Truly, the hipster beard is the gift that keeps on giving. Despite virtually everyone calling time on it – including the team of Australian scientists who popularised the idea of “peak beard” in the learned Biology Letters journal last year – the Brian Blessed look is refusing to leave the sartorial stage. Clearly push is going to have to come to shove, but thanks to the latest beard trend to surface, the resulting dust-up is going to leave an oily, glittery mess behind it.
I'm talking about glitter beards, something which started out as a micro-trend among a handful of Instagram-obsessed hipsters but which now seems to have snowballed into a fully-fledged movement. With its own hashtag.
It seems to have started – and I wish I had a dollar for every time I've written this – in the hipster capital of Portland, Oregon, where two dudes called Brian Delaurenti and Johnathan Dahl post and vlog as The Gay Beards. They like to decorate their full and lustrous beards with flowers, fruits, tinsel, lights, feathers, sweeties and what looks from one picture like Cheesy Wotsits. Then they take selfies and put them on their Instagram page.
But it's the glitter beard which seem to have really struck a chord, so much so that Delaurenti and Dahl have posted a how-to on YouTube. Beard oil is essential, apparently. “If you're going for, like, an evening or a party, you're going to need it to cling to something,” says Delaurenti. For that they recommend something called Morning Wood (they crack a joke at this point, but I didn't get it). After that, all you need to do is choose your glitter – and pour it on.
Now at this point I feel I should adopt the role of responsible adult and say “Do not try this at home” because, as all parents know, the first rule of child-rearing is Never Allow Glitter Over The Threshold. Two reasons: it gets everywhere (literally: you do not want to know where I have found glitter) and it has a half-life comparable to plutonium (24,000 years). Bearded hipsters, being mostly young, childish and childless, are ignorant of these pernicious qualities. Or they will be until they decide enough's enough and they try to de-glitter their shimmering furze.
By the by, never let it be said I ignore the distaff side when there's scorn to be poured like brandy sauce. Inspired by the glitter beard trend, some hipster women are doing their own version. Not having beards, however, they're adorning the hair on a different part of their bodies, but posting pictures regardless.
Oh, come on, you didn't really think I meant there did you? No, using the hashtag #glitterpits, they're adorning whatever underarm hair they have. In part it's about keeping up with the boys but also (it says here) as a comment on beauty stereotyping and media sexism.
But now that our glitter beard- and glitter pit-wearing friends have given us such a generous Christmas present, what can we possibly give them in return? Sympathy, I'd say.
And a razor.
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