Beasts in Eastern Ohio

In Eastern Ohio, a sect of Amish goons led by a family named (amazingly) the Mullets have been settling their scores by dragging fellow Amish men out of their houses and de-bearding them with scissors and battery-operated razors. Facial hair means a lot to an Amish man, so the assaults amount to a profound smackdown. A symbolic castration—an in-your-face, or rather off your face, move.

So far authorities know of four separate de-bearding incidents. Most seem to be directed at individuals who left or those who helped individuals leave a splinter settlement called Bergholz, ruled by the eldest Mullet, Sam, a 66-year-old Amish hard-ass. In one instance, members of the Bergholz community knocked on a guy’s door, bum rushed him and hacked away at his beard on his own front lawn in front of his entire family. Needless to say, Ohio’s Amish are rattled. Not only are their trademark beards being attacked (something Nazis used to do to Orthodox Jews), they’re being attacked by brethren.

The Mullets knew fully well what it meant to target an Amish beard, a symbol of masculinity, and that got me thinking. So I gave a call to Allan Peterkin, author of 1000 Beards: A Cultural History of Beards, to learn more about the history of beard meaning.

"What you find from the cave times on is that the beard has come in and out," Peterkin said. "Cultural things happen and political things happen, and that's what determines what the beard means and whether or not it's favored or looked down upon."

Beards have meant different things to different people throughout history. In some cases they’ve even meant different things to the same people throughout history. In the Christian Church, for example, beards have been viewed both as godlike because Jesus wore one and demonic because the devil is often depicted with one. (Peterkin called this the "Santa or Satan" principle.) Similarly, I was under the impression that military men always wore beards. Just check this dude’s beard out.

But apparently as far back as 300 B.C. conquerors like Alexander the Great mandated that his soldiers shave so there would be less to grab onto in hand-to-hand combat. Pulling hair is a girl fight maneuver.

Little-known fact: Governments have enforced beard laws. The most absurd of these occurred in 1705, when Peter the Great, Tzar of Russia, implemented a beard tax in an effort to “modernize” his county. Aka, he didn’t want Russian men to look like hillbillies. 100 rubles per beard. After paying the tax you'd get a token, one side of it depicting a Russian Eagle, the other depicting the lower half of a fully bearded face. An inscription on the coin read: “The beard is a superfluous burden.”

Today we're into 20-plus years of freeform (and tax-free) beard growth. Most of us can wear beards wherever we want to, even in the workplace, which was never the case for our granddads. But it seems a little hollow now compared to earlier times, when a beard actually meant something. "Throughout history you used to be able to figure out a man through his facial hair," Peterkin said. "Nowadays, you can't really tell.” And that sucks.

That's what’s so interesting about the Amish attacks–the beards weren’t just pointless fashion statements. I mean, nobody’s going to go after some posturing period dork or some Brooklyn jackass looking like a 1920s duck hunter from Maine and cut his beard off. It just doesn’t happen.

Peterkin told me a story about a man who truly believed in his beard, a man named Joseph Palmer. Palmer was everything any guy worth his salt from 1950 on has ever wanted to be: burly as hell, a farmer, and a transcendentalist. A fucking transcendentalist! On top of it all, he sported a full-on mountain man beard, which he wore with pride when he moved to Finchburg, Massachusetts in 1830.

America hated beards back then, and as such, Palmer lived life as an outcast, enduring cruel jokes, derision and outright abuse. One day a gang of local youths approached and informed him it was the town’s wish that his beard disappear. Much like the Mullets, they set upon him and tried to vanquish his beard, this time with soap and razors. Palmer fought them off, slashing at their legs with a knife until they relented. He ending up getting jailed for “unprovoked assault,” but his beard remained intact.

Palmer was a real man. By the time he died in 1875, beards like his were back in fashion. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in North Leominster, Massachusetts. His stone marker reads: “Persecuted for wearing the beard.”