facial hair and presidents
Just got my face waxed last night.
Facial hair is a weird thing, no? Hair in general is weird. The other day I looked over at a friend, and it struck me that he would look particularly good in a powdered wig. When I said so, he was absolutely flummoxed, as well he should be, because that's an odd thing to say.
You can get a good history of hair in America by looking at all the Presidents in order. Powdered wigs from Washington through Madison. Then Monroe shows up with dark, slightly receding, slightly long hair, and that's that. The powdered wig probably started dying out long before 1817, but it was dead enough for a President not to have one by then.
And everyone's clean-shaven. Who's the first bearded President? Lincoln. The second? Ulysses S. Grant. Then, from there out, it's an unbroken line of beards, mustaches, and bushy faces till William McKinley took us into the twentieth century. TR and Taft immediately follow, both with walrus mustaches, but they're the last gasp. No president ever since has had any facial hair.
Facial hair is a weird thing, no? Hair in general is weird. The other day I looked over at a friend, and it struck me that he would look particularly good in a powdered wig. When I said so, he was absolutely flummoxed, as well he should be, because that's an odd thing to say.
You can get a good history of hair in America by looking at all the Presidents in order. Powdered wigs from Washington through Madison. Then Monroe shows up with dark, slightly receding, slightly long hair, and that's that. The powdered wig probably started dying out long before 1817, but it was dead enough for a President not to have one by then.
And everyone's clean-shaven. Who's the first bearded President? Lincoln. The second? Ulysses S. Grant. Then, from there out, it's an unbroken line of beards, mustaches, and bushy faces till William McKinley took us into the twentieth century. TR and Taft immediately follow, both with walrus mustaches, but they're the last gasp. No president ever since has had any facial hair.
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