Sathnam Sanghera: Of beards and close shaves
I was recently reading a copy of this newspaper in a coffee shop when I came across a picture so striking that it nearly had me choking to death on a latte. In short, not to beat around the (hairy) bush unnecessarily, to (razor) cut to the chase, it was a photograph of Fernando Rod?s, the new chief executive of the French marketing services group Havas, sporting the most dramatic beard I have seen this side of Richard Harris?s rendition of Professor Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer?s Stone.
There have, of course, always been a handful of successful businessmen with beards ? Sir Richard Branson and Larry Ellison spring to mind ? and there was, of course, a period in the 1970s when walking into any boardroom was like landing on the set of Planet of the Apes. But in recent decades the beard has become taboo, with a 2001 survey of British company directors finding that only 4 per cent believe bristles to be an advantage. So the Rod?s portrait raised a titillating possibility: the renewed acceptance of face fuzz in the corporate arena.
To find out whether attitudes have changed, I recently decided to stop shaving. And while I waited for my five o?clock shadow to grow into something more substantial, I did some research. The first shock discovery was the extraordinary seriousness with which some beardies take their facial hair. The existence of beard websites, beard clubs, National Beard Week, beard parties, the World Beard and Moustache Association, the biannual World Beard and Moustache Championships and the Beard Liberation Front, ?dedicated to the removal of a societal prejudice against the facially folically enhanced or bearded?, took me aback. Evidently, to quote a passionate beardie, there are those who believe that a beard is for life, not just for Father Christmas.
But as I read further, I began to understand why the bewhiskered feel the need to assert themselves: beards get a really bad press. In just five articles on the subject I came across a range of wild allegations, including the suggestion that men only grow beards to conceal something (a weak jawline, an extra chin or three and so on), that beards make men look undependable (David Brent in The Office), that beards make men look untrustworthy (?never trust a man with a beard?) and that no sane woman has ever found a man with a beard attractive (one female journalist compared kissing a whiskered man to ?snogging a Brillo pad?).
Unfortunately, business is just as pogonophobic as the media. There have been countless high-profile face-offs between employers and the hirsute, ranging from Waitrose refusing to employ beardies in certain jobs to broadcasters asking certain on-screen staff to remove facial hair, to Butlins holiday camps insisting on fluff-free faces.
Invariably, the reasoning used to justify such discrimination is about as convincing as an adolescent moustache. It is often claimed facial hair is ?unhygienic?. But, if so, surely food workers should be required to shave eyebrows and sideboards, too? Then there is the common accusation that the general public finds beards unappealing. But if you look closely at the surveys that back up the assertion ? one recently suggested that only 5 per cent of women like to be kissed by a man with facial hair ? you will find that many have been commissioned by razorblade companies. Hardly neutral observers.
Indeed, by the time my beard began to fill out, I felt quite sorry for the hirsute and was looking forward to listing the many ways in which beards are marvellous. Unfortunately, after 10 days of growth, I still had not been able to think of any. In spite of the good will, I hated my beard for the way it made me look like a jowly, Asian version of Friedrich Nietzsche, for the way food tended to hang in it and for the way it provoked endless unsolicited feedback from colleagues, which included comments such as:
?It doesn?t highlight your best features? (the implication being that my face is one of my weakest features); and ?In general I think beards look best on people with thin faces? (the implication being that I have a fat face).
The only person who enjoyed it was my mother, who interpreted it as a sign that I had finally rediscovered my Sikh religion and would soon succumb to her pleas to get married to a simple village girl from the Punjab.
Of all the drawbacks, the uninvited feedback was the worst. Although men are said to be judged less on their appearance than women in business, it seems paradoxically that, because they have less to play with, if men do change anything they attract more comment than women. Beardies sometimes claim that, during the average lifetime, they will save more than 3,000 hours of life by not shaving every morning. The problem is that all the time saved is subsequently spent responding to comments about your beard. Taking a blade to your throat every morning is surely preferable.
Which is not to say I cannot see that beards do sometimes add value. They can make some people look ferocious (Rasputin), mysterious (Che Guevara), radical (Fidel Castro) and deep (God). Unfortunately, these values are not particularly prized by corporations and most of us just look messy in beards.
Moreover, despite the talk of diversity, companies are incredibly undiverse in practice. Most want their employees to conform, see things in a certain way and to look a certain way, too. As far as facial hair goes, this means a clean shave is nearly always the best a man can get. And while I am not one for making (shaving) rash predictions, I reckon that, within a year, either Mr Rod?s or his dramatic beard will have gone.
胡须虽酷 不留为妙
最
近的某一天，我正在一个咖啡店阅读英国《金融时报》。当目光扫过一张图片的时候，我震惊得差点儿被一口拿铁咖啡呛死。简单地、不兜圈子直奔主题地说吧：那是法国营销服务集团Havas新任首席执行官费尔南多?罗德斯(Fernando Rodés)的一张照片，照片上的他炫耀着我所见过最为惹人注目的大胡子，其夸张程度仅次于理查德?哈里斯(Richard Harris)在《哈利?波特与魔法石》(Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)中饰演的邓不利多教授(Professor Dumbledore)。
当然，总会有一些成功的商业人士蓄胡子――我想到了理查德?布兰森爵士(Sir Richard Branson) 和拉里?埃里森(Larry Ellison)。而且，20世纪70年代，也确实有一段时间，当你步入任何会议室，都宛如降落在《人猿星球》(Planet of the Apes)的电影场景中。不过，近几十年来，大胡子已经成了禁忌。2001年对英国公司主管进行的一项调查发现，只有4%的人认为大胡子是一种优势。因此，罗德斯的照片显示了一种搞笑的可能性：在公司竞技场中，可能又要重新容忍面部茸毛了。
为了弄清楚人们的态度是否真变了，我最近决定不再刮胡子。我一面等自己在下午5点钟就长出来的胡子茬长得更长，一面进行了一些研究。第一个惊人的发现是，蓄胡子者对待他们的面部毛发特别严肃认真。关于胡须的组织、活动数量众多，吓了我一跳，比如胡须网站、胡须俱乐部、“全国胡须周”(National Beard Week)、胡须团体、“全球胡须协会”(World Beard and Moustache Association)、一年两次的“全球胡须锦标赛”等(World Beard and Moustache Championships)，此外还有一个“胡须解放阵线”(Beard Liberation Front) “致力于消除对面部毛发较重或蓄胡子的社会歧视”。显然，用一位热情的蓄须人士的话讲，有一些人相信，胡子是生活的一部分，不是圣诞老人的专利。
不过，看了更多资料之后，我开始理解，为什么有络腮胡子的人觉得有必要强烈申明自己的观点：胡须确实受到严重压迫。仅仅看了5篇关于胡子主题的文章，我就看到了许多奇谈怪论，比如男人蓄须就是为了遮掩些什么（比如消瘦的下颌、双下巴或三层下巴等等），胡须使男人看起来不可靠，胡须使男人看起来不值得信赖（“永远不要相信留胡子的人”），还有，正常女性永远不会认为胡须有魅力等等――一位女记者曾将亲吻有络腮胡子的男人比喻成“亲一个钢丝擦锅球”。
不幸的是，商界与媒体一样患有“胡须恐惧症”。在雇主与蓄须者之间，曾经出现过无数次沸沸扬扬的对峙，比如英国高端超市连锁Waitrose拒绝雇用蓄须者从事某些工作，广播电视公司要求某些出镜员工去除面部毛发，还有英国Butlins假日营也坚决禁止员工留胡须。
用来证明这种歧视的借口总像是合情合理的，就像青春期的男生肯定会长胡子一样。经常有人宣称，面部毛发“不卫生”。不过，如果真是这样的话，食品工人是否需要把眉毛和鬓角也都剃掉呢？还有一种常见的说法，说普通大众认为胡须没有吸引力。但是，如果你仔细看看那些支持这种论调的调查（有项调查指出，只有5%的女性喜欢被面部有毛发的男性亲吻），你会发现，许多调查是由剃须刀片企业委托进行的。他们根本不算是中立的观察者。
实际上，在我的胡须长起来之前，我非常同情蓄须者，打算列出胡须的诸多绝妙之处。不幸的是，胡子长了10天之后，我仍然没有想出一条好处。尽管怀有善意，我还是讨厌我的胡子，因为它让我看起来就像是一个下巴留着大胡子的亚洲版弗里德里希?尼采(Friedrich Nietzsche)，而且食物总是沾在上面，另外，它还引发了同事们源源不断主动提供的反馈，其中包括下面这样的评论：“那没有突出你最有特色的地方”（隐含之意是，我的脸是我最没有特色的地方之一）；还有，“总的来说，我认为瘦脸的人留胡子效果最好”（隐含之意是，我长着一张胖脸）。
惟一喜欢我胡子的人是我母亲，她认为这是一种迹象，表明我终于重新皈依印度锡克教(Sikh)，而且很快就会屈从于她的恳求，与一个纯朴的旁遮普省乡村姑娘结婚。
在所有障碍中，不请自来的反馈最糟糕。尽管据说在商界，对男人的评判不像对女人那样看重外表，然而看起来比较矛盾的是，由于男人能拾掇的地方不多，因此，如果男人确实出现点变化，就能比女人招来更多的评论。蓄须者有时宣称，按照平均寿命计算，由于每天早上不剃须，他们一生将节省3000多小时的生命。问题是，所有省下来的时间，随后都要用于应对那些对你的胡须发表的评论――还不如每天早上拿一个刀片对准你的喉咙呢。
这并不是说，我没有看出胡须有时候确实能增添价值。它们能使某些人看起来很凶恶――例如俄罗斯“魔僧”拉斯普京(Rasputin)，能使某些人看起来很神秘――例如切? 格瓦拉(Che Guevara)，能使某些人看起来很激进――例如菲德尔?卡斯特罗(Fidel Castro)，还能让某些人看起来很深奥――例如上帝。不幸的是，这些价值没有得到企业的特别重视，而我们大多数人蓄胡子只能显得很邋遢。
此外，尽管人们都在讨论多样性问题，但企业在实践中仍然非常强调一致性。多数企业希望它们的雇员行动一致，以某种特定方式看待事物，同时也要往特定的方面看。就面部毛发而言，这就意味着，剃净胡须几乎永远是一个男人的最佳选择。尽管我不是一个草率做预测的人，我还是认为，在一年之内，要么是罗德斯本人，要么是他那富有戏剧性的大胡子，总有一个将会销声匿迹。
