Experiments In Fur

I will never understand why the toughness of a hair is directly proportional to the sensitivity of its surrounding skin. Or not until someone explains it to me, anyway. In the mean time, growing a beard is not something I generally mess with. After a week or so it itches, and a couple of weeks after that, it frankly hurts. The constant nagging at my face makes me irritable, to a level exceeded only by lack of sex (which does very unpleasant things to my personality). Thus, I have a certain lack of experience with it after a certain point. Even conditioning the stuff only fends off the annoyance for a few days.

It's no secret to anyone who's met me that I look better with a few days' growth than clean-shaven. I know of no one else whose bride asked him to not shave for their wedding. Carefully controlling for body language, weather, and clothing styles, I have experimented and discovered very distinct changes in woman-on-the-street reactions to my beard. The greatest open interest happens between 7 and 10 days' growth, trimmed to a "short boxed beard" shape, and declines a bit in the days following. Shaving at that point (which I generally do a day or so past the optimum) drops my attention draw by maybe 80%.

Women are so shallow, I swear.

A couple months ago I noticed something about the relatively new Captain Morgan commercial campaign. The music had caught my attention, especially in Chapter 2 of their still unfinished 3-part story, as had the cinematic quality of the whole series.



Pondering how the music was used, watching it in my skull's screening room on the road home one day, I realized I couldn't quite recall how the Captain's facial hair was styled. It gave the impression of being a goatee, while leaving the notion of a short boxed beard, and yet I seemed to recall the mustache that has so long been on the spiced rum's label. Which was it?

If you just watched the video above, you probably know that it was all three. Have a look at 0:13. He has the mustache above his mouth, a wide soul patch and goatee combo below (reaching oddly far back on his jaw), and a very short beard along his cheek/jaw/sideburn that's been cleaned up along the neck and upper cheek. Very complicated stuff for a pirate, especially considering his shipboard barber. If you include the shaved areas, that's four distinct lengths on one face! Just goes to show how much thought goes into projecting just the right image in the brief format of an ad series.

Now, don't think I'm going to attempt that sort of lunacy. Not quite, anyway. As we established at the beginning, I simply haven't the patience for it. If I nursed my patience along, though, I figured I might be able to have a go at 3 levels, again including the shaven areas as one. The itchiness on my neck gets a bit much after just a few days, so that part's pretty much assumed, and the overall shape is the same as usual. The only difference is that after about 3 weeks I used the electric trimmers to reduce all but the 'stache/goatee to a nice, even minimum, just shorter than Morgan has. The remaining longer beard doesn't go as far back along the side or under the chin as his, either, since that looks very strange on me.

Reaction from the woman-on-the-street has been very positive indeed.