A sideburn aside

Dear hypothetical blog-readers,

I do apologise for the long expanse of dead air since my first tentative postings. The fast-approaching exams, it would seem, have robbed me of (a) spare time and (b) any interesting thoughts with which to fill it. It’s a measure of my sorry existence that the most exciting thing that’s happened to me recently is that I have grown some rather puny sideburns.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so modest. These babies are my first vaguely successful foray into the manly territory of facial hair growth and I’m pleased with the results. I sang at a black tie event last night and they really set off the whole look quite nicely. And the process has also let me in on some insights about the whole thorny issue of facial hair.

Firstly, I’ve discovered that there is a huge disparity between facial hair as viewed by the wearer and the observer. The process of growing and lovingly sculpting these things has been a huge emotional investment for me. You noticed the use of the word “babies” in the last paragraph? It wasn’t casual. As a man this is as close as I will get to childbirth. Two hairy little runts of twins whom I love, disproportionately to any real merit or beauty they may possess, but simply because I brought them into the world. And there’s no bond stronger than that.

It’s been a painful process: not just because shaving around them blunts my razor blades even quicker than usual and I am even more of a bloody mess after shaving, but also because the precarious task of evening them up has made me painfully aware of how asymmetrical my face is. What do I use as a guideline? My slightly lopsided ears? It’s a nightmare.

But of course, no-one who sees these paltry pillars of fuzz could suspect that they have been the focus of so much angst. To an outsider they are just sideburns, the most routine and unremarkable of all facial growths. Richard Herring, who has shaved himself a Hitlerian toothbrush moustache for his new stand-up show, recounts in his blog the emotionally turbulent experience of walking around London sporting the most inflammatory facial hairstyle of the 20th century. He found, however, that people (especially Londoners) don’t really care. To him it’s a Hitler moustache, an embarrassingly sixth-form pseudo-“statement”; to the general public it might equally well be a Chaplin or Ron Mael. And if Herring’s Hitler can’t raise more than a shrug, what chance do I have of setting the world alight?

And indeed, since growing my sideburns precisely TWO people have commented on them: my ex-girlfriend, and one of my oldest and closest friends (who is also, coincidentally, this blog’s only known reader. Hi Richard.) Both, in their way, experts on my face. Anyone ranking below an expert is unlikely to notice; or if they notice, to care; or if they care, to comment. It didn’t help that I had my first haircut in months around the time I started growing them, so the haircut has tended to act as a smokescreen, and people comment on that instead, either taking the facial hair as part of the overall package or perhaps assuming that some of the hairdresser’s trimmings simply got stuck to the side of my face.

I’d like to close with a rather out-of-date observation on that Joaquin Phoenix appearance on David Letterman that set the internet abuzz back in February. Surely the most implausible aspect of the whole business is the fact that when Letterman compliments him on his enormous beard (in the first 45 seconds or so), he seems totally nonchalant about it.



You’re fooling no-one, Joaquin, least of all me. I know there’s an ecstatic, breathless voice in your head crying: “YESSS! He noticed!”