Beard Styles – What Women Love Most About Beards
There are so many beard styles to choose from and no one right or wrong choice. Perhaps you like a short, cropped, well groomed beard or prefer longer more unruly beard styles.
But regardless of your opinion, what beard styles are women actually attracted to?
There’s a popular quote around at the moment which says – “Kissing a man without a beard is like drinking champagne without bubbles.” But if we looked hard enough, I’m sure we could find another quote that expressed the exact opposite about men who were clean shaven.
In this world there are pogonophiles (beard lovers), pogonophobes (beard haters) and those who are indifferent to beards.
Women’s Favourite Beard Styles
So, today’s article looks at what women really think about beard styles and what your beard says about you!
But remember, even though we’ve backed up our findings with a plethora of surveys and studies, it is not in any way conclusive.
Researching surveys and studies conducted by men’s magazines, women’s magazines, dating sites, laymen, psychologists, biologists and sociologists, we aimed to determine whether women like beards on men and if so, what type of beard styles they favour?
One of the most cited articles on the subject is by Barnaby J. Dixson and Robert C. Brooks and appeared in ‘Evolution and Human Behaviour Journal’ in May 2013 with the title, The role of facial hair in women’s perceptions of men’s attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting abilities. Believe it or not, there are whole, thick academic tomes on the subject of pogonology (the study of beards)!
In the 2013 study, Dixson & Brooks presented female participants with photos of men who were clean shaven, lightly stubbled (5 days growth) or heavily stubbled (10 days growth) and with big, bushy full-grown beard styles and found that “Women judged faces with heavy stubble as most attractive and heavy beards, light stubble and clean-shaven faces as similarly less attractive.”
Their findings confirmed that an ‘intermediate level of beardedness’ (10 day stubble) was proven to be most attractive to the female participants, while men with fuller, longer beard styles were perceived as “better fathers who could protect and invest in future offspring…”
In terms of relationships, the men with ‘an intermediate level of beardedness’ appealed to women who were looking for a brief, light-hearted fling, whereas women who were looking for more of a long-term commitment favoured the men with more facial hair.
Shorter Beard Styles Seem To Be Preferred By Women
Dixon & Brooks looked at data from several sources, often the findings were contradictory. They ascertained that “ beards augment perceptions of maturity and masculinity . However, associations between other personality traits and beards are highly polarized. On the one hand, bearded men are ascribed positive attributes such as self-confidence, courage, sincerity, generosity and industriousness . On the other hand, beards are judged as less socially appeasing and more aggressive .”
So, to conclude, according to the studies, women generally favoured the close well-trimmed cricket-pitch look of a beard rather than wild, chest-tickling woodland beard styles where tiny birds might want to build their nests!
Finally, here’s a quote from Jo Usmar, (a columnist for Cosmopolitan, the popular women’s magazine) from an article called ‘To beard, or not to beard, that is the question (March 12th, 2012)’: “My boyfriend Ben has a stubbly beard and I love it. It makes him look rugged and capable, like he could carry an injured goat up a mountain while simultaneously playing the lute. Surely everyone fancies a bit of beard now and then…
There are, however, a few rules: if it’s long enough to catch food, it’s too long; it has to be well maintained and regularly trimmed at all times.”
Whichever beard styles you or your partner like the most, you can keep it looking its best by using Gentlemans Face Care Club beard oil and balm. You can take a look at our entire beard care range here – https://gentlemansfacecareclub.com/product-category/beards/