Creative Beard Design: episode one

I excused myself from dinner tonight to go and hack away at my beard. It had been bothering me for a while, and I felt that a change was in order. So I took a pair of scissors from the medicine cabinet and started cutting it away from my face in massive, white clumps. After a few minutes of this, I looked in the mirror and saw the following looking back at me. I hadn’t intended to develop a new beardstyle, but I think I came up with something pretty beautiful, a kind of bi-level construction comprised of a classic, pointed Van Dyke with a whimsical undergirding of neck beard.

bearddesign

My family, when I showed them, lost their shit. One cannot simply float a goatee above a neck beard, they told me. I thanked them for their input, but told them that I was going to wear it to work tomorrow. “I just want to try it out for a day or two,” I said to them. I must have been pretty convincing, because they believed me. They begged me not to. Clementine told me that she wouldn’t be seen in public with me. Linette tried a different approach. She just stared blankly in the direction of my face and silently shook her heard. I looked back at them like they were crazy. “I think it’s really nice,” I told them. “And I’m pretty sure the folks at work won’t even notice it.” I let it go on for way too long. By they time I told them that I was just kidding, they were almost in tears… For what it’s worth, though, I really did like it. I thought it looked distinguished. And why is it that neck beards are off-limits in the workplace anyway? Who decided that mustaches were alright, but that long, grey, neck beards weren’t? I’m too old to be at the forefront of this fight, but it needs to happen. For the sake of future generations, someone needs to pick up the cause of the Van Dyke neck beard combo and make it happen.

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17 Comments

  1. Posted January 19, 2015 at 10:03 pm | Permalink

    I am a coward. I should have kept it.

    Damn…

    I hate myself.

  2. Posted January 19, 2015 at 10:15 pm | Permalink

    I’m going to grow it back and enter a beard competition. I’ve just decided.

  3. Jennifer Perez
    Posted January 19, 2015 at 10:30 pm | Permalink

    Names for this style:
    The cat snuggler
    Depth percep-chin
    Chin strap baldness
    Adam’s Awful

  4. Anonymous
    Posted January 19, 2015 at 10:41 pm | Permalink

    You have no idea just how hard it is to make a name for yourself in the world of competitive facial hair.

    http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-563760-breitwandaufmacher-powp.jpg

  5. Chaely Chartier
    Posted January 19, 2015 at 11:29 pm | Permalink

    Futuristic

    But yet also old timey.

    Transcendent.

  6. Posted January 19, 2015 at 11:30 pm | Permalink

    We need to build a rail line between Ann Arbor – Ypsilanti – Detroit that runs along Michigan and Washtenaw Avenues. Moreover, it should be free for all people who make less than the national median income.

  7. Elviscostello
    Posted January 20, 2015 at 12:05 am | Permalink

    Mark, I agree with your family. Just looking at the picture makes me cry.

  8. Jcp2
    Posted January 20, 2015 at 6:31 am | Permalink

    You should have asked Arlo. He gets it.

  9. Linh
    Posted January 20, 2015 at 8:10 am | Permalink

    My daughter asked, “Why does Santa look mad?”

  10. Leisa
    Posted January 20, 2015 at 8:12 am | Permalink

    It would’ve been funny if you attached a GoPro to your forehead and recorded reactions from your office. I can smell a viral video… or maybe just the food that was stuck in your beard.

  11. Alice Boss
    Posted January 20, 2015 at 8:45 am | Permalink

    That bottom tier lends itself to braiding, curling, extensions, spiking (you know, a liberty spike beard tier). Maybe you can start something here, A man and his “beard’s-tier”! If you can get that thing long enough the possibilities are endless. And if you don’t feel like messing with your beard’s-tier for the day, wear a turtleneck and simply tuck the beard’s-tier into your collar.
    And I agree, GoPro it, write it, post it!

  12. K2
    Posted January 20, 2015 at 3:26 pm | Permalink

    http://instinctmagazine.com/post/heart-or-hate-it-men-are-dyeing-their-beards-vibrant-colors-2015

    Men Are Dyeing Their Beards Vibrant Colors In 2015

  13. Posted January 20, 2015 at 6:00 pm | Permalink

    Good lord that’s gross. God hates neck beards.

  14. Posted January 22, 2015 at 12:23 pm | Permalink

    I think beard styles are slowly gaining more freedom. I just read in the news that prisons cannot force inmates to shave their beards now. Hopefully, the workplaces will follow suit…

  15. Stafford by proxy
    Posted January 22, 2015 at 2:46 pm | Permalink

    I think my face is happier fuzzy.

    http://imgur.com/fuxzzOB

  16. Rahela Begum
    Posted March 4, 2015 at 5:54 am | Permalink

    My name is Rahela Begum, i live and work in Oxford shire, UK. My life is back!!! After 2 years with a man who had a beard much like yours, I felt like ending it all, i almost committed suicide because of him and his bi-level beard, i was emotionally down all this while. I found a spellcaster who freed me though. My message to your wife is that she can break free of your power.

  17. Jake A Vanderbeck
    Posted September 10, 2017 at 7:46 am | Permalink

    I want to try that

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