One Thousand Beards: a Cultural History of Facial Hair. (Book review: stubble in mind: how has facial hair shaped history? An entertaining new book shaves out a few theories).

One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair

* Allan Peterkin * Arsenal Pulp Press * $16.95

The Bible, you'll quickly find while reading through Allan Peterkin's facial history, One Thousand Beards, is obsessed with follicles. Job shaves his head to start his life fresh, David's envoys get a humiliating half-beard clip, and of course, in the showstopper, Samson gets an unwanted trim by the insatiable Delilah. In fact, it has been only in the last century that a beard or lack thereof hasn't been a veiled front for power, class, and subjugation. Of course, as many gay men--and some lesbians--will tell you, facial hair is just plain hot.

There's no better time to talk about the history of beards than after a decade of some of the most explosive experimentation with them ever. Peterkin, an psychiatrist and journalist in Toronto, has collected his search for the history, psychology, and culture that surrounds the stuff between your forehead and your Adam's apple. Covering facial hair's appearance throughout history, in gay culture, and even in the feminist movement, Beards takes a casual look at the underlying importance of what's now become such an everyday phenomenon.

Once you start to see the connections between beards and culture, Peterkin argues, you'll start to realize just how much you've grown to recognize--or judge--people depending on what's on their face. Hitler's Chaplin-inspired mustache evokes dread as much as Confucius's long facial locks provide a sense of wisdom and tranquility. Are we just psychologically diverting our libidinous energy by shaving, trimming, and grooming our beards? Is a gay man's trimmed goatee a symbol of his status as the vagina in a homosexual relationship? Maybe; maybe not.

Beards never takes the subject too seriously, so the book is more a whirlwind tour than a breakdown of society's connection with facial growth. Peterkin's chuckling tone keeps the book from ever diving too deeply into the matter, but he writes with charm, acknowledging the levity in trying to break down such a superficial (literally) subject.

While One Thousand Beards sometimes feels as though it's regrowing the same key facts into different styles chapter after chapter, there's enough substance here for it to be considered more than just five-day stubble.

Lopez writes for G4TV.