How to NOT grow a beard

Clean-shaven face paired with a hairy neck? That’s just plain wrong. Allure confirms what we’ve known all along – there’s no excuse for ‘Neck Beard’.

It has come to our attention that a certain male grooming trend – we’ll call it the Neck Beard – can be physically repulsive to members of the opposite sex. One member of our staff was recently a guest at a wedding at which the groom had hair growing, without interruption, from his chest to his chin; she claims to have come perilously close to throwing up at the sight of it.

And yet we see this look all time, most recently on Shia Lebeouf, whose refusal to shave shouts out, ‘I’m between projects, I don’t have to be handsome!’

Oh, Shia, but you do. Although beards were once grown unfettered and people like Abraham Lincoln and Rasputin managed to pull them off without frightening the neighbors, today some measure of grooming is pretty much expected.

‘That whole neck problem is probably the result of a guy wanting to grow out his beard but wanting it to look natural,’ says Robin Capilli, a men’s stylist at Sally Hershberger Downtown in New York City.

Here, men, are your options: If you favour a full beard, you can attempt to taper it with an adjustable trimmer so that the hair fades into your neck, or, says Capilli, you can keep your neck clean by shaving with a clean line where the neck meets the chin. Pick one, please. For the ladies.

Written by Patrick Rogers, this article originally appeared on Allure.

Image: PRPhotos.com