Musings of a first-time beard owner - feel free to advise

[njpaddy]

I'm kinda liking the look of my shaggy goatee. I stopped shaving at Thanksgiving, but after hating the beard on my neck, I went to a goatee. It's still a pain to trim, and keep out of my mouth, but my wife and youngest daughter (40s) like it. It could use a trim or shaping as one side is a bit thicker than the other, but I'm not spending $40+. I'll have to get my wife to take a pic for posting. I can't use a cell phone, or see good enough.

 

[Sethology]

Just keep the stache. Looks good

 

[Hercule]

Shaved it all off and have gotten back to shaving once a week. My stubble is very soft an fine, kind of like flocking.

 

[frbock]

As the title says I'm a first-time beard owner... at 60. While I tended to shave a couple or three times a week, I often let my facial hair grow out, sometimes more sometimes less, usually over the Christmas/New Year holiday. This has been the first time I've let it go to a full beard. It's been growing since about the middle of December (so 2 months at this point) and I'm not sure how long I'll let it go. It makes me look like Orson Welles, though considerably less rotund. I go hot or cold on it all seemingly by the hour. The cheeks are filling in, though, on the thin side. I think being salt and pepper makes it seem thinner than it is. They definitely thin out at the sideburns, always have. The mustache and goatee areas are quite full at, as best as I can tell (I haven't measured) about 3/8" to 1/2"+. I haven't trimmed anything yet. I'm working on training the mustache to part in the middle and lay to the sides, and I can get some curl at the ends. The goatee areas are white/silver and very full on either side. I find it odd that the center line, from the soul patch downward seems to be lagging in growth, though still full-ish.

As I said I go hot and cold on it. The fuzziness of the neck and lower sides annoys me, though trimming may help that. I'm quite taken by how wooly and dense the chin/goatee are is. Below that the hair annoyingly grows in the opposite direction - down from the chin then up from the neck! I haven't tried mustache wax yet. Being the cheap SOB that I am, I've tried whatever I already have in the house - a bit of soft Stirling Margaritas in the Arctic shave soap massaged and combed into the mustache seems to work well at making it succumb to my will.

If I do opt to shave it off, I'll wait until my son comes home on break and we can have some fun taking it through different style incarnations as it comes off. I'm a big fan of and quite miss using my RazoRock Gamechanger .84.

If I keep it I'll likely trim it to a goatee with a bit of a handlebar mustache or more likely something approaching a van Dyke (can't wait to counter the Colonel Sanders comments!).

Conceptually I've never really prescribed to facial hair. My brothers have always had beards, but mostly because they were inept at shaving in my opinion. It's just never been my thing. I've always claimed that shaving is what separates us from animals. Besides, I work around too many college students for whom facial hair is thought to be an expedient to maturity. Actually, I kind of like how I look but not how it feels, largely. Though I'm getting used to it. The wife says it makes me look mean, so it's been a success - perceived meanness has always been my defense mechanism (but that's another story).

Sorry for the rambling stream of consciousness. I'd be glad to hear comments and/or advice, or not.

Below is a picture of what I'm working with.

View attachment 1797661

You have a thin area on the cheeks. I'd think about going straight down on the sideburns and then follow above the jawbone . That would add better structure to the face. The rest of it is doing well. You don't have to go all the way to the heavy growth, you just need a clean line.
In Japan they do Bonsai... here we do Beardsai.

 

[Hercule]

You have a thin area on the cheeks. I'd think about going straight down on the sideburns and then follow above the jawbone . That would add better structure to the face. The rest of it is doing well. You don't have to go all the way to the heavy growth, you just need a clean line.
In Japan they do Bonsai... here we do Beardsai.

Thank you for sharing your insight. I agree about creating the beard line along the jaw for better facial structure. I've always hated seeing those who trim their beards in a diagonal line from the sideburn area down to the chin. Rounding or cutting the corner of the jaw below the ear just seems odd and looks bad. I like the idea of "Beardsai" and though tongue-in-cheek surely, I wouldn't at all be surprised if there were indeed such a thing in Japanese history/culture.

My trouble with thinness on the sides has always been that the beard really doesn't connect with the sideburns. (It the gray that makes it seem thinner now) It's much better now than it was decades ago in my youth, so are what long ago had been bald patches on either side of the chin which now grow whiskers with an absolute vengeance.

It was fun having a beard for a brief while, and was told that it suited me. But I just didn't feel that it was me, so I was glad to get rid of it and get back to shaving a few times a week. I was also glad to get away from it before the maintenance rabbit-hole sucked me in. The couple of products I did indulge in (more like experiment), I now use in my hair until they're used up.