Daily Sitka Sentinel

Whiskers Get Their Day in Sentinel Survey

By HENRY COLT
Sentinel Staff Member
    Tomorrow is February 22, which means (and this may be stating the obvious) that we will be exactly 27 weeks away from World Beard Day, held the first Saturday in September. Which also means that those with the capability should start growing now.
    Or earlier, depending on desired length. In 2016, GQ magazine published research indicating that the average beard grows .016 inches per day – a figure they call the “ideal growth constant.”
    But we don’t exist in an ideal world, and neither do our beards. GQ recognized this, and came up with a second figure that accounts for the fact that beard hairs grow not in straight lines, but squiggly ones. This figure, the “apparent growth constant,” is .011 inches per day.
    You don’t need to be a mathematician to determine when you should start growing. All you need to do is take your Goal Beard Length in inches (GBL) and divide it by the apparent growth constant. That gives you the number of days it will take to grow a beard that long.
    For example, let’s say you had a GBL of 12 inches. You’d plug 12/.011 into a calculator, and discover that growing a 12-inch beard from scratch would take an average of 1,090 days. To be ready for World Beard Day 2020, you would need to have stopped shaving on September 5, 2017. (Of course, certain unguents could speed things along – see a link to our favorites at the bottom of this article.)
    But all this is quantitative data, and the Sentinel wanted qualitative data. In search of the human element, bearded Sentinel staff members asked bearded Sitkans a simple question: What does your beard mean to you?
    Products that could help speed things along:
https://www.baldingbeards.com/best-beard-growth-products/   

Norm Campbell
“Tons of people now wear little beards like this, and it’s sort of interesting to see who does and who doesn’t. I have no overriding reason for doing it, no justification for doing it, no sensible reason for doing it – and I can’t remember why I did it in the first place!”

Jesse Pepper
“I don’t know, rugged Alaskan? Keeps me warm in the winter? That’s the main one — it keeps me warm in the winter. It’s my face jacket.”

Joel Hanson
“It means having to shave less often. I used to have a much fuller beard, but then I shaved it off and my son didn’t recognize me, so I compromised. He was ten when I shaved it, now he’s 39. But every once in a while I let it go a little bit crazy.”

Charles Dean
“As odd as it sounds, for me it’s just a display of masculinity – there you have it.”

Jay Newman
“It’s fitting the hairstyle and fitting the whole feel of the personality – like, how you feel that day. Sometimes I feel like being nice and clean and shaven and having a haircut. But if I let the hair go like this, I want my face to match the hair. So I think that’s one of the main reasons I like to keep this beard a little bit long, until I get a haircut – then it’s all going to be shaved off.
Kayla Newman: “I’ve been with him 5 years, and I’ve never seen him baby-faced.”
Jay Newman: “I guess that’s another thing – it’s for the ladies too.”

Jim Hartman
“My wife would divorce me if she saw my face.”