History’s Most Famous Facial Hair

What better way to start off than with our 16th president, recently immortalized by Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis, who is no stranger to on-screen facial hair (see: Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood)? But we digress. Before Honest Abe came around, the White House was pretty devoid of beard and stache. Then, while running for office, a beard-less Lincoln was encouraged by a letter from an 11-year-old girl to “grow some whiskers,” since she thought his face was too thin. The Republican nominee took the young girl’s advice, won the election, and the rest was history. The great United States got a president who eventually abolished slavery—and the original “chinstrap.”

The modern mustache took a simpler approach at the turn of the 20th century, when the “toothbrush” style was popularized in America. Unlike the Imperial, the Walrus, the Kaiser, and several other extravagant staches before it, the toothbrush cut corners (literally) with a low-maintenance look popularized by society’s elite. The style was most regarded on Charlie Chaplin, who dug the toothbrush for its comical appearance—and also because it didn’t hide his many facial expressions. Alas, a guy named Adolf came along and totally changed the perception of the inch-long stache, and the style is rarely seen these days. (Thanks a lot, Hitler.)

When it comes to the world of animated facial hair, there are several characters throughout history that deserve mentioning. There’s the Dali-esque mustaches of your favorite video game plumbers, Mario and Luigi, the well-groomed crumb catcher sported by Ned Flanders, and the au naturel, all-white beard that hangs from Papa Smurf. No cartoon in history, however, can compete with the fire-red face fur donned by Yosemite Sam. It’s hard to say where the mustache ends and the beard begins—it literally looks like his hair is eating his face—but if you’ve ever been to Six Flags and haven’t simultaneously tugged on the Yosemite Sam mascot’s whiskers? Well, my friend, you haven’t lived.

The ‘70s may be the premier facial fuzz decade of all time, probably thanks to all the residual hair left over from the hippies of the ‘60s. That said, the style and grooming tightened up a bit during the disco era, and Hall-of-Fame point guard Walt “Clyde” Frazier was ahead of the curve. While the rest of the NBA mostly conformed to clean-cut looks, Clyde ushered in a new era of funky self-expression, from his outrageous clothing style to his gigantic muttonchops. Groomed to perfection, with a matching stache, Clyde is still styling and profiling to this day as a color commentator for the Knicks, in which he regularly wears outfits like this.

Hair of the ‘80s can best be described with one word: big. And for Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, frontmen of the rock band ZZ Top, their beards were no exception. (In one of the greatest examples of irony ever, the name of the band’s mostly clean-shaven drummer is... Frank Beard.) Granted, ZZ Top was making hit music since the early ‘70s, but it wasn’t until the music videos for “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man” that the band reached true commercial success. And what coincided with those videos? Why, the debut of Gibbons and Hill’s new chest-long beards, which they grew without each other’s knowledge during a prior hiatus.

In the world of professional wrestling, one signature hair choice can define your image and launch your career into stardom. For John Cena, it was the buzz cut. For the Rock, it was the sideburns. For Stone Cold, it was the goatee. Before those guys, though, there was one Terry Gene Bollea and his 24-inch pythons, better known as Hulk Hogan. Hogan’s mustache is your classic horseshoe design, grown to the corners of the mouth where it makes a b-line down the jaw. Hogan’s horseshoe was highlighted by bleach dye, and stood out over a 30-year wrestling career. When Hogan announced he was ditching the stache in 2012, the American Mustache Institute protested the decision, calling Hogan a “leading figure in the sexually dynamic mustached American community.” (Yeah, it gets even weirder the more times you read it.)

While he is still a facial hair legend in the making, the early consensus is that Ron Swanson (played by Nick Offerman on the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation) will define a decade that’s been longing for its mustached savior. Amidst a sea of over-the-top hipster beards, Swanson sports a clean-cut stache that has been known to store steak particles for weeks. When combined with his stern facial expressions, the Swanson mustache is said to resemble some members of the feline family, as this blog devotedly chronicles. What’s more: His cranky character even has an on-the-record philosophy about facial hair, thanks to the “Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness” he revealed during Season 3. (“Facial Hair - Full, thick and square. Nothing sculpted. If you have to sculpt it, that probably means you can't grow it.”)