Advertisement

Beard Fail: Hipster Transplant Trend Arrives Just When Women Have Had Enough

Give facial fuzz the heave ho and reacquaint yourselves with your razors boys.

Some people will do anything for fashion.

Like enlisting a surgeon to thicken up a less-than-bushy beard in order to keep up with the facial fuzz trend that's swept Hipsterdom over the last couple of years.

According to What Clinic, nearly three quarters - 72 per cent - of surgeons have reported an increase in enquiries for beard transplants in the past year.

Wowzer!

And most of these requests have come from patients wanting to keep up with the recent craze that's swept Shoreditch, Hackney and beyond.

Unfortunately for anyone going under the knife, it seems that the rise in beard transplants has come at just the wrong moment.

A new study suggests that we might have reached something called 'peak beard.'

In other words, thanks to an evolutionary quirk that encourages us to favour something that is in short supply, we've now got to the point where there are so many beards everywhere that women are starting to crave a clean-shaven face.

Just last year we were all discussing how a shaggy face was the height of manliness - subconsciously we assumed it indicated that a man would be protective or that he would father strong children.

But, this new study from the University of NSW seems to show that beards are only attractive when there aren't very many of them.

Professor Rob Brooks, an evolutionary biologist, conducted an experiment which involved showing people a series of faces, with varying degrees of beardedness, and finding out what they preferred.

[Full-Bush Bikini Wax Goes Viral]

[Veet's Don't Risk Dudeness Campaign Sparks Body Hair Outrage]

And the results proved that beards were much more attractive when they popped up among a group of clean-shaven faces.

You hear that Tom Hardy?

Time to show your beard the door.