should i grow a beard?

i bought a comb

you know it's long when combing it makes it look better.

i shaved mine recently, after 6 months of being pirate-level. i look like a child.

I haven't shaved in a while. Normally I'm clean shaven. Sometimes I forget - especially at the moment since there's no proper mirror in my house and I tend to shower at work. For a while I just look halfway between a stud and a slob and then a tramp depending on the angle and what I'm wearing. Then I shave and my top lip goes all fat and weird.

I grew a beard through last winter after I did Movember. I'm planning on doing the same this year - I enjoyed it, and got an awful lot of compliments.

how do people maintain a beard at regular length? I grow one and then I have to shave it all off...

you trim it

that way you can regulate the length

imagine, if you will, that the beard is say, a hedge in someone's garden. as the hedge grows, the owner uses a hedge-cutting device to remove the unwieldy branches that sprout ever higher.

now imagine that that hedge is on your face, the branches the hair that grows there, and you the hedge owner. in place of a hedge-cutting device you have another device, let's call it a facial hair trimming machine. you apply to this to your face, as the hedge owner the hedge-cutting device to the hedge, and shape or "trim" away the excess hair.

thanks LG. Very helpful. But my razor cuts to zero and so does my electric. do you have to buy a whole new thing?

Yes, you do. You can buy a specifically-designed beard-trimmer from Boots or Amazon etc etc etc for anywhere between £20 and £100.

Or probably a diamond-encrusted one from harrods for £2000.

buy a beard trimmer and you'll prob only need to buy one pack of disposable razors a year, unless you need to be cueball shaved on the reg.

cool. my world has been changed!

haha, I know that was a pretty dumb question but other than the 3 months when I jsut didn't shave, I've always been completely clean-shaven and it never struck me that beard trimmers existed!

I clean-shave once a week, generally on a Monday, unles I've got an important meeting or something later in the week, when I might shave again. That's less often these days - I deal much more with academics and students these days, and they're seldom clean-shaven.

^ Broken Britain

The answer to this question is always yes.

i always lose my enthusiasm for this look at about 8 weeks. which is now.

hi beardos, i have an embarrassing issue so i'm going to state it publicly and ask for advice because it's 2014.

i'm trying to grow this beard thing. first time. it started off looking like a really bad teenbeard, as i knew it would, but after a few weeks it filled in a little. things are ok. oh yeah, except for one thing:

it doesn't grow up at the top, starting at about an inch beneath my ears. there's a gap. it's embarrassing. people are asking me if i'm doing it on purpose. what a fucking disaster.

what should i do? is this is a sign from above? do i just keep waiting? do i fake it and do some sort of blended thing where i trim it so that it gradually fades in? do i ditch the teenbeard and just go with the mustache alone? give it another 15 years and try again? wtf is wrong with me?

When I was younger, I had that problem. As I got older, hair started growing in that little area between sideburn and beard and has done so ever since. I don't know how much that had to do with shaving and how much that had to do with just biological aging or what.

Just keep waiting. It will come. Unless it doesn't. Then I don't know what to do with you.

It took until my 30s for the mustache to come in. It's not the thick, luscious Selleck like mustache I desire, but it suffices.

visual representation of the problem:

http://i.imgur.com/DJhb2jG.jpg

Oh dear, that's much more severe a hair deficit than I had ever suffered, but my brother was sort of in your boat and his finally started coming in after he turned 32 or so.

this morning's division meeting took an excruciating turn when someone mentioned the gap, and then someone else said something about it looking like abe lincoln, and then someone else who felt sorry for me tried to make me feel better by reminding everyone that abe lincoln was a great president

i mean seriously, should i just shave off this monstrosity, deal with a few more days of awkward comments at work about how it's not there any more, and move on with my life?

http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/j/Anchor_Beard.jpg

Looks kind of neckbeardy. I would lose it.

Revisit the idea again in a year or two and see how things develop. Don't go around looking like Andrew Luck, though.

is there anything happening in the gap at all? any hopeful blonde shoots?

if not, you need to shave it.

like...just a few? not too many! i wish i could just go off to an island for a few months and see what happens, away from the judging eyes of humanity

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gs8ryNQPGsg/UaUo28LYCQI/AAAAAAAAAew/JWk_6zVzh7k/s1600/Hannibal7.jpg

ok. think i'm going to shave it. leave the stache for an evening, but maybe ditch that as well. RIP 2014 halfbeard. i'll try again when i'm even older

i'll probably be able to grow a full beard on my butt before i can grow one on my face

happens to the best of us

another decade or two and you can grow your ear hair out to cover the empty spots

it is done.

what a nightmare

Oh man - had excellent advice to give. If only I had seen this sooner

what was the advice?

Shave it. Shave it all

i felt your advice waves enter my mind before you even projected them, and carried out the task

i think you have to go past the point you would feel comfortable with elsewhere on your face, until everything you need bearded is bearded

then trim the rest to suit

and never shave it again

that's how to do it

then other men will know that you are a patient man who can be relied upon when things are really important (e.g. growing beards)

So is growing a beard really a painstakingly slow process for some men?

i had completely forgotten about my abandoned factory/bustling courtyard dilemma until this thread, unlike the hair that hypothetically would grow near my upperjaws, popped up

it is a very uneven process for me. I could have a very full midwestern goatee very quickly, but everything else is pretty sparse.

Mine seems to have reached a peak where it won't grow much further. It's okay though.

Just keep trying guys.

i tried growing a beard a while ago and got the same factory floor problem. i can grow a pretty legit mustache, though, but it makes me look like I'm trying out a Sgt. Peppers costume for Halloween. i've just resigned myself to no facial hair at all.

Don't think I can shave again in case this happens:

http://www.webburgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/shave-beard-001.jpg

(with thanks to pfunkboy)