The Many Faces of Me

Some of you (the ones I haven't seen since January, at least) might not have heard about my attempt at growing a beard. Sometime last year, I was thinking to myself, "Why, I've never grown a beard. I wonder if I would like it?"

Or something like that. When it got around to being New Years, I realized that I couldn't think of a single New Years resolution that I'd ever kept. I couldn't remember ever making one, either. If anything, I may have once resolved not to make New Years resolutions, just to maintain my nonconformist reputation.

Well, times change. This year I resolved to do something different: make a New Years resolution. Easiest resolution ever! I immediately followed through by resolving to grow a beard until the end of the spring semester.

You can see the results here. Pretty impressive, right? This is even after trimming it back twice. People asked me pretty frequently why I had decided to grow a beard. I got tired of explaining the true reason (I was bored), so I made up some ridiculous ones.

"I'm actually a wanted fugitive."
"I realized that my face was too handsome, so I covered part of it up."
"I'm growing this beard to raise awareness for all the people in the world who can't grow facial hair."
...and so on.

Well, eventually May rolled around, and I finished exams and went to a wedding. When I got back home, I started to remove the beard. My friend Laura had suggested that I shave off one part at a time, and I liked the idea. I'd seen other people do it before on the internet, and it looked like fun.



The first experiment was probably my favorite. This one got called "general burnside", "king kalākaua", "early presidential", and a lot of other comments.


One of my roommates put a copy of this picture on the refrigerator.














More ridiculous glamour shots. This stage was also pretty good. Apparently this particular facial hair style is known as the "friendly muttonchops". Or maybe the one above this was the friendly chops. I'm still unclear, and the internet disagrees too.

Really, this was just a transitional stage between the first style and the next. Not my favorite, although I do love these pics.













I like to think of this one as "the Hogan", but I guess there are other names for this style. One of my friends claims that I look like some kind of sleazy drug lord in this picture. I liked this one.






I'm not as fond of this one. At least, I don't like this picture, but it's the only one I have of "the handlebar".

I had a lot of fun twirling the ends of my moustache while talking to people, and curling the tips up to look like a musketeer or something.

I still this this picture is awful.




And at last: back to a smooth, clean-cut face.

This montage was taken at the end of the road in Hāwī, up near the northern end of the island. There's a trail down to the beach (and beyond), marked with several very large warning signs, but we didn't have time to hike down to check it out. Maybe another time.

(The last picture, btw, is "You're a kitten!")

Anyway, I'm pretty happy without the facial hair for now. It's summer, and it's hot, so I don't miss it. But winter will be coming up again soon enough, and I've been thinking I might do this again, especially now that I know it only takes a couple months for me to grow a respectable little beard. Certainly enough to play around with.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the show, and that you're all doing at least as great as I am. Email me if you want better quality copies of any of these pictures.