Have you seen how much a razor costs nowadays?

Again?

Cause our chins are weird.

Can't speak for anyone else, or if there are any trends, but personally it's because I, at the age of 41, finally have reliable facial hair growth. All men in my family are like this. It's a welcome trade-off for the fact that no men in my family ever develops a bald spot.

As an example of how this trend is being noticed is that Jehovah's Witnesses relaxed the rules around facial hair for men in the United States at the beginning of this year.

I get awful razor burn and I hate shaving. Grow beard, trim the mo' every now and then, go see my barber for a tidy up when it starts getting too wild. So much easier

As everyone's arguing about what the trend actually is, I went looking for hard numbers. Here's some data spanning the Victorian to the late Cold War, from a paper by Dwight E. Robinson, but the link to it itself appears to be broken now.

Unfortunately, more recent information is googlebombed with people's lightly supported fluff pieces, so a cursory look didn't turn anything like this up for the 80's, 90's, 00's, and 10's.

The rent (razors) is too damn high!!!

I feel like beards are a reaction to the clean-cut look of the 1980s and 90s. The mainstream aesthetic was clean-cut brutalism, from architecture to facial hair. People in media lived in almost empty spaces made of concrete and hard lines. Even the grunge/plaid look of the 90s featured beardless dudes with a hint of stubble.

In the 2000s, there was a reaction against that. People looked for alternatives. Hipsters grew beards and mustaches. Instead of IKEA catalogs, movie characters lived in cottage-core wizard hangouts or busy apocalyptic shelters. This will continue for a while.

In the next decade or two we're going to see a reaction against that. Politics are going to get funky and I think that'll help get us back to clean-cut and brutal. But here's hoping for a hirsute solar-punk future. Given a choice, I'd take a 1990s-style perfect shave in a solar-punk future, but that's just me.

Hides my fat face.

I just do whatever the last attractive person who gave me advice on my appearance told me to do

I don't grow it really, it grows on me. Sometimes I style it, sometimes I shave it off.

Sadly it won't ever look like a proper full beard because it grows very sparsely on the chins

There's a strong correlation between haircuts and facial hair, and economic uncertainty.

Screw beards, ALL HAIL THOMPSON AND RITCHIE!

I can't stop it! It's out of control. As if my facial hair has a mind of it's own.

World fucked, why buy razor

Im lazy. Dont like my beard, but cbf shaving.

I hate shaving and I think it's a waste of time. I think facial hair can also act to make your appearance more visually interesting if you prefer to keep your hair cut really short like I do.

Same reason I wear a brown onion on my belt

Lol, of course Lemmy posts this picture.

it's fun to play with. my ADHD brain likes the texture

I have a closely cropped beard. I grew it in the pandemic just to see if I could. It didn't look too bad and my wife didn't object so I kept it. Beats shaving every day.

I've had a beard for 10+ years now. I was going thru a really rough period and didn't do much hygiene. Once I got out of that rut, I kinda liked it. My spouse, who initially said they didn't like beards, complained when I shaved it.

I've always wanted one. I have a baby face and it makes me look older and people take me more seriously.

Because I can and it looks dope when I put in the time and trim it right.

I really fucking hate wasting my time shaving and gave up on it during the pandemic, then people told me I looked better with it.

I'm slightly less fugly with it, I hope.

But I grew up admiring beards. So I finally decided to grow one over COVID only to find out I got screwed genetically in that area too.