Beardy men, be warned: ‘peak beard’ is fast approaching

Beardy men (top L to R): Anton Chekov, Ben Affleck, Zach Galifianakis, Jared Leto, George Clooney, Brian Blessed, Fidel Castro, Joaquin Phoenix, Leo Tolstoy, Davick Beckham, Alfonso Cuaron, William Shakespeare.

It has been quite the journey for the humble beard: from geography teacher territory, to hipster mainstay, and finally to the mainstream. When Jeremy Paxman comes back from holiday with a face full of facial hair, you know things have changed.

But scientists in Australia have warned that there are consequences to so many men adopting beards with abandon – the wearers become less attractive.

The study published in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters, looks at beards through the lens of evolutionary genetics, via social media.

The researchers wanted to find out if trends in facial hair, and the response to them, would be subject to the same laws of attraction and evolution as other genetic traits.

The four stages of facial hair

They took images of men at four stages of varying facial hair growth: clean shaven, five days of growth, 10 days of growth, and a full beard, with at least four weeks of untrimmed growth.

The researchers at the University of New South Wales then posted these photos online in various groupings and asked men and women to rate them.

Each subject was shown 36 faces – one of each man – at various levels of facial hair, and among various groups of “beardedness”. The first 24 images were aimed at getting the subject used to a certain style, and were predominantly either bearded, or clean-shaven. They were then asked to judge the following 12 images, which were a mixture of both.

When they were shown a series of clean-shaven faces, the beards were rated more attractive – and vice versa: “When full beards were rare or when the four levels of beardedness were evenly distributed, full beards enjoyed significantly higher attractiveness than when full beards were common,” said Professor Rob Brooks.

Gallery: the UK’s leading politicians, with and without beards.

A brief history of the beard

The phenomenon is known as “negative frequency dependency” (NFD), and is not uncommon in evolutionary biology. Among guppies for example, the male fish can develop rare coloured spots, making them less likely to be prayed upon, and more likely to get a mate, writes Professor Brooks. But when this pattern spreads and becomes common, the effect is significantly diluted.

While they may have become increasingly popular in recent years, beards have been going in and out of fashion for centuries: under Henry VIII, they were sported by aristocrats, while revolutionaries adopted them in the early 19th century. More recently, they were generally unpopular in the latter half of the 1900s, with pollsters warning politicians of public distrust towards towards facial hair – what are these men hiding under their beards? That was until the mid-2000s, when the beard was once again on trend.

But fashion conscious men – fear not. The study concluded that five or ten day old facial hair did not have much of a bearing on levels of attractiveness. It appears that we will never have too much designer stubble.