Mask Beard: COVID Has Been a Pandemic For Beards Everywhere as Bedhead Goes Down on Your Face

Remember the days before face masks? Yeah, we don’t either. We’ve been strapping on personal protective equipment for so long that it’s become second nature, if not a second skin. But that doesn’t mean we’ve figured out how to still look (or feel) put together while masking up. We’ve had to deal with “maskne” and “mask breath.” But for those with facial hair, masks have been particularly unflattering.

Basically, face masks are messing with our grooming prowess. Before coronavirus, we could take care of our beards and keep them well-cut, brushed, and oiled. Then masks came and turned our beards into the bedhead of our face. It didn’t help, of course, that we kind of let ourselves go in the grooming department. With nowhere to go, no women to woo, no bosses to impress, we decided to see just how long and scraggly our facial hair could get – and even we were surprised by the level of dishevelment we reached.

Mask makers have been trying to troubleshoot face mask-induced beard disasters, with debatable success. There are a wide variety of face masks that not only allow enough fabric for the heft of a beard, they actually contain all the facial hair, no matter how gnarly yours has become during quarantine.

But at some point, the mask comes off, and there’s your bird’s nest of a beard all bedraggled and rebellious. How to prevent this? Well, there’s really only one way: shave it all off. By getting rid of your face pubes, you’re saving yourself the embarrassment of an unkempt beard.

Terrified to go naked-faced? Don’t worry. Even if you regret it (you won’t), given how long the vaccine rollout is taking, there’s plenty of time to grow a whole new beard. And by then, maybe, just maybe, face masks will be a thing of the past.

Cover Photo: Nadezhda Zaitceva / EyeEm (Getty Images)

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