About every three or four years I decide to stop shaving and let my beard grow. Usually it’s at the tail end of a vacation when I’m not shaving and decide to just let it grow even after returning to work. Well this is one of those times and it also coincided with No-Shave-November / Movember…the American Cancer Society men’s cancer awareness initiative. So I’m also giving some money to a good cause.
When I have grown out my beard in the past, I normally shave it off after about 4-6 weeks, but this time, I’m considering letting it go for a while. My wife likes the beard. My beard is blondish/red and wiry during the early stages. Beard balm usually helps keep it from looking so untamed.
So what are your experiences, if you have grown out your beard? Are there certain products that you use or prefer, etc.?
I have had facial hair ever since I could grow facial hair, primarily out of laziness. When my temples went grey, I switched from a full beard to a (I forget the correct terms) Van Dyke (Mustache and goatee). Ten years or so ago I went a long time without trimming and had a ZZTop type thing going on.
When I was in my beard-to-my-beltline phase it wasn’t uncommon for women to ask if they could braid it. I would always say, “sure, so long as you’re sitting in my lap” and surprisingly, they all went along with it.
Never used any product in my facial hair. Never saw the need. When I drove a soft top wrangler the wind would sometimes catch my beard and put it in my face.
Never let it go for more than 4-5 days, wnen on the road and shaving was inconvenient. But I had a mustache for a while.
I think most polls I’ve seen, women prefer clean-shaven men by a pretty wide margin. Personally, I always thought men with beards have an unattractive unkepmt appearance.
Have you ever looked at my picture in the SDMB portrait gallery? I can raise a beard like that from stubble in about 3 months. My beard has gone anywhere from really short to ZZ TOP in the course of my life and its almost a part of my identity. I shaved three times since Nixon was in office - the last time in 2006. My wife laughed, the neighborhood kids were frightened to death of me, and the family across the street called the cops and reported me breaking into my own house.
(Although sometimes I do claim to be clean-shaven ---- I insist the hair I used to have on top of my head fell out the bottom)
(Anyone growing a beard and bothered by the itch ---- brush in a little Mennon’s Talc. Stops it real well)
I’ve had a beard most of my adult life. Sometimes it’s well trimmed, other times I let it grow wild. To keep it well trimmed requires daily attention. You need to take a pair of scissors and check your beard in a mirror, rotating your head from side to side to catch anything sticking out. It’s amazing how a hair that wasn’t there yesterday can be sticking out an inch tomorrow.
I just use shampoo or plain white soap for washing, and hair conditioner to soften it occasionally. Sometimes I use a touch of mustache wax to get some spots under control.
Mine has been growing since sometime in June, so its getting pretty long now, this is about the longest i have ever grown it. Most people tell me they like it and give an emphatic NO if I mention that i’m thinking of shaving.
I don’t put any product in it other than maybe once every second week or so i give it a really thorough shampooing.
All have been fuzzy - except for one. That one was Wuzzy.
Kind of like Bill and Steve. You know? Jobs & Wozniak?
I’d like to know from anyone may like to reply.
Is this post (above the dashed lines) a reasonable post in this forum? Would it be a better post in some other forum? Thank you. I’m trying to understand the rules for creating posts in these forums.
I tend to grow a bit of a Van-Dyke-style goatee, though I’ll shave it all off occasionally. This year, I’m actually not shaving at all in November, though. It’s nice having everything nice and soft without shaving. Got a good half an inch now.
I grew a full beard in my late 20s, and shaved it down into a goatee at the request and advice of my fiancee before we got married (she said it would make me look younger than the full beard, and it did).
This year, I grew the full beard back, then shaved the chin portion for a Halloween costume (I went as Wandering Oaken). My wife and daughter were horrified, as it was the first time they’d ever seen me without chin whiskers. So, after Halloween I shaved the sides and left a long mustache, which is now filling back in as a goatee again. I’ve been cautioned by the women of my household to “never do that again”.
I grow one every year, October through March or so, because winter. I always tell myself I’m going to grow a sweet-ass Viking beard, but I tend to leave it pretty short. After a certain point it gets too dense around the chin and I find it annoying to sleep on, so I trim it up.
I’ve pretty much had one since I was a senior in high school, with a few periods of clean-chinnedness. Laziness, mainly - shaving is a pain.
That said, I have never had nor ever liked the long Civil-War-general look that is popular among those crazy kids on the intertoobz these days. If my beard gets long enough for the whiskers to get in my mouth, I trim it - that’s annoying as hell to me.
My one sop to vanity is that I have begun dyeing it - it was fully gray by the time I was thirty-five.
I’ve had a beard for 15 years. I don’t keep it long. Once every week or two I trim it using a Whal trimmer with #1 guard on the sides and hit the goatee area with a #3. I don’t have a very cool long beard because it just keeps getting bushier and rounder making my face look fat. Every time I trim it looks like I lost 10 lbs, but I don’t care enough to trim it as much as I should.
I have had my beard grow for about two or three weeks, but never a long beard in the style of ZZ Top/Osama Bin Laden/Duck Dynasty, Santa Claus. I like some light beard, five o’clock shadow but soon shave it. Content that I can grow a beard though I choose to be clean shaven.
My brother hasn’t had a naked face for 32 years. He trims it every once in a while so it isn’t that extremely long, but we wouldn’t recognize him without it.
I’ve grown lazier about shaving since I retired. I’ll often go a day or two without shaving. And then sometimes I let it go for a few days and at that point, I’ll often decide to let it keep growing to beard length before shaving it all off again. As it happens, I’m currently at short beard length.
I ain’t never used no balm, conditioner, fertilizer or other stuff on my beard. It grows just fine without outside intervention (I come from a long line of hairy men).
These days, not wanting to look like a cross between Bad Santa and Charles Manson, I’ve gravitated to a short beard. I mow every couple of weeks. That’s it for maintenance.
According to the all-important Mrs. Jackmannii poll, it looks great.
It crawled onto my face Xmas day 1984 and never left. Trim monthly. Ivory soap in the shower. Nothing on the neck; ends at the jawline. Since I’m Irish, German and Cherokee, it took 2 dozen years for it to fill in properly. Just in time for it to go salt-and-pepper. Never any complaints from the fairer sex.