The Goatee Must Die
Created | Updated Jun 22, 2003
It starts as a small follicle on a man's chin. Pretty soon there's a
small forest of short and curlies. He's sick of shaving, so he only scrapes
off half the whiskers; next thing you know, he's walking around with the
facial fashion statement of the 90s. Enough already. The goatee sprouted on
the faces of Seattle rock stars such as Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, and
Kurt Cobain at the start of that decade. Grunge is now dead. So is Cobain.
The check shirts are long gone. What's so special, so loveable, about this
hirsute affectation that it can still be seen flourishing on the chins of
men the world over? Oh, they can look pretty cool, depending on the
compliment it pays to the wearer's mug. A man's chin is his own business.
But why stick a tuft on it, and yet leave the cheeks bare? Why? Why? Please,
why?
Middle-aged Affectation
'I hate shaving, so I'd like to have a full beard because it just frees
you from that.'
says an old-enough-to-know-better possessor of a goatee, who
is - how revealing - reluctant to use his name.
'But then you start looking
like your old geography teacher. I'd see it as middle-aged affectation (he's
in his early 30s). I used to make fun of goatee wearers in the early 90s,
whenever the fashionable young things started wearing them. I'd had beards
at various times and then one day I shaved one off and left a bit of a
goatee. It's a very thin strip and it seems to get smaller and smaller
because I shave before I put my contacts in so it gets shaved very rudely.'
He has even had a barber offer to trim up his tickler. It sounded like the
sort of proposition he could refuse, but evidently it was a reference to his
facial affectation, the strip under the bottom lip often known as a soul
patch.
Fashion's predictable cycle. It starts as counter-culture, a statement
that the wearer is not like everyone else. Then through some inexplicable
symbiosis, it is absorbed into the mainstrearn and eventually loses its
appeal because by the very act of becoming mainstream, it is no longer a
statement.
A Place In History
Goatees had their place in history - Buffalo Bill, Lenin, Freud, the
finger-licking Colonel Sanders. Satan is often pictured with a flourishing
goatee and there is some speculation that this is because his image is based
on the half-man, half-goat, Greek god Pan. In Elizabethan times, it was worn
by the smart set - the courtiers and scholars, and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck did a series of portraits in the 17th
century of men wearing goatees. In 19th-century Paris, goatees thrived as a
badge on the chins of poets and painters in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Then
came Gen X. Followed by Hollywood. Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Bruce Willis,
Spike Lee.
A lot of guys have probably thought, 'that's an interesting look for
me', or 'it would make me more attractive', or 'different from the way I
used to look and a lot of other people look'. And then a lot of people end
up adopting that attitude. And then lots of people end up having the same
thing. That's when fashion trends become sad and mainstream. It's like
piercing and tattoos and scarification. They were very counter-culture to
begin with and then they started permeating mainstream culture.
Different Constructs
That's the point, really. Goatees surely have reached the high-water
mark? It's probably levelled out. People are coming up with different ways
to construct facial hair. Those really razored sideburns, cut across the
cheek bones. You see quite a few of those around these days ... and now
people are doing a whole lot of different versions of goatees. More like big
moustaches, or just that little tuft of hair under the bottom lip, which is
just about the most disgusting version of the goatee.
Like there's a difference. Clearly, it is time to stop acting the goat
when everyone from alternative Christian rockers to your local mortgage
manager or accountant (well, maybe not accountants) is busy trimming that
facial folly. No longer is it a valid, low-maintenance form of self
expression. Goatees must die. Now.
