Jonas Doerr – Opinion Columnist

The new beards sprung themselves on us rather suddenly. With the help of some social upheaval, the new type of beards became cheaply and readily available. Even children could have beards! People soon came up with a name for the new beards: masks.
These “masks” had a lot of the same benefits as beards. They covered virtually the same area of space as an ordinary beard. They provided warmth to the lower portions of the face. They had the potential to render traditional beards obsolete!
Masks certainly had a leg up on ordinary facial hair. Instead of partially covering the lower face, masks obscured it completely. Bad chin acne? Wear a mask. Long nose hairs? Wear a mask. Didn’t brush your teeth? Wear a mask!
Plus, they allowed for even greater self-expression than traditional beards. Instead of having to go through the arduous process of growing facial hair, people could just pop on a mask. Purple beard? Flower beard? A beard that looks like a piece of lettuce? Masks can do it all, and then some!
The benefits of these new beards were so obvious that people in charge decided everybody should have one. Beards have never been so popular! Everywhere one went, one would see people wearing these new-fangled beards. Make no mistake about it – the new and old beards did not coexist well. The combination of the two was incredibly itchy. It seemed like the masks were determined to strangle the life out of the original beards.
Of course, the new beards have one huge thing in their favor on top of everything else. They help prevent COVID. This is why they are so prevalent at Gustavus to this day (and, believe it or not, not because of their fashionability).
The new kind of beards have undeniably helped keep Gustavus’ coronavirus numbers at the respectable level they are now. Any number of cases is too many, but it would be much higher without masks.
The benefits of masks are obvious, but I still long for the old days. I long for the days before razors when beards were free to grow untamed, roaming wild like the American bison. Well, maybe I’m not quite old enough for that. It’s still clear traditional beards have been going through a rough patch recently. COVID complicates things, but maybe masks can share the fashion limelight with ordinary beards.
The pandemic means we clearly should stick with masks for the short term. There’s nothing wrong with people who can’t grow their own beard using a mask as a substitute. Yet traditional beards have their merits too. Call it nostalgia, but I think they deserve to have a comeback.
Consider, for example, the numerous styles one can wear a beard in. There are really only three ways to wear a mask: over the nose, under the nose, and under the chin. Only one of those is stylish, though. Surely no fashionable person would wear their mask beneath their nose. On the other hand, beards are stylish when worn in a number of ways. There are long beards, short beards, thin beards, and wide beards. Heck, mustaches are even an option if you want to look like the Godfather. There’s so many more ways to wear a normal beard than a mask.
Plus, beards are very attractive. I sometimes have a beard, which obviously makes that statement more true. On a more objective basis, beards can fill out the angles in one’s face to make them look better.
Maybe instead of suppressing their growth, masks can enhance beard culture on campus. People can have two beards at once! Normally, a beard grower has to go through an awkward stubble phase, where their face looks like a lawn in the Sahara. It can be so hard for onlookers that they sometimes call the Constubble (a.k.a. the beard police). Eventually the full glory of the beard comes into existence, but that first phase can scare off potential beard-growers. Masks, while they may be itchy, can cover up that uncomfortable first phase and allow people to experiment with beard styles. Coexistence might not be so bad.
Masks are here to stay for a while. Perhaps they will even remain more popular than beards, which is almost as crazy as saying soy milk will be more popular than dairy one day. It might still happen. Either way, we can agree to yearn for the day when the masks can come off and beards can once again flourish like daffodils flowering from fresh spring rains.