"I want to show people that this has real history behind it and it tells us something about ourselves that we didn't know before—particularly about manliness," Moore said.
We spoke with Springfield, Ohio native about what he's learned from the project, about beards, and how he hopes his learnings have an impact on Dayton and the world.
How do you think your book can inspire readers?
Moore: One way is to see how everyday, ordinary things, like the way we do our hair, is part of our lives. It's a way we communicate. It's kind of fun to think about all of the subtle ways in which we communicate with each other as human being with our bodies and our hair and our clothes. They might also become aware that these things have a history like everything else. We talk about the history of nations and war and famous people—they have history, obviously—but so do other things. Everything that we do as humans has its history and has an impact on what we do. So, the way we do or do not grow our facial hair is partly a result of history, what people have thought about it, and ideas and the rules we've had about facial hair.
Can you say that modern ideals have greatly influenced your inspiration for writing?
Moore: One of things that I think is at the core of this—in every time, even our own—facial hair is one of the ways in which ideals and values of what it means to be a man and, more specifically, what it means to be a good man are represented. In more recent times there has been a strong expectation that a good man would be a shaved man, because that means he is well-maintained, he's a cooperative, sociable, honest type of person. He is a team player. That's the kind of manliness that our society values. We want that person to represent that commitment to those values by shaving. Conversely there is a certain prejudice or dislike of men who have beards because that suggests he is not those things. There is a prejudice against beards. It's become less true in our time, but it's still there. When I talk about prejudices against beards I also talk about politicians. If you look at the presidential elections, none of those male politicians are going to even dare to wear facial hair because it risks too much of a backlash.
One of the things that bearded men always tell me is that they are constantly getting questioned by people, randomly, about why they wear a beard. It's almost as if, if you wear a beard, you have to explain yourself. "What are you doing, what does it mean?" But, if you shave, no one asks you questions. No one asks "Why do you shave?" That alone shows the kind of prejudice our society has against that issue. Why do we have that? It's because we have certain qualities that are associated with shaving and not shaving.
What's a fact about beards that made you say "wow" as you were researching the topic for your book?
Moore: At every turn, there was something amazing or something interesting that I never realized or thought of. Russian czar Peter the Great, who was Emperor of Russia in the last 1600s early 1700s, wanted to make the Russians start shaving. He wanted to enforce shaving because he thought that was modern. He enforced the rule of shaving so strictly that he actually imposed a tax on anyone who dared to grow a beard. That was a way to make people conform. It created a lot of anger and resistance. In the end, not very many people paid the tax, they went ahead and shaved. Religious conservatives were very angry, and that anger against shaving and desire to return to beards is still there in Russia among the really conservative orthodox Christians. So, that's kind of amazing to me.
Another example is the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages starting in the 1000s. They passed official church law which declared that all clergy men and monks should shave regularly—meaning once every two weeks. If they grew their beards out, they could be excommunicated from the church. That is pretty extreme. That rule technically was on the books all the way up to 1912. This was a really extreme example of strict enforcement of shaving rules. It helps to explain where we get our prejudices from today. Shaving in the church was next to godliness. Shaving and goodness were connected. That strong connection has stayed intact from that time.
What made you decide that the world needed to hear this perspective?
Moore: My "aha" moment went off when I was trying to figure out, for my history classes at Wright State University, some fun social history for my students—particularly in ancients times to make it more human and more accessible. It was the thought that the Romans all shaved. I thought to myself, "Why did they do that? Did they start this whole thing?" I wanted to know how this whole shaving thing got started. I kept looking around and there was nothing. Nobody had written anything on this—no scholars had written on this. There was no explanation. So I thought I had to write this, because there was nothing really there to speak of.
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