Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute, Fabric of History weaves together US history, founding principles, and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what’s inside.

Mary (00:23)
Hi, everybody. So we’re back with the Fabric of History. And today we’re going beyond the beard. So we’re going to think about beards and history and specifically beards and presidents, because, of course, at the Bill of Rights Institute, we spend a lot of time talking about presidents. It’s a presidential election year, so we’re excited to dive in. So I’m Mary, and I’m here with you again. And I’m joined with Eryn.

Eryn (00:46)
Hello.

Mary (00:46)
And a special welcome to Kirk, who is joining us for this particular podcast. Hi, Kirk.

Kirk (00:51)
Hello.

Mary (00:52)
Tell us a little bit about what you do here at BRI.

Kirk (00:55)
Sure. So I am the senior manager of education here at the Bill of Rights Institute, so I oversee the development of all of BRI’s educational content.

Eryn (01:05)
And he also rocks a beard. So that’s one of the other reasons joined us today.

Kirk (01:11)
I do have a beard, and I am slightly biased toward bearded presidents, particularly Benjamin Harrison, who is from my home state of Indiana.

Mary (01:19)
That’s fascinating. Eryn and I do not have beards, and we’re also just putting that out there. All right, so let’s talk beards. So here at the Bill of Rights Institute, we spend a lot of time thinking about presidents. And strangely enough, beards. We have several bearded employees in the office, and it’s funny how often the conversation comes back to beards. So we decided to put the two together, presidents and beards. So for the past several decades, it’s always has been a clean-shaven face that wins the presidential race. But was this always the case? Facial hair used to be pretty on-trend while running for political office. But what changed? And why are we so hard-pressed to name bearded presidents today? So who are these presidents that rocked beards and mustaches and mutton chops? Can we go beyond the beard? Granted, I spend a lot of time working on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. So that’s BRI’s forthcoming a push online resource, which is really exciting. And currently, I’m looking at the 1960s, and there’s a lot of pictures of the hippies and the counterculture with the beards. And I can’t help but note I always think to myself, these people look like they smell bad, which is really maybe I shouldn’t say that, but that is what I think of. And so I think it’s really interesting that during the 60s, having the beard, it turned into this stigma of America hating, because the counterculture was all about sticking it to the man and the establishment and the power elite. And you have this beard, and that was your way of going against that.

Kirk (03:04)
But I think it’s super interesting, though, because you’re looking at beards being countercultural. Right? So there’s a sense that in the 1950s you have this clean-shaven look, the high and tight haircuts, and everything is supposed to be, particularly during the Eisenhower administration. That like very clean all American. I’m doing air quotes. It’s hard to do on a podcast. But you have that all-American look. Right. And in the 1960s with the counterculture, it’s that those beards are on the outside, that they are something that is a sign of rebellion, is a sign of going against what’s expected and trying to show off personality and identity in a different kind of way. And it’s interesting because looking back at other bearded presidents or other bearded periods, I guess it wasn’t countercultural, especially in the 1850s, 1860s. Even in the 1880s and 1890s, you have a lot more of these political officials who are certainly a part of what the counterculture would call society doing my air quotes again, really rocking that facial hair.

Eryn (04:12)
We’re kind of flipping back now because beards are very popular in our society today.

Mary (04:20)
So I actually found a loophole to this will take us back to the 19th century that Kirk referenced the other day. It’s true that the four presidents there, of course, referring to that were impeached. So you have Trump, Clinton, Andrew Johnson, and Nixon, who was almost impeached. None of them had beards, but Rutherford B. Hayes. They tried to impeach him, and he did have a beard, but he was never actually impeached. Okay, that was pretty interesting. I did a book report on him in elementary school. I don’t remember learning that about him, but I did look that up about him.

Eryn (04:54)
Well, it’s also bearded presidents because Hayes also apparently wore the longest beard of all presidents. Yeah, it was very dusty.

Mary (05:04)
It was.

Eryn (05:05)
Well, also doing this research, there was one website and they were describing all the different beards, and they said, oh, this guy has a beard like the actor from the Home Alone movie. Well, they showed a picture. I don’t remember.

Kirk (05:26)
Who are the Wet Bandits, I guess.

Eryn (05:28)
No, it wasn’t the Wet Bandits.

Kirk (05:31)
Oh, the neighbor.

Eryn (05:32)
It was the neighbor. Yes, exactly. Good man. Yeah, I’m impressed. But it was really funny going through how they described each president’s beard. But maybe that’s what we kind of need to pivot to is talking about these presidents and not just beards. Right. Because we didn’t have a bearded President until Lincoln, but there were a lot of other presidents before that that had some sort of facial hair that still probably fall under this, even though it’s named beyond the beard.

Mary (06:03)
Right.

Eryn (06:04)
Still falls under that.

Mary (06:05)
It’s still impressive. It’s still worth talking about.

Eryn (06:07)
Yeah, some of them are very impressive.

Mary (06:09)
So the whole term mutton chops, full disclosure, it just sounds gross to me. So I was looking up, where did this word come from? And it’s apparently if the mutton chops are trimmed properly, it’s supposed to look like this particular cut of the meat along the spine, it just sounded way too butchery. I apologize to any butchers who might be listening to our podcast right now, but John Quincy Adams had mutton tops as well as Martin Van Buren, which is a pretty I don’t know. It’s a look that you don’t see too often today.

Eryn (06:46)
But brought back as well. They’re a beard resurgence.

Kirk (06:50)
Yeah, they’re out there.

Eryn (06:51)
I think some people are really going to everyone out there help us bring it back.

Kirk (06:56)
Yeah. But they were edgy at the time. Right. But I think it was on-trend in the 18 teens to have that kind of full facial hair and then moving into especially just before Lincoln. One of the reasons, at least I’ve read that beards became popular during that period in the 1860s is because the Crimean War, which was fought between Britain and Russia, and a whole bunch of people were involved. The Ottoman Empire for the French. It’s famous for being the Charge of the Light Brigade, Battle of the Festival, and all that kind of stuff. But during that war, there was a relaxation in the British Army of facial hair requirements. And so they allowed guys on campaign because they’re having a hard time either getting fresh water or getting shaving materials. They couldn’t keep the tight, close crop facial hair that was usually expected of them. So they let them grow beards. So when that conflict concludes the late 1850s, you have all these guys that are coming back from these foreign battlefields that all have these rugged, Manly beards looking unkempt and unshaved. And so it was like reflective of this really kind of Manly, tough-guy culture, these guys coming back. And so people started growing beards after that in fashion because it was or so I’ve read, reflective of being a part of that sort of experience, and everybody wanted to associate with it. So there the beard trend took back off. And starting with Lincoln, moving forward, I’m not sure if Lincoln grew his beard because of that.

Eryn (08:24)
Well, there’s that letter that that girl wrote.

Kirk (08:28)
Oh, yeah.

Eryn (08:30)
So he didn’t have a beard when he was campaigning. He was clean-shaven. And then he got a letter in March of 1861 from an eleven-year-old girl named Grace Badell in New York. And you guys want me to read what this letter said? All right, let’s do it. She goes, I have yet got four brothers, and part of them will vote for you anyway. And if you let your whiskers grow, I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you. You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers, and they would tease her husbands to vote for you, and then you would be President. Kind of got it right. But he did. After that, he started growing a beard.

Mary (09:11)
I do think Lincoln is one of those people who genuinely looks better with a beard.

Eryn (09:15)
Agree. I think she hit the nail on the head that his face was too thin. With a beard, he looked a lot more substantial.

Mary (09:24)
I also really like the term whiskers. And I wish that would come back along with the beard

Eryn (09:29)
And mutton chops.

Kirk (09:30)
Right.

Eryn (09:32)
We’ll rename it for Mary.

Mary (09:36)
I’m going to start calling my husband, saying he has whiskers.

Kirk (09:39)
It is interesting, though, thinking about how the image of a President would have worked in those days because not only was actively campaigning not really a thing, they didn’t go around and give speeches like we’re seeing from the candidates in the primary races now, but also just seeing images of these people wasn’t as prevalent. Right. So I wonder how much that factored into their decisions to grow beards or not grow beards today. Lincoln would probably have a committee of ten people telling him how to dress.

Eryn (10:10)
Oh right. Yeah.

Mary (10:13)
Okay. So I think we have Lincoln as the first President with a beard. So who are some of these other presidents with beards that maybe we’ve forgotten about today? Maybe we’ll take a quick break and talk more about them when we get back. Okay. So before the break, we had just talked about Abraham Lincoln being the first truly bearded President. Fun fact. It was not a full beard and it was known as a chin strap, which is also super interesting. We were talking about this arc of presidential beard. So Lincoln starts us off and then they get a little bit longer with Rutherford B. Hayes, and then they kind of trickle out again. So Eryn was saying something about a pie chart of beards. This is intriguing, please tell me.

Eryn (11:20)
I guess some guy that made this his research and was doing pulling some data on why have we had President this big time period where all these presidents had beards or different facial hair. And we haven’t seen that for the past hundred years, basically. And so he pulled all his data points and then converted it into a pie chart that is color-coded that you read like a clock from twelve clockwise all the way around, reading from twelve being the first President all the way again to twelve being current day. And I would say from two to five, it’s all blue. And that was all bearded presidents or presidents who had facial hair. And then six all the way back to twelve has been clean-shaven presidents. And it’s really interesting that there’s just this very clear time period where it was all about the facial hair and then it just has stopped so abruptly. And we’ve just continued this trend that cleanse and men thus far have been seen as President. But it’s been interesting. There was a study that was done in 2010 that since women have won the right to vote, that facial hair became less popular among politicians because of its association with chauvinism and domestic violence. There was this connection that was done in this study. And you think about it, though, like 1920 wasn’t too far off from Howard Taff, which was 1913. So again, correlation does not equal causation. That is just one study that was done.

Mary (13:17)
So once women got the right to vote, men started not having beards?

Eryn (13:19)
Men started not having beards anymore because beards were associated with chauvinism.

Kirk (13:25)
Whenever I think about bearded Presidents, I’m always thinking about from Hayes in 1876 and the election and presidency in 1877. But then up through I think Benjamin Harrison is like when it tails off for me. But I think when I’m referring to bearded presidents, I guess that’s what I’m always thinking of. And that period is interesting to me because everybody always forgets those presidents. It seems like poor Garfield didn’t have much time in office, Cleveland.

Mary (13:53)
I don’t know anything about James Garfield other than he was assassinated.

Kirk (13:58)
Yeah. But of the assassinations, he’s the one people usually overlook, too, right?

Eryn (14:02)
Yeah, because he wasn’t didn’t he not die right away? He went to go and recuperate. I believe he got an infection a couple of days later.

Kirk (14:12)
Yeah. It happened fairly quickly.

Eryn (14:14)
A few days.

Kirk (14:15)
Yeah.

Eryn (14:16)
But I think that’s why people really remember assassinations because it was kind of like, oh, my gosh, this happened and they’re dead and the Vice President takes over. And this is just kind of more of a slow burn.

Kirk (14:26)
Yeah. But people remember like William Henry Harrison and his pneumonia. But I think people forget those presidents because they just weren’t as unlike now where the executive branch is very much like the branch and the government during that period, the legislative branch was much more the dominant branch. And so because of that, that’s where most of the debates took place. That’s where most of the action was. So my working theory is that those poor bearded presidents get overlooked because of that. So maybe they’re growing a beard because they just want to stand out again to their Manhattan.

Eryn (15:00)
It falls right in line with this theory.

Kirk (15:02)
Yeah.

Eryn (15:04)
Well, and then they even say that’s why Martin Van Buren had these giant mutton chops because he’s only five-six. And so it was trying to make him look like a bigger person.

Kirk (15:15)
Yeah. He’s also in the shadow of Andrew Jackson, who had quite the personality. So he’s trying to make himself stand out a little bit, I guess.

Eryn (15:21)
I don’t know. Did it work?

Kirk (15:23)
No,

Mary (15:24)
I think that just the idea of looking presidential is very interesting because I think that’s something that I don’t know if that’s a pendulum swing or that’s just changing with the times or reflecting the times. But like you said, in the 20th century. So Taft was our last President with facial hair and he just had a mustache, although it was pretty great mustache. He did not get stuck in the bathtub. Disappointingly. But I heard that that’s just not true. But, yeah. And all in the 20th century. They’ve all been clean-shaven. So is that going to continue? Because like you said, there’s so much this resurgence of beards, there’s this whole aisle on beard gear in Target. It’s interesting to me. I can’t even go down here because I don’t have a beard.

Eryn (16:09)
I’m thinking, though, we were talking about beards and the counterculture movement, and I wonder if it’s still transitioning almost out of another iteration of that today.

Kirk (16:24)
I wonder, though, too, that if because popular public image is so image-driven now. Right. We were talking about that a little bit earlier, but I wonder if beards are just or if facial hair generally is just more divisive. And so you’re more neutral if you’re clean shaving and so you’re going to appeal to a broader range of people, whereas the beard people are either going to like it or not like it or we’re on a trend. And soon before, beards weren’t seen as clean and professional. And now maybe they will be soon. Or maybe we’ll see a hipster President with flowers in his beard, the whole deal.

Eryn (17:00)
A man bun.

Kirk (17:01)
Yeah.

Eryn (17:03)
Whiskers, mutton chop.

Kirk (17:07)
I wonder which President has the longest hair, actually, now that you say that.

Eryn (17:11)
Yeah. Well, that’s actually kind of an interesting another subject. All presidents have had short hair. Right?

Kirk (17:19)
Washington had a queue. Right. So he had his hair tied up.

Eryn (17:23)
I think those were wigs.

Kirk (17:25)
Washington wasn’t a wig. It was a real deal, man.

Eryn (17:29)
Well, yeah, but it’s still pulling.

Mary (17:31)
Madison had those, too. I don’t know if you have wigs.

Eryn (17:36)
But again, it was pulled back.

Kirk (17:37)
Did you do the queue? Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Eryn (17:41)
I want to see a President who just has his hair down.

Kirk (17:45)
Right.

Eryn (17:46)
We were talking earlier.

Mary (17:50)
I do think it is pretty divisive or I think it’s just a very divisive thing. So I do think maybe it’s just that it’s easier for a politician to just not have one. But perhaps that will be changing.

Eryn (18:03)
I do wonder, though, Though, talking about image consultants for political candidates and if this is actually a conversation that comes up, you can or cannot grow a beard.

Kirk (18:15)
I’m sure it does. But I think, too, again, it comes down to the professional business of government. So maybe it’s just the role the government plays in our lives now and how that’s changed. But it’s interesting that beers are still seen as, I guess, fashionable. We’re also in arts like you see a lot of musicians with beards and things like that, which I think has been a trend. I think artists have always we’re talking about Walt Whitman earlier. I think Walt Whitman certainly had like a pretty gnarly beard.

Mary (18:49)
He looks like Gandalf.

Eryn (18:51)
Yeah. It’s very triangular. But we’re doing exactly what we’re assuming everyone else would do if the politicians can’t have it.

Kirk (18:59)
Yeah, exactly.

Eryn (19:00)
We are critiquing every single beard and facial hair of everyone we have talked about.

Kirk (19:06)
Right.

Eryn (19:08)
I guess therein lies probably the problem for all those political campaigns.

Mary (19:11)
Yeah, if you’re going to put yourself on the national stage like that, I guess you have to be ready for people to pick you apart, which is sad, but I think it’s kind of true. But you should tell us, what do you think about facial hair and honor? Are we going to see a bearded President in the next 20 years? Please let us know your thoughts or any thoughts at comments@fabricofhistory.org.

Intro/Outro (19:40)
The Bill of Rights Institute engages, educates, and empowers individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exists in a free society. Check out our educational resources and programs on our website mybri.org. Any questions or suggestions for future episodes? We’d love to hear from you. Just email us at comments@fabricofhistory.org and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay connected and informed about future episodes. Thank you for listening.