BLF Fundraising Speech
by Marc Nair
On behalf of my colleagues at the Beard Liberation Front (BLF),
I would like to thank you all for opening your pores and letting
the hair on my words take root in your smooth-shaven chins.
I’ve been a bearded man for most of my life,
but tonight, I briefly considered coming clean… shaven
because I’m tired. Tired of being discriminated.
Tired of the stares, the whispers, the side-long glances
thoughts that form but are politely unspoken
could he be… a… a… terrorist? They say never use the words
terrorist and bomb in the same sentence. Woops.
Well, what about terrorist and beard?
Let me tell you why this is so. It’s got nothing to do with bin Laden,
his beard was a nest and not a beard by the way, and everything to do
with Hollywood. There is a close association in American film
between facial hair & role—if one lead male character has more
facial hair than another, he is far more likely to be the antagonist,
& the man with less (or no) facial hair the protagonist.
In other words, bearded men are always the bad guys,
which is plain unfair.
Our only agenda is to liberate men to feel proud to wear a beard.
The only thing we want to blow up is the proportion of men who shave out of fear,
bound by wives who prefer them smooth and sexless, men who deny their
masculinity because they’re afraid of customs officials, who think that beards
hide a detonator or two, or the beard is really a fuse wound around our faces,
or even that rubbing our beards will trigger an explosion.
And besides terrorists, there are so many other unfortunate
stereotypes associated with bearded men. So just to straighten the knots,
having a beard does not make me an evil genius, or a ratty pedophile
or a lumberjack. And no, bearded men were not raised by wolves.
On the contrary, men with beards have been associated with
sexual virility, wisdom and high social status.
We have a very distinguished bearded alumni:
Zeus, Socrates, Santa Claus, Chuck Norris,
Hemingway, Confucious, Sigmund Freud, Colonel Sanders
Triple H, Bob Marley, Hagar the Horrible, Obi Wan Kenobi.
The Beard Liberation Front believes in beards… for life,
For women who have moustaches, well, that’s a good start.
And young man, if you’re starting to stubble, put that razor away;
because Jesus kept a beard, and he went on to save the world.
