When Cute Guys Grow Beards...

I went to see Jason Falkner play last week and ran into a buddy I hadn't seen for a couple months. This guy is one of the most adorable boys on the planet: a talented songwriter, guitar & piano player, funny, kind and very very cute. Of course, I've had a crush on him for ages.

Then he went and grew a beard. Argh! There is no better way to crush this girl's libido then by growing a bushy, scraggly beard.

Now, some guys totally work the facial hair thing and I don't mind it at all. I have a couple guy friends with nice goatees (a girlfriend of mine used to call them "the man snatch," and, well, if you think about it...). I have a few other guy friends with nice trim beards, even a couple with more Grizzly Adams types that aren't horrifying in the least. I mean, I'd probably never feel compelled to make out with them, but they look fine. In most cases, these beards fit the personality of my friends also, and that makes them work.

But lately, there has been a trend amongst the cute skinny indie boys to grow the borderline Rumplestilskin-esque beards that are just so... ew. Is it because without the facial hair, they look like they are twelve years old? Because with the facial hair, they just look like hippies. I mean, come on - the puffy 70's jackets over vintage t-shirts and cordoroy pants and Pumas... Just add the beard and the VW bus will come to you, with pot smoke billowing out the sliding door.

I blame it on Grandaddy and Iron & Wine. As soon as those acts got cool with the kids, you could practically hear the beards growing. It makes me sad: I've seen loads of perfectly good looking guys get buried under their facial hair. Maybe one day I'll see them again. My ex-boyfriend was doing it too, so I'd sing tracks from Jesus Christ Superstar to him whenever I'd see him because well, he kinda looked like Jesus. His comment was, "Hey man, the Jesus look is timeless."

Now when I was with this guy, he'd sometimes get a bit grizzly but was generally good about shaving. Early on he was kind enough to ask if his potentially growing a beard would be a problem or not, and since I had just hacked off my hair from about the shoulders to just below the ear without anyone's permission, I figured I couldn't really tell him what to do with his facial hair. But thank God he never grew the beard which he nutured after we broke up - damn, what a turn off!

Ah, why do cute guys grow beards? Hopefully the next time I see my now "ex" crush, he'll have shaved and made himself crushworthy again. Sigh...