Mondays with Mike: Style points

We were carless in Urbana during our visit last week, and relied on the kindness of friends (Thank you Jean, Milton, Nancy and Judy!) — as well as Zipcar and cabs—for transportation. Each ride was a nice chance to chat, and on one trip with Steven (of Steven and Nancy who are Hanni’s companions), he and I – as we are wont to do – started talking about the latest pop culture trends and oddities. One of them: The growing preponderance of young men growing bushy mountain-man beards.

The latest trend.

I’ve had a beard ever since my freshman year in college. I did it in part simply because I could – I was the kid in high school who had to shave the earliest (and consequently was asked to do illicit things that only adults could do, but that’s another story). So when I went off to college (and out of parental range) I figured I’d see what I’d look like. By my lights I looked better. And, given it saved a lot (if not all) shaving chores, it was a winner.

Before we were married, Beth asked me to shave my beard, just so she knew what that looked like. I did. She concurred with my opinion about looking better with than without, and insisted I grow it back immediately. Beth’s last vision of me is when I was 27 years old, when I had more hair on top and less me in the middle. But I honestly can’t much remember what I would’ve been wearing back then or what the styles were.

Ugh.

I do know they’ve changed a lot over time, and I do my best – not always all that well – explaining them to Beth along the way. Beards and long hair went out and men started shaving their heads. And their bodies. During the grunge era, on campus every young man wore a ball camp and a flannel shirt. Young women have gone all Madonna, and if my mom were alive I picture her running

Ugh.

down the street behind women and admonishing, “Your bra strap is showing!” By the same token, there was that intentional layering thing that took hold I know she would’ve wanted to say, “Tuck your shirt in” to every young woman in earshot. For awhile now, tall boots and leggings and tunics have held the day in women’s fashion.

Men wore impossibly pointy long shoes for awhile, some men wear their pants way down low, and now we have impossibly skinny and tight pants for both women and men. And, my least favorite of all modern men’s fashion trends: The tiny suit. Don’t get me started.

Back to the bushy mountain-man beards. Apparently, it’s a real thing. And it’s enough of a thing that a new term has been coined: Lumbersexual (borrowing, of course, from metrosexual.)

Here’s a link to one blog about it. But Google it, you’ll get a lot of hits. There is now a hipster movement that has young men growing out beards and back to flannel shirts and such. But instead of axes, their tools are MacBook Pros, or so one of the bloggers observed.

Which Steven and I described to Beth during our car ride. Explaining it is another matter.