Hipster beards don’t cut it with the ladies

I don't know what it’s like where you are, but it seems to be getting worse where I am. You can’t even put it down to April Fool, because it’s been going on for ages now, and growing all the time.

Beards. I refer to beards, and the current hipster rage for them. Everywhere you look, there’s a beard either in your face or on your face. Big bushy complicated projectiles that look perfectly sensible on big gay bears, but perfectly ridiculous on skinny twentysomething boys who have only recently started shaving.

Chaps — desist. We know you are doing it primarily – if subconsciously — to show off your beard-growing testosterone levels to each other, but the heterosexuals amongst you should realise ladies hate beards. Really hate them. Imagine, Mr Luxuriant Beard Wearer, what it would feel like to stick your face into your own beard and have a rummage about with your lips. Hideous thought, right? And yet this is what you expect us ladies to do. Sorry to spell it out, but women don’t like snogging beards. Apart from the pubic hair texture, we are afraid of what we might find in there. Lost coins, bits of old pizza, that comb we mislaid last week.

We can blame the hipster youth of Brooklyn for this. This is where the trend began, apparently, and is now so fully rooted — sorry about that — that there is a new cosmetic procedure currently enjoying popularity amongst the young and the cool. Facial hair transplants, which cost up to $9,000 a go, are currently tout-la-rage in New York.

Once the preserve of female to male transgender people and Hasidic Jews, it is now groovy young men with patchy beards who are opting for the op: hair is taken from elsewhere (let’s not even go there), and implanted into the face, so your beard looks bigger, bushier, better.

Except beards never look better, apart from when they are disappearing down the plughole after they have been shaved off. We are not taking stubble here, or even footballer beards.

No, the current trend is for perfectly presentable young men to aesthetically disfigure themselves via the aggressive growth of facial bush. This fey lumberjack look is everywhere, but most especially in places that sell complicated coffee or obscure beers brewed by other beardy hipsters; it is a permanent accessory, accessorised by hipster hats and hipster sunglasses and those unfortunate canvas shoes that make everyone flat-footed.

Obviously, this beardy thing will pass, and some other preposterous trend will take over. Soon, hopefully. But what about those chumps who will have paid to have their beards permanently implanted? Is this the male equivalent of the regretted boob job?