Stare Into Space

Curse You, Johnny Depp’s Beard

Posted on | June 28, 2010 | 16 Comments

Look at him. Handsome bastard. Perhaps you’ll get all swoony and weak at the knees. Perhaps your little heart will beat more quickly in your swelling bosom. Perhaps secret parts of you are getting a tad muggy just contemplating his deep eyes, his chiselled features, his oooh-look-at-my-hair-it’s-all-unkempt-and-boyish hair, his patchy beard.

His patchy beard.

Although I normally tame most of my above-the-neck hair and shave it into a funny little chinny beard (and I wear it ever so self-consciously – Ricky Gervais really hurt us), I posses the hirsute wherewithal to grow a full and manly, Grizzly Adams-type beard. As an aside, I do so every now and then, until my wife wears me down and I shave again.

This is the way things were meant to be. If you were a lady, in need of a mate, stuck on a frozen tundra somewhere, you’d pick the grizzly bloke with the small family of ground-sloths living in his whiskers and not the patchy-faced chap because the former would be far more useful stabbing pointy rocks into mammoths and at carrying a hairy elephant leg back to camp. Old Bare-But-Striking-Cheekbones there would be next to useless with mammoths and could only impress you by helping you pick berries and by listening to your interminable stories about last night’s episode of Sex And The Small Encampment Of Animal-Skin Huts. Who wants that in a mate?

But things have changed. Men no longer need to head off in the morning to kill various Proboscidea (and they call this progress). Now, men can attract a mate by having dark, piercing eyes, nice hair and a scraggy beard.

What hope for the rest of us. Or, more to the point, me.

But this is not a selfish rant. It’s bigger than that.

You see, the more that Johnny Depp’s beard is selected for, the more patchy will be the beards of future generations. In a few dozen generations, no more manly, grizzled, bewhiskered fuzzfaces will exist. All the faces of humanity will become less furry and, soon, there will be no beards at all. Is that what you want; a world without beards? ‘Cos that’s what’s definitely going to happen.

Natural selection can be a beautiful and vicious thing.

Don’t let Johnny Depp’s beard win. Don’t let Johnny Depp’s beard’s smooth genes depilate your descendants until humanity resembles some sort of bipedal dolphin. You can beat evolution, ladies. You can do it, but only if you eschew handsome men with inadequate facial hair and, instead, take as your mates, bristly, shaggy, hairy and homely blokes.

You know it makes sense.

Comments

16 Responses to “Curse You, Johnny Depp’s Beard”

  1. Elizabeth Ditty
    June 28th, 2010 @ 11:41

    The obvious solution here is for women to pick two mates: one of the Johnny Depp variety and one of the, say, George Clooney line. Then we’re no longer in danger of losing our brawny protection from mammoths or our sensitive, swoony, berry-picking companions.

  2. Gerry Hayes
    June 28th, 2010 @ 11:54

    No, no, no. The only solution is to shun Johnny Depp. There is no other way. The moment you let Johnny Depp in your bed, his barely-haired seed will work their evil, you see? His smooth, sensitive seed will charm your ovaries (or whatever happens inside girls – it seems unnecessarily complicated) and the damage will be done… No more beards in the future.

    You must never sleep with Johnny Depp. It’s the only way.

  3. Elizabeth Ditty
    June 28th, 2010 @ 14:47

    While I have never slept with Johnny Depp, I fear the damage may already have been done. Apologies. When the great bearded men are gone, we shall build monuments in their honor. Maybe.

  4. Gerry Hayes
    June 28th, 2010 @ 18:38

    We don’t need no steenking monuments. Dear god, is it too much to ask that you girls not sleep with handsome, talented, heartthrob Johnny Depp?

  5. Elizabeth Ditty
    June 29th, 2010 @ 3:41

    Yes.

  6. Vancouver
    June 29th, 2010 @ 6:22

    Long Live Human Progress! The scraggly, wispy-haired cheek shall prevail to reign over all. Only then will all be right with the world!

  7. Gerry Hayes
    June 29th, 2010 @ 9:42

    Selfish; that’s what it is. Well, when the world is populated by only good-looking men with no face or body hair, you’ll have only yourselves to blame. Then you’ll be sorry.

    “Oh, where have all the unattractive men with hairy chins and shoulders gone?” you’ll cry. “How could we have been so blind?” you’ll wail to the heavens (or your descendants will). And I’ll be laughing smugly from my grave.

  8. ellie
    June 30th, 2010 @ 19:28

    And from our side, the stick-figure-girl-women who threaten the longevity of curves (natural). Johnny Depp and those girls. That is the future. (Of Hollywood, at least).

  9. Gerry Hayes
    June 30th, 2010 @ 21:32

    Dear god! What if Johnny Depp and the thin women get together? A new super-species of chiselled, hairless men and pointy-elbowed women whose eyes will have evolved – behind those Posh Spice sunglasses – to be so enormous that their stick-like necks will be prone to snap under their weight.

    We hairy and curvy ones will be made to worship them as gods and to fashion complicated support mechanisms to stop the females’ spines from being crushed.

    It’s a terrifying glimpse of the future. For my part, Ellie, I vow never to sleep with super-models if you’ll swear off Johnny Depp.

  10. Katie McCullough
    July 2nd, 2010 @ 18:46

    Gerry, I heard the call. Who is this Johnny Depp? He does not sport a beard, it’s the result of him falling asleep on some UHU and then falling on to the floor post vegan milkshake (it gets too much for him at times).

    We need muscular beards in full throng that tickle our faces and warm the bed. Now THAT’s what a man’s for. Bring forth all the properly bearded men to me and I shall make sure they are treated well.

  11. Gerry Hayes
    July 2nd, 2010 @ 19:01

    Ahh, KatieMac, I knew I could rely on you. Your unquenchable pogonophilia* is an inspiration to these frivolous Depp-lovers. Or, if not, it ruddy well should be (excuse my profanity – this is an emotive issue).

    *If it’s not a word, it should be – it gets a phobia, why not a philia?

  12. Katie McCullough
    July 2nd, 2010 @ 19:14

    I could write a book on the subject and I could teach the world to sing in perfect harmony about beards and why we need them (but I’d keep some secrets to myself). It would involve venn diagrams, handouts, presentations and everyone would walk away with one of the metal filing magnet games to bring to life their fantasies…

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pogonophilia

    I don’t think I’ve ever been defined so much by the dictionary. Except for the pogo stick bit.

    Swear away dear man, the world needs your fury on this matter.

  13. Gerry Hayes
    July 4th, 2010 @ 0:30

    You can prove anything with venn diagrams and magnet-game things.

    Luckily, that’s just what I want and the use of venn diagrams makes it all the more delicious.

  14. ellie
    July 5th, 2010 @ 21:56

    i have sworn off the chiseled life-force-threatening fucker

  15. ellie
    July 5th, 2010 @ 21:56

    ps – i have a secret crush on Tony Soprano

  16. Gerry Hayes
    July 6th, 2010 @ 9:39

    Okaaaaay. I’ll just gloss over that touched nerve, Ellie, and move on to Tony Soprano.

    Really?

    Gandolfini does look like he could grow a full and bushy beard if he put his mind to it though. I wholeheartedly approve of your no-longer-secret crush.

Gerry Hayes

Gerry Hayes

I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and debase my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.

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