If you’ve picked up this month’s GQ, you may have noticed a rare bit of prognosticating in the Editor’s Note. In case you haven’t, here’s the gist: With the help of a few well-chosen futurist, EiC Jim Nelson envisions a future of heavily-bearded, housebound, and impotent American men.
Leaving aside how he gets there, we aren’t sure how the beard ended up with such a bad rap. For Nelson, beards are a cipher for masculinity, not the genuine article, but he’s too heavily invested in his clean-shaven mug to see the truth. The mountain men are only gaining in strength, and the time will come when unkempt masculinity will rise up to displace the clean-shaven ideal that’s reigned for so long. (This may also coincide with all of us losing our jobs.) A few whiskers won’t make men any less virile, even if we need to trade razors for clippers and recalibrate our dopp kits.
Until then, if Nelson wants to see the future, he should visit Maine.