My face, and the pro- and anti-shaving factions

TODAY’S COLUMN DOESN’T bear another obscenely unpopular position on a hot topic. I will not discuss and I will hardly even mention societal ills, socio-economic inequities or the vapidity of general-education, lower-division women’s studies courses on this campus.

In fact, what I am about to say, or more literally “write,” will not likely interest you or anyone to great degree. For reasoning you should be able to infer, women’s studies professors more than anyone would actively promote their passive disinterest.

For many moons, this humble Collegian contributor has sported an almost iconic beard that, due to his Bunyan-like proportions, only furthered this association. Optimists tacitly pretended to agree with the attribution of a mythic status whereas louder-mouthed pessimists noted the absence of Babe.

In fact, this beard was said to be analogous to the writer’s writings as it, like his writings, was more insubstantial fluff than significant substance.

Nonetheless, on one cruel Saturday it was determined that the beard must be stopped. The reign of terror must be averted. Razors were used this traumatic day, and not the kind that send text messages.

“Oh my God, you shaved. Are you trying to bring about the apocalypse or something?” squealed one onlooker. “I’m so proud of you. I’m so very proud of you,” added the second. Hopefully the second person had not been listening to the first.

“Nice tan line,” commented one sarcasm-starved individual. “You don’t even look like the same person. I had trouble recognizing you at a distance.”

As if appending that observation, another chimed in. “You look clean. Nobody can argue that you look dirty anymore,” she noted, fully aware of the implications of this statement.

“It takes 10 years off you, not that you need it,” joked a less caustic acquaintance.

“You look better without the beard, buddy,” said one friend, making sure to add his on. “Whatever your reasons were, you did the right thing.”

Some were less supportive.

“Who are you and what have you done with Ben?” asked one, reasoning the spectacle to be some sort of stunt. “Are you trying to bring about the apocalypse or something?” asked another, seemingly certain that some other, direr stunt was in progress.

“You had recognition that way,” he added, almost certain I would be more receptive to this line of reasoning. “You look like a little boy.”

“Then he looks like a clean little boy,” quipped back one of those in support of shaving.

“What happened?” asked the former of the two. “Why’d you shave it?” clarified the second person.

I chose to not answer this question, lest I might open the floor to speculation. I wasn’t disappointed.

Some believed I was motivated to do this for the sake of some sort of bizarre wooing ritual, others insisted I was just admitting my style had some sort of fault. More peculiarly, some assumed I shaved myself just so I could work in our Vintage Days food booth. All neglected the least incorrect reason: reaction.

It doesn’t take Newton to realize that every action has an equal, often opposite reaction. Perhaps the only reason to obliterate the beard was with the knowledge of this reaction. But when has anyone been motivated to lash out and to brashly start any kind of polemic epidemic? This is rhetorical.

Suffice to say they failed to discern a single reason because they were searching for just that: a single reason. It is impossible to boil one’s motives in to black and white absolutes.

There is nearly always more than one shade of a factor that influence motivating someone to consider that they might perhaps make a decision. Maybe every answer was partially, but not equally correct. Or perhaps I say that merely to confuse the matter.

Avoid confusion. Remember what I consider analogous to fluff.

Comment on this story in the Opinion forum >>