Yup, it only seems like it grows faster because new hair is coarser than older hair. After hair grows out it slowly gets worn down, making it softer. So when you shave it off, the newly grown stubble usually appears to be a lot thicker and more coarse.
I was 16 when I grew a moustache. Probably around the age of 24 I grew a goatee, and I have had it ever since. Never had much trouble growing one. Not sure if its genetics or what. My dad has always had a full beard.
Fourteen.It was a problem in high school back in the era of dress codes.I often got “kidnapped” into buying alcohol for minors,once by black guys into a black bar.Was never carded though.
Some years back I discovered my favorite iconic grandfather’s father and Gfather both had complete beards/moustaches (the elder’s visage on tinplate ) to the extent you couldn’t see their mouth and the beard was chest length.I’ve been like that since.
Much like the pic of Triskadecamus.
I’m 46. Blond hair as a small boy, darkened to brown during adolescence.
I tried growing facial hair in college and ended up with rather ratty long sideburns, al la Neil Young 1967. I shaved them off at age 22 and my girlfriend liked my bare face so much she wouldn’t let me grow anything back.
I left my corporate job at age 40 and began working with hippies, dippies, beatniks and beard-os, so one long weekend when my girlfriend (at that point, wife of many years) and our kids took off to visit the grandparents, and I quit shaving. Today I have a rather luxuriant ginger-and-grey full beard.
…“groom it”…?
around 25 I suppose. I could muster a good moustache at 15, and a full goatee ( without the little mouth connecting bits which i still do not have and probably never will) at 17 or 18. At 27 now, I’m lucky enough to have a job in the arts, so I can now grow it out properly. I’m about 2 weeks in and it’s at a rather ratty looking point, but I shall persevere and see how it turns out. For those interested in growing one, remember that it can take up to 2 yrs for it to look “proper”.
Beard?! And for all these years I thought Satan was sending his tiny black minions in the night to keep watch over every movement my face made during the day! God, I’m so relieved. I can stop trying to burn them back to hell where they belong!!
Hmm… well, photographic evidence shows that I could grow a completely full beard by about 21-22.
I think I started shaving somewhere around 8th grade (14), but at that point, it was only the upper lip. By my sophomore year in high school, I was having to shave the upper lip & chin pretty regularly, and by the end of my senior year, I should have been shaving daily, but managed about every other day.
By 19, I had a decent mustache and and chin beard. The two never quite grew together to form the true goatee however. I’m 29 now and I’ve always had the impression that a full beard would look patchy on me if I ever tried it. Four days over a holiday weekend is about the longest I’ve gone without shaving. (I sure regretted that when I went to shave it with an electric razor!)
I’m 30 and still cannot. It comes in very patchy. I have a goatee instead. At least it comes in ok.
44 here, still can’t grow a full beard. Can (and often do) look like I’ve got some revolting fungal disease, but a beard seems to be out of the question.
I was 19 when I grew the first beard. It was full at that time. Now at 32 it seems to be the same fullness. Oh, and I do not have chest hair…well, ok, I have 27 chest hairs. And I am balding, so my robust facial follicles are an anomaly to the rest of my upper body hair.
At 42 the best I can manage is this kinda snaggled-n-straggled thing when I try for a full-face beard.
I’ve got a goatee now and given my rate of hair growth, it’s an exercise in determination.
I probably could have grown a beard at 18; I already had a full chest of hair by then.