I think the key is to avoid the awful neckbeard - a la Pau Gasol of the Lakers. I've had facial hair of some sort for as long as I can remember. Most recent, and small/obscured enough for general internet consumption has to be me pictured with Sinbad. Big dude...I'm 6"3, 215. He was definitely bigger than me.
I'm rather bored so I thought I'd present a journey through my facial hair. I'm 30 but I look all of 19 when I've shaved so I prefer to keep some sort of facial hair. I didn't have any luck finding my driver's license photo taken after not shaving the entire winter. I expect however that it qualified me to be dropped in the national axe-murderer database. I'll have to try to scan it tomorrow because I know that these 6 or 7 pictures are not enough. Another side effect to the facial hair is taking less shit from the high school kids I sub for since I don't look like another student. I admit it, my beard is a proxy for actual respect. I also take pleasure in leaving the house in five layers of clothes wearing both a hoody and a wool cap looking as homeless as possible. Without further ado, I present: The Chronicles of Beardly Kyle Clean Me Deadwood Me Russian Me A Tribute to Charlie Chaplin Ginger Beards Are Strangely Sexy Artist's Rendering (Grade Two Edition) To Live and Die in LA (Beard Life) Enjoy that waste of time folks!
This shouldn't be called the beard thread, there are very few proper beards posted. It should be called the "Great, my one chance to show the chicks I'm not hideous" thread. Anyway, I win this one. I've got a God given beard. None of this trimming and combing shit. You just let it go and it looks great. God looks down on this beard and says, "You're welcome, my son." And I look at the skies and give the big man a thumbs up. I last shaved on December 24, 2009. I haven't touched it with clippers or anything but soap since. Spoiler
See, God looks down on my beard, my tan and my love of not being sodomized in Guantanamo and says "Bahahahahahah good luck fag." Hence why I trim. You're rocking a cool beard though.
And a few years ago I lost a bet and had to got to a bar with half my face shaved. I no longer bet on college basketball. Spoiler
Yes. I really am Korean from the eyes up. Apparently though, I'm Korean enough to grow facial hair that makes me look like I suck dick for crack. Whatever, I'm lazy and I don't care.
Caps beard, 11 days and counting. Once a year, $5 per Caps win over the course of the playoffs to save the ta tas. My wife actually said it doesn't look all that bad; she was drunk at the time. No way I can do the neck however. My work and my tendency to scratch things approve. Spoiler Non-beard.
At 20 years old I can't even grow sideburns... Pro: I don't have to shave often (twice a week) Con: If I don't/forget/too busy to shave then I can look like a creeper (patches of stubble) Pro: About a day after I shave the stubble looks surprisingly good in the heavy areas (sideburns, chin) Con: No facial hair usually leads to a guess at my age about 2 years younger than I really am while out and about. I'll bump the thread in a few years when I can grow one with pride.
I waver back and forth with the beard. I'll usually grow one for a month or so before I decide to shave. Yesterday, I shaved the neck, turning it from lazy scruffiness to a shining example of maintained facial hair. My main problem is that my moustache grows faster and thicker than anywhere else, and I have no interest in being The Guy With the Moustache.
When I had long hair I would rock the beard for the full hippie look. I've grown my beard a few times since I cut my hair but I seem to have more and more gray than brown and I'm not ready to go the "Just For Men" route.
Took this a couple of months ago when I ended my temp tour on base, might have been a little under the influence here too. Decided to let it grow while I was on unemployment.
Ok, it seems I need to post some additional info. This picture which I already posted was taken this past Saturday. The beard is normally combed a little neater, but we were camping for the weekend, and combing my hair and beard would have taken valuable time away from going to the shooting range. This growth is only about 6 months worth, with the mustache getting trimmed about once a month, the beard never trimmed. This is me at Halloween, I decided to go all out for the costume. I kept that mustache for about a month as the rest grew back in, then trimmed it down to match the new growth. I went on customer visits with that mustache, and fit right in. One of the advantages to calling on places that build garbage trucks and construction equipment. This is just about a week before that Halloween party, at my wedding: And this was sometime around a year ago. Other than shaving it off at Halloween, this was the shortest it had been since around fall 2007. It started out as a seasonal thing, I'd grow it out every year for hunting season to keep my face warm, then around Feb or March I'd shave it off or trim it down to a goatee. My grandma hated it and started complaining the second year, so I kept it just to bug her. I started liking it more and more, and my wife (then girlfriend) really started liking it, so it stayed. As far as work goes, I'm an application engineer and split my time between customer visits and working from home. My boss hasn't ever said anything about it, some of the sales guys call me Jeremiah Johnson or Grizzly Adams, but overall nobody really cares. Occasionally I have to go to meetings up in Chicago for one of the related divisions of the company, and everyone there is convinced that facial hair will kill any chance of promotion in the company. I really don't care what they think, the guy in charge is a douche. I stopped in that office on my way to the airport to pick up my laptop once, and they made me come back and sit with them while they ate lunch. I ended up sitting next to the boss, wearing cargo shorts, a t-shirt, flip flops, and my beard, and guys are still sending around cell phone pictures of it. They all thought I was crazy, and apparently their boss wasn't impressed. Good thing I don't care what he thinks, and would never work for him anyway. My real boss and all my customers know that I'm damn good at what I do, and as long as I keep fixing their problems, they don't care what I look like. The job I'm on now is full of young Asian engineers that can't grow facial hair, and they're all jealous. They also like to try and stick pens in my beard when I'm not paying attention to see if they'll stay. I don't worry about it hurting my chances of promotion, the only positions I could move into from where I'm at would involve a cubicle, and I would have to kill myself if I had to work in a cubicle again. I'll stay where I'm at, doing what I enjoy, and take my 10% raise every year. For those of you that complain that it itches too bad and you have to shave it, the itching phase only lasts a week, tops. A lot of you are probably giving up and shaving it just a day or two before the itch disappears.
This is what I usually look like... I don't usually let my facial hair grow. It always itches like hell and seems to get very greasy for some reason, despite washing my face twice a day. Oh well. By the way, that was taken by a cellphone. I'm now partially blinded by the flash too. Fuck. EDIT: I was dumb to wear that shirt. The fucking buttonholes are too big for the buttons - you button it, it undoes itself. Infuriating.
My beard sucks, I have no idea how long this took me to grow, but it was a substantial amount of time. I'm 21 and that was pretty much the first time I've ever let it grow at all.
This was taken last week. That's Dozer, my pitbull licking my ear. You can see his sister Dixie's paws on my arm. Unfortunately, I messed up trimming it a couple of days ago and shaved it off to start from scratch.