If memory serves, when FDR was pressing his plan for reform of the Supreme Court, and New Deal supporters were criticizing the Court as reactionary, one of the targets of derision was Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes’s beard, which marked him as yesterday’s man.
Likewise, my impression is that the bright young things of the 1920s associated beards with their hopelessly stuffy Edwardian fathers and Victorian grandfathers, and so chin hair went more and more out of fashion. Until it was so very out of fashion that it snuck back in through the counter-culture.
I first grew a beard in 1962, as soon as I finished high school and so was no longer subject to its discipline, in Australia. That was so unusual then that I got my picture in one of the Sunday papers in Sydney. Of course, these days a 17- or 18-year-old with a beard is not all that noteworthy.
A 17 or 18 year old who dose not have that awful stubble OTH is a stop the presses moment.
I think you’re forgetting one of the most famous bearded entities around – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus. He’s maintained his style and popularity throughout my lifetime at least.
Robert Bork, nominated but not confirmed to SCOTUS, took some teasing for his scraggly mess, too: http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/asset_upload_file915_12260.jpg
Here’s Letterman’s Top Ten list for the occasion: Extra Top Ten Lists
These days a man with a mustache alone looks unfortunately like a 1970s porn actor. It’ll take a while for that stigma to fade.
Too bad; there’s something to be said for a magnificent mustache.
The same happened a bit later in the US during and following the Civil War.
There are several theories as to why full beards started to reappear in the mid-1800s. One is that it was a side effect of 19th Century Medievalism, which itself was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the Elightenment.
Chester Arthur had it goin’ on!: File:Chester A. Arthur by Ole Peter Hansen Balling.JPG - Wikipedia
