Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I would like to know at what age guys usually start growing out and maintaining their beard. Its something I hope to do in the near future, and I want to know when to start and how to start. Also, will growing a beard make me look older and less attractive in any way. Additionally, do beards feel uncomfortably scratchy at times. Just basic questions I want to ask.
I would like to know at what age guys usually start growing out and maintaining their beard. Its something I hope to do in the near future, and I want to know when to start and how to start. Also, will growing a beard make me look older and less attractive in any way. Additionally, do beards feel uncomfortably scratchy at times. Just basic questions I want to ask.
I don't wear one consistently (I periodically shave it and don't let it get very long; I also keep it a bit groomed so it's not a full beard) but I started experimenting with it right when I realized my hair was thinning on top. (about a six months ago; I'm 36) I figured if I'm starting to lose the hair on the top part of my head I should begin to figure out how I like to wear the on the rest of it!
And yes, they can be kind uncomfortably scratchy, but I find the more I grow one the less it is noticeable.
I don't think it usually makes one look more or less attractive (though how you groom it can!) per se, but it does make you look a little different and often a little older.
They're only scratchy during the intermediate phase between stubble and a full beard.
I've avoided shaving for up to a week but have never grown a full beard. It looks pretty bad during the intermediate phase and I've never made it through. When I'm off work a few days, I just wear stubble.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,210 posts, read 80,369,332 times
Reputation: 57089
I started at 19 when on a 2.5 month cross country road trip. Shaved it off at age 22 for a job, but then after a few years there grew it back and have had it since. I always thought when I got old I could shave it off and look 10 years younger but at 60 it's "salt & pepper" and I still have it. Where I work now probably 60% of the men have a beard, and 10% of the women.
I shaved for the last time at age sixteen, and I'm now sixty.
I don't find it scratchy.
I have known guys who didn't like how old it made them look because their beards came in gray before the hair on their heads. Both of my sons, age 30 and 27, are starting to have some gray in their beards.
I first started wearing what an optimist with compromised vision could sportingly call a beard at 19.
A few years later, when I could actually grow what would meet a respectable definition of a beard, I grew a real one (most of the time it's a goatee but in the winter it blossoms into a beard now and then - not this year, though, the recent spate of days with a high temperature of highs around -15F notwithstanding).
A few years ago, I thought I'd shave it off. I did, and then I realized: "Oh, yeah, that's why I wear a beard!" - lack of a chin and the inability not to break out in that part of my face when I shave.
My husband's been able to grow a beard as long as I've known him (he was 20 when we met). He will go years without a beard and then decide he wants one. Right now he's got a moustache and goatee. He has to run the trimmer over it every other day or it gets big and bristly pretty quick. By summertime I predict he will be tired of the moustache and goatee and will go back to being clean shaven for a year or two.
It makes him look older because the gray in it is in little clusters, unlike the gray on his head which is a single hair scattered here and there.
I started growing facial hair properly at 17 (but it looked ridiculous) and started having maintained stubble at 18. I've never allowed it to grow too much though, but could easily allow it to, if I wanted to.
14, but it was patchy. i couldn't grow a full, good looking beard until 17-18
apparently some women have found it attractive when i do grow one(such as now)
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
