Homage to the Beard

The male beard is a most magnificent accoutrement (the female beard, no less magnificent, has unfortunately been consigned to the ignoble rubbish heap of sideshow freakdom and daytime television by the ignorant, the uncultured, and the jealous), matched in dignity and bearing only by the monocle, the pocketwatch, and the halfcape.

As a social indicator, too, the beard can provide invaluable assistance in determining a potential bar-mate's caste and (therefore) ability to meet your tab.

For that purpose one can always rely on the bearer of a well-maintained (which is to say trimmed, brushed, cleaned, oiled, shaped, twirled, and/or permed) faceblanket, so long as it displays a pleasing quality of thickness or luxuriousness, howsoever long it may be.

On the other hand, persons who lack facial adornment, or whose whiskers are thin and straggly, should be treated at all times with the utmost suspicion and contempt, regardless of how well-groomed they appear to be. Such brigands are merely attempting to co-opt a respect and bearing to which they are not privileged.

What, then, to do with the third group, those ill-kempt mountain-men and rugged Russian novelists, possessors of jungle-wild tummy-ticklers, rude but proud?

The question remains open. In each case a multiplicity of confounding variables have to be taken into account: Beard size/ferocity relative to that of the viewer, the presence/absence of mania in the eyes, the stench of cheap/dear whiskey on the breath... and many others can either trigger your fight or flight response, or inaugurate a lifelong friendship.

These things aside, the principle uses of the noble throat-scratcher might be ennumerated thus:

1. To distinguish the dignified individual from the coarse; the bearded from the inbred.
2. To insulate and protect the organs of speech, that they might remain booming and baritone. To wit: Brian Blessed.
3. As a protector of the waistcoat from the stains and abuse of food misconsumed. In which capacity further,
4. As a dietary supplement, during periods lean. A well-established soup-strainer should, if well-seeded, always provide a nutritionally meritorious soup at the boiling, or chew-snack to assuage a more pressing hunger. It is for this reason that home-grown neckwarmers are so highly esteemed amoung the mountaineering fraternity and not, as commonly held, their ability to attract a mate.
5. As an actor's prop, to be stroked in the event that the bearer has nothing to say, and wishes to look contemplative while saying it.
6. As a field over which an employer can assert her tyranny, it having been determined by a committee of the garrulous and pale that business is best prosecuted in the smooth-cheeked style of a pre-pubescent.
7. As 6, except for employer replace: "lover/wife", and for business replace "romance/marriage".