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By Dean Norman

In the summer of 1957 my wife and I drove north in Minnesota to begin a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. We saw cars coming south with canoes on top. When these cars stopped at gas stations, the guys would strut toward the restroom displaying one or two weeks of hair on their faces. They were happy. They had just been on a canoe trip in the wilderness, and didn’t bother to shave.

I decided to do the same. I came back to my job at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City with two weeks of untrimmed hair on my face. My co-workers laughed. I was mellow from the canoe trip, and was happy to tell everyone how wonderful it was to be away from civilization for two weeks.

In the early afternoon my boss called me into his office. “The Personnel Director noticed your beard and asked me to remind you of the company policy," he said. "If you are hired with a mustache, you may keep it. But you can not grow a mustache after you are hired. And chin whiskers are never allowed. I told him I thought you had just come to work with a beard after a wilderness canoe trip, and you didn’t intend to keep your beard. Is that true?”

I said it was, and I came to work clean shaven the next day. I had no wish to grow an untrimmed beard, or to fuss with trimming a beard or mustache. It was less hassle to shave each morning.

Now it is fashionable to go to work, or appear on a TV talk show, with a hairy face. Not necessarily a proper beard. Just look like you are so cool that you didn’t bother to shave for a few days. If this trend continues, will companies tell men not to come to work clean shaven? Will women women rub hormone cream on their cheeks so they can grow hairy faces, and look just as cool as the guys?

— Dean Norman

Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards, The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine and The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.