent in battle with a foothold. The old man, according to this theory, is a kind of statement: I am so strong that I can beat my enemies even when I give them a "for". But if the beard is a natural decoration that women are attracted to, then it would be reasonable to see a similar attraction even today, but a simple observation shows that a clean-shaven man has no particular problem finding a date. In 18 studies, all of which required women to rate pictures of bearded and clean-shaven men according to the degree of attractiveness, 8 showed a preference for bearded men, 8 for clean-shaven men, and 2 studies showed indifference to facial hair. In another study it was found that women preferred the bearded when they were a minority of the portrait gallery that was shown to them and the shaved when the selection consisted mainly of bearded men. This preference for the less common look may explain the constant change in shaving fashion as recorded in the last two hundred years: a statistical analysis of photographs of men from the beginning of the photographic era shows a peak in popularity for cheek wigs in 1853, for a mustache attached to sideburns in 1877, for a full beard in 1892, for a mustache in 1918, and so on until the stubble of the beards of these days. Another answer came up almost by chance in a study that examined male facial characteristics that create an attractive appearance. The study only included pictures of men without beards or mustaches and focused on measurable characteristics such as eye size, nose width, etc. Analysis of the results revealed an unexpected finding: bristles. Even those who prefer a shaved face want to know that beneath the smooth skin hides a dignified Herzl beard. A subsequent study confirmed the stubble effect: between a clean shave and a thick beard, the subjects gave a high score to the spiky appearance. What creates masculine beauty is a balance of characteristics that convey tenderness and sensitivity such as large eyes to distinctly masculine facial features such as a heavy jaw and a large area of ​​skin that requires shaving. Adherents of evolutionary psychology see these conflicting requirements as an expression of the collection of qualities that a woman should look for in a suitor: "masculine" strength of one who is supposed to provide and protect with the ability to relate emotionally to a permanent partner and children.

If not as a piece of jewelry to win the hearts of women, maybe the male face was covered with hair as a signal to our male friends?

A good way to pass on genes to future generations is a high status among males. Those who succeed in deterring rivals will improve their chances of producing offspring. Many of the male status symbols in the animal world in general and among our relatives the monkeys in particular are concentrated in the mouth and jaw area. Prominent fangs and menacing jaws keep competing males away, so evolution nurtures them. In the process in which we became a "thinking person" the human brain grew at the expense of the jaws and the beard, according to this hypothesis, gives a small jaw the menacing look it has lost. Studies show that indeed, hairy faces also look more masculine, powerful and threatening than those bald ones when they are shaved. Furthermore, it turns out that men more than women associate a beard with aggression and strength. But even this theory is not perfect: our ape relatives threaten their opponents by displaying long teeth and the beard does make the jaw stand out but makes the teeth look smaller. In addition, the link between a beard and "wildness" or aggressiveness depends on culture and in many places a beard is linked to an intellectual or even pacifist image.

If the beard has no real function and there is no benefit in the form of sexual attraction or deterring rivals, it may simply be an evolutionary "accident", a feature that has no advantage but spreads in the population because it exists in the founding fathers or is a "hitchhiker" of another feature that has an advantage. The history of the fashion of beards, mustaches and sideburns shows that it is neither the environment nor the technology but the culture that shaped our attitude towards the beard. The inner gate took on whatever symbolic meaning we chose to give it. Thus, for example, the mustache that is considered macho and militaristic today was actually banned among the battle-loving Spartans. At the dawn of civilization, the beard was an important element of the performance: the ancient Egyptians who shaved and shaved their body hair left a well-designed and decorated beard on the chin that was considered so essential for a dignified performance that Queen Hatshepsut (1490 BC) decorated her chin with an artificial beard. Also in Babylon, a curly beard was an item that could not be given up and the shaving of the beards of David's messengers by Hanun, king of Ammon, was a reason for war. To take the beard out of fashion required a ruler of the stature of Alexander the Great who preferred clean-shaven soldiers whose chances were better in hand-to-hand combat.

The Romans, who were influenced by Greek culture, perpetuated a shaving tradition that would last for many generations. A beard was considered in Rome a sign of carelessness and neglect and the first shave was cause for celebration when the young man first wore the toga. It is precisely the lack of usefulness of the beard that allows us to express our attitude to "masculinity" as we interpret it in different cultures and times. Thus, for example, sociologists point to the great renaissance periods of male facial hair in the merry sixties of the 20th century and the middle of the 19th century as coinciding with a time when great changes took place in the relations between the sexes and the beard became a means of expressing a new type of masculinity. Around 1850 precisely when new razors were developed, much more convenient and safer than the knives that were used for this purpose until then, mustaches and beards took the faces of Europeans by storm. At the height of this wave in 1870, half of the men in Britain sported a full beard. Since the members of the Victorian era had a heated discussion about the value and moral significance of their external appearance, it is possible to learn how they carried hypotheses on the face with the burden of shaping a new concept of the man's role. Until then, the vast majority of men spent their time very close to home, the farmer's house was built on the edge of the field, while the craftsman and merchant lived in or adjacent to the workshop or shop. The father of the family was present in his small kingdom and closely controlled it at all hours of the day.

The industrial revolution gave birth to the breadwinner who goes to work in the morning and returns home in the evening. What we see today as a conservative and chauvinistic way of life - the woman managing the household while her husband is at work was for the people of the time a feminist revolution that forced them to express masculinity in a new way and first of all to emphasize masculine external signs. Medical experts of the time were quick to provide the audience with scientific justifications for the new fashion: the beard and mustache were presented as natural filters for the inhaled air and there was even someone who explained that God in his grace provided a protective blanket for the male vocal cords on which the task of reading the Holy Scriptures rests. The fashion for the beard faded in the late 19th century when the stubble began to appear on the cheeks of the second generation of the industrial revolution. This generation gave up the role of domestic patriarch and sought to rule not the household but the world. Not the beard but rather the shaved appearance as a sign of civilization was the flag that the men should wave throughout the empire. Thus, in filmed and animated films, Tarzan represents the white man in the jungle when he is clean shaven. Since the smooth look is associated with the West, the beard became a symbol of resistance to this civilization and a must-have item for rebels and revolutionaries. This is how shaving or the beard became a flag that we are required to wave every morning to express our attitude to "masculinity" as defined by culture.

Should you shave?
The answer depends, of course, on the meaning that the environment attributes to this decoration on the chin. As facial hair becomes more popular, employers' resistance to bearded workers decreases. Until about a decade ago, corporate anti-aging rules generated plenty of legal debates in which companies fought for their right to force shaving on their employees. The pizza company Domino's, for example, sent the vice president to the witness stand to defend the firing of a shaver who refused to shave, when he was equipped with a survey according to which no less than 20% of the company's customers would shy away from a bearded pizza delivery man and claims that "common sense" dictates that people will buy less from sellers with facial hair. Even today, bearded waiters are seen as sloppy and less clean than their clean-shaven counterparts.
Even if we bearded people are still discriminated against here and there at work, our image is excellent: compared to our clean-shaven friends, we are seen as more mature, intelligent, creative and reliable. Marketing studies that examined the effectiveness of advertisements showed that a smooth face is more effective in selling "attractive products" such as fashion items, but we are more convincing when recommending highly specialized products such as medicines or reliability for example in high-tech products or insurance.

But the answer to the question "Is it worth shaving" may come from a completely different direction, Big Brother is already diligently collecting data on surfing habits, consumption, interests and friends and is also interested in our facial features. The loss of privacy does not stop with the information about our location at any moment or the information we consume, there are those who are working on algorithms that decipher, based on facial expressions, the mood of a person according to his picture. 7 Basic emotions are expressed independently of culture or language by fixed expressions. Disgust, for example, is universally expressed in the stretching of the lower lip, the wrinkling of the nose and the raising of the upper lip. Similarly, the computer can be taught to recognize joy, surprise or fear. It is possible that within a few years anyone who wants to will be able to know not only which stores we visited in the mall or which Zoom meetings we were bored at, but also where joy arose in us, what surprised us and where and when we were disgusted. When reading articles about the wonderful / monstrous ability of these programs, the bearded man finds one, modest, point of comfort: the ability to identify decreases significantly in beard growers. During the heyday of beards, the Victorians in England in the 19th century explained from the side of the beard that an extroverted expression of emotions is not suitable for a man and it is therefore appropriate to grow a beard that will allow a restrained and decent appearance at all times. Maybe it's time to revive the gentleman who keeps his feelings to himself and grow the last hiding place in the face of the complete loss of privacy.

Thanks to Dr. Gianluigi Guido and Dr. Christopher Oldstone-Moore for their help

Did an interesting, intriguing, strange, delusional or funny question occur to you? Send to ysorek@gmail.com

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Things Yoram knows: why do girls play with dolls and boys with cars?
• Things that Yoram knows: why are the legs long?
• Things donors know: how evolution can create emotions