In your face: Masculine style stories and the fashionable beard

Over the past decade, the full beard has been described as major style phenomenon to the extent of being ‘the defnitive visual shorthand for the early twenty-frst century’ (Saner 2013). The beard has seen a massive fashion revival in Europe and North America particularly in urban settings. This chapter considers the trend to have taken of in 2005 within a mainly Western context (Montandon 2006), and are still considered to be dominant in 2014 at the time of the study, despite speculation that the trend is declining (Sykes 2013; Saner 2013; Mchangama 2014). The concern here is with the personal and local practices of the full beard as a global style trend. The focus is on young Danish men, a group in which the beard has seen an intense revival (Solgaard 2013). The cultural context of this group is interesting because Denmark is considered to be a highly developed country in terms of gender equality, while the beard is also an archetypical male gender flag. The aim is to chart themes of masculinity and status representation as performed through the display and management of the full beard in contemporary society through in-depth focus group interviews.