I was 26 when I grew a beard for the first time.
It was the late 1980s. While some people still associated beards with hippies and 60s counterculture, more and more associated them with frontiersmen and outdoor culture. A friend told me “I grew my beard because of Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson.”
I grew a moustache at age 21 because of Tom Selleck in Magnum PI. Selleck was one of the hottest men in Hollywood at the time and he had a moustache. I saw an earlier picture of him without it and thought he looked very ordinary. I knew I was no Tom Selleck, but I hoped it would make a proportional improvement in my appearance. It did make me look older, and at 21 that was a good thing. It did not improve my luck with dating.
By the time I was 26 I was married and established in my professional career, but I was still trying to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. That Fall I decided to try growing a beard.
It was… different. It was itchy the first week or so, but then it grew out and it didn’t bother me anymore. I liked the way it looked, and I liked not having to shave every day. My wife liked it and that was a plus.
But under the beard I was still the same person I had always been. Once people got used to seeing it, it was no big deal.
When Spring came and the weather started getting warm, I shaved it off. But I grew it back that Fall and I kept it.
What does “professional” mean?
Fast forward to 1997 – I was in my job from hell. I was doing my best to find something better and I wasn’t having any luck. Finally I found an opening through a recruiter and started preparing for the interview. During one of the conversations the recruiter asked me to describe my appearance “in case someone has to meet you in an airport.” It was a way to ask what race someone was without asking about race. I answered the question and mentioned that I had a short beard.
The recruiter went off. “You have to shave the beard. It’s not professional.” I asked what was unprofessional about it. I don’t remember his exact answer – I do remember I wasn’t impressed with it. But I was desperate – I would have shaved my entire body to find a new job.
I shaved my beard before the interview. No one should have to do that, or be coerced into doing it. But desperate people do what they have to do.
Even without the beard I did not get the job.
About a month later I found a much better job, in what I consider one of the greatest magical successes of my life. I had kept shaving, but when I got there I found that two of my closest co-workers and the division Vice President all had full beards. I grew it back that Fall and I’ve had it ever since.
Promoting the cultural superiority of the people in charge
The now-retired Vice President of Sales of my current employer refused to allow his salesmen and male sales managers to have beards. Given overall company policy they may have been “strongly discouraged” instead of “prohibited” but I don’t recall ever seeing men with beards in Sales until after he left.
One day the subject came up in a pre-meeting conversation and I asked why. His answer was “beards aren’t professional.” I pushed him for his definition of “professional” – his answer wasn’t any better than the one given by the recruiter in 1997. But by then I was older, more experienced, and I had read a lot more.
“Professional” dress and grooming has nothing to do with the ability to do a job. If there was ever any doubt about that, Silicon Valley’s tech industry and Steve Jobs’ jeans and black turtleneck proved it conclusively. There’s something to be said for presenting a neat and clean appearance for customers – or just for yourself – but for jobs that have no customer interaction even that adds no value.
“Professionalism” is about affirming and promoting the cultural superiority of the people in charge. In this country, that’s straight white upper-middle-class Christian men. When the recruiter and the VP of Sales said they wanted people to look “professional” they meant “I want them to look like me.” This is how they look and dress, this is how their friends and neighbors look and dress, and so this is how they want everyone else to look and dress.
Oh, they’re fine with diversity – up to a point. Most (by which I mean >50%, not 99%) corporate executive are genuinely happy to hire women, people of color, and even LGBTQ people – so long as they look and sound like straight white upper-middle-class Christian men. If they look or sound like they belong to a different culture or subculture, then they “aren’t professional” and “wouldn’t fit in here.”
Real professionalism
The kind of professionalism that reflects technical competence, customer service, and continuous improvement is a good and necessary thing. But when we start talking about appearance and other things that have nothing to do with getting the job done, we’re into “my culture is superior and everyone should adopt it” territory.
Hegseth’s cosplay games
Of all the false, obnoxious, and dangerous things said by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (no, I won’t call him by his cosplay title – only Congress can change a department’s name) when he wasted millions of dollars bringing every General and Admiral in the U.S. military to Virginia for a political rally, “no more beardos” is of relatively low importance. But – as previous sections demonstrate – it’s something I have a personal interest in, so it’s something I want to talk about.
Because it’s symptomatic of a larger problem in the current administration.
Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
There are valid reason to require soldiers to shave. Smooth skin allows for a better fit with gas masks. Shaving promotes attention to detail and uniformity among troops, which is particularly important in transforming very young men into soldiers.
There are also valid reasons to allow beards in the military. Some men – 90% of whom are African-American – have a skin condition that makes shaving painful. Some religions require men to have beards, including Sikhs, Muslims, some Jews, and some Norse Pagans.
Hegseth’s order eliminates most medical and religious exceptions to shaving requirements. Some service members who’ve had beards for years will quit, while others will simply suffer. More will never join, which is a problem considering that the military struggles to meet its recruiting goals except in years when the economy is down (like this year).
The most important question here is this: do the benefits of the no-beards policy outweigh the costs? How much uniformity do you need to inspire and enable a skilled and well-trained fighting force?
I have no military experience. My friends who do have military experience largely (though to be fair, not universally) agree that whatever value this policy brings will be far outweighed by the loss of experienced personnel (as will many of Hegseth’s other policies – especially his policies on women and on investigating misconduct – but this post is about beards).
This is a culture war
And all this brings us back to the matter of “professionalism.” Which, as we discussed earlier in this piece, simply means “the preferred culture of the people in charge.”
There’s been a culture war going on in this country for my entire life. It’s moved generally in a more progressive, more inclusive direction.
And now some people are doing their best to reverse it.
Read Project 2025. Yes, much of it is about taxes and spending and other traditional political matters, but a significant portion is about cultural issues and using the power of government to enforce the cultural norms preferred by its authors.
And the Trump administration is moving to forcibly remake American culture more to their liking.
This is what Hegseth’s political rally was all about.
Trump and Hegseth are hoping to change the culture in the military overnight. But the Generals and Admirals in the room in Virginia built the current culture. And while they are duty-bound to follow orders, they know their loyalty is to the country, not to the President or his blowhard SecDef. They know how to accomplish the missions they’re given – they know what works and what doesn’t (like intimidation-based training – the Army stopped it decades ago because it’s less effective than actually teaching and leading).
Because the role of the military is to protect and defend the country, not to promote Pete Hegseth’s teenage boy fantasy of “warrior culture.”
We’ll see what happens…
TL;DR
- Real professionalism is technical competence, customer service, and continuous improvement.
- “Professional appearance” is the preferred culture of the people in charge and nothing more.
- Display, promote, and embody the culture you want to see win the culture wars.
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