Apropos of the recent discussions of beards and men, I was wondering why so few men in the 40s and 50s had facial hair. The reason was obvious, but I didn’t see it.

P.W. writes:

One of the main reasons that beards fell out of favor in the 20th Century was for military reasons, especially during the World War I years and beyond. 

This is because of the invention of poison/nerve gas. Men with beards and a lot of facial hair (mustaches, etc) are not able to obtain an adequate seal on their gas-mask, thus beards were abandoned first by the military so that their gas-masks would work correctly. Beards were discarded by the military for purely practical reasons and that trend then trickled out in to the general populace. 

Also, in your previous discussions of this topic someone mentioned that “all men can grow beards.” That isn’t true. The growing of beards have a racial/ethnic component: men of Caucasian ancestry, whether in Europe, the Middle East, and so on, are the men able to grow the thickest beards. Conversely, men of Asian and African ancestry are unable to grow large thick beards unless they have some Caucasian ancestry, and overall they also have a lot less body hair than men of Caucasian ancestry. Many ‘pure’ East Asian and African men (without any Caucasian ancestry whatsoever) cannot grow a beard at all aside from a few whiskers here and there. One of the first thing the Europeans landing in The Americas noticed is that all of the men of the Native American Indian tribes were completely beardless (and no, not because they shaved – it was biological). Just wanted to mention that.

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