The Sideburns' Last Stand

On a fine morning of April, that valiant warrior of a month which enlists even the heavenly showers in its mission to "pierce the droughts of March to the root," I awoke to the reassuringly baritone voice of NPR's Robert Siegel blaring on my radio clock. Only a British accent can lend a voice as much credibility as being three octaves lower than normal does. This blog of male readers will understand the rejuvenating effect such a voice must have on a mind groggy after staying up way too late playing Halo doing homework.

Peering into the bathroom mirror, I realized that I had a problem. My sideburns were downright bushy.

Sideburns should never be bushy. You can wear jeans for two weeks straight and get away with it (I have), you can carefully wipe your fingers on your socks without serious consequences (or so my uncle tells me), and you can even shave all your hair off like a wannabe swimmer and not look totally dumb. But whatever your blunders in the way of hygiene or appearance, don't ever for the love of Elvis Presley mess up on your sideburns! Sideburns make the man. They are manly. In fact, despite what some people think, most women don't even have them. Grow your sideburns too long, and you'll look like a failed Taliban who wants a beard but can't quite manage. Cut them off completely and you'll look—shorn. Like a suited scrivener who's too meek to venture into the bold land of real whiskers. (Apologies to certain individuals out there who are at this moment angrily protesting.) And blond, unshaven peach-fuzz burns are the worst of all.

Now, there was a good reason my sideburns were a little unkempt. My barber down the street is not the kind of person I like to visit more than I need to. Not that he's a Sweeney Todd or anything. That would be cool. A creepy, exciting, mysterious monster of a barber would make a haircut worth the thirty dollars that haircuts cost in our degenerate age. But this barber is just a run-of-the-mill, sleepy chatterbox whose head is shaved to about a half inch of graying growth, and who is fond of garrulously and affably rambling about any subject from sports to politics to how he pirates the most awesome stuff on the internet and has a mega CD collection that he downloaded for free onto his quad-core computer with a terabyte hard drive. I'm not jealous; in fact I am quite happy for him. I hope his computer has a long and satisfying life and that he thoroughly enjoys it. And then I hope it blows up his house.

Just kidding. Did I mention that he doesn't have sideburns?

I, on the other hand, do have sideburns. I have stronger, healthier, sideburns than most people. My virile hair does not grow "very slowly"; in fact, it sprouts up faster than the kids in that family your mother hasn't seen in five years. ("My, how little Jonny has grown! I just can't get over it! *pinch embarrassed sixteen-year-old's cheek*) When I looked in the mirror, my sideburns were of moderate length, but way too thick and positively rebarbative.

Being a resourceful fellow, I knew exactly what to do. Out of my shelf came an electric shaver. Out from the shaver popped the trimming attachment. And I set to work shaving off just enough hair to thin out my burns and polish my already dashing appearance. But alas! My hand is not so steady as I thought it was.

Ten minutes later, I stood in the mirror staring at my vanished glory. To repair the slip, I had been compelled to remove every last whisker from my jaws and cheeks.

Of course, it will grow back soon. But after a few days, I am finding that a smooth, clean image really suits me. In fact, I'm not sure why anyone would want those scruffy strips of bristle running down his face.

Visor Vanity

The other day I hopped into a car with a few friends and started my normal on-the-highway daydreaming routine. My brain was flat-lining as I watched the little white lines wiz by and I began to reverie of happy things. On this particular occasion, I believe the daydream involved a beautiful woman and a lot of ice cream. Anyway, my thoughts were interrupted when my friend in the passenger seat pulled down the visor and looked at herself intently in the mirror. She stared for a while, squinted and then opened her mouth for an oral inspection. There were no visible marks on her face, she wasn’t adding makeup, her hair looked well quaffed and she hadn’t eaten anything in the last two hours so she wasn’t conducting post facto dental hygiene. In short, there were no conceivable reasons for her to be using the visor at that moment.

Now, we all know and love girls. This post isn’t meant to knock girls – that subject has gotten old – rather it is a critique of what I like to call Visor Vanity: the urge a passenger has to use the car’s built in mirror to ensure that their good looks remain intact. This phenomenon isn’t isolated to girls; I have, on more than one embarrassing occasion, caught myself pulling down the visor for a quick peek. And I am not a girl. It’s not that I’m particularly sensitive about my features (I often go through my morning routine without ever glancing at the mirror, but that’s probably because it is so covered in grime that such a look wouldn’t be productive) or that I seek regular approval (excepting, of course, in my love life) or that I am very, very extremely vain.

So why do we thus abuse the visor? I think it has something to do with the popularity of photographs.

In the old days, pictures weren’t that common. Most of them were grainy, black and white and, if you go back far enough, daguerreotypes. Mirrors were the only opportunity to find out how we looked. Today, with every trinket on the market photo-enabled – from the cell phones that take pictures, to those little cameras over stoplights – our picture can be found all over the place. The other day I even found a picture of myself in the local obituaries. I am still trying to figure out why I was thus honored. Anyway, pictures give us the likeness that others see while a mirror provides the mathematical opposite of that image. When we see a picture, an image of ourselves is ingrained in our minds. But when we look in the mirror, that picture is contradicted. In an effort to convince ourselves that either the photo or the mirror is accurate, we must constantly look in the mirror. Some people have a similar problem called Photo Vanity, but that only occurs in the left-handed.

Test this out. Grab a picture of yourself and go to the mirror. Which image do you like better? The one in the mirror or the one in the photo? Odds are you’ll like the mirror better.

In response to Visor Vanity, I have taken a picture of myself and put it up as my background on my cell phone and computer and pasted it all over my bedroom, coving a full length mirror. This picture reinforces the correct image of myself and, hopefully, obviates the need to pull down the visor.