On the upside, though, guys think guys with beards have higher social status.
TUESDAY, March 6, 2012 — Ernest Hemingway, Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Brad Pitt, Dumbledore, and the swashbuckling “Most Interesting Man in the World” (according to Dos Equis, at least): What do all these men have in common? Fame? Smarts? Sure. But the truly defining characteristic these icons all share is, of course, their beards — manly, distinguished beards. Indeed, few markers of appearance seem to imply a rugged masculinity more than abundant facial hair — or so men might think.
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But could it be that while bearded men believe their bristly faces look strong and handsome, women think they look, well, kind of awful? That is the finding of a just-published study by psychologists from Canada and New Zealand, who asked more than 200 women to rate which they found more attractive: a group of photos of men sporting beards, or the same guys sans facial hair. The women, who hailed from Samoa and New Zealand, consistently rated the clean-shaven look more appealing than the hirsute one.
These findings are somewhat surprising, given that no less an authority than Charles Darwin posited that men’s beards were an attractive attribute in their pursuit of female mates. But women today just might be proving the great biologist (who, it must be said, sported a famously heavy beard himself) dead wrong.
The two psychologists who conducted the study (Paul Vasey of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada; and Barnaby Dixson of Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand) recruited 19 fully bearded men from New Zealand and Samoa. The researchers photographed them twice: once with a normal expression and once making an angry face. The men then shaved, and photos were re-taken, again with each making a normal face and an angry one.
Not only did the women rate the clean-shaven versions of the men more attractive, they thought the bearded versions looked angrier as well.
But if you sport a beard (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit I currently do—though mostly due to laziness about shaving), the news from Vasey and Dixson’s study isn’t all bad. The researchers also asked men to view the photos, and while the guys agreed with the ladies that the bearded men looked angrier, they were also inclined to “ascribe them higher social status,” as the psychologists note in their study abstract in the journal Behavioral Ecology.
So it seems men with beards must make a hard choice: either shave, and appear more attractive to women; or remain bearded, and be taken more seriously.
Photo Credit: PR Photos
Do you find bearded men sexy — or scary? Make your case in the comments section below!
Thursday, October 29, 2020