Into the Wardrobe

As you will all know, the clean shaven look arises from Roman styles. I was brought up by my Greek Cypriot mother to think that secondary masculine attributes, such as the beard, were to be worn and not removed.

This web page is roughly what I was taught:
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/clergy_hair.aspx

Although I have tried shaving off my beard as an adult I looked too much like Mr Potato Head without it and had to shave 2 times a day. It seems that as I get older I look more and more Greek, including the beard. Learning to live with it.

As for hygiene, I shampoo it along with the rest of my hair every day. In any case food is not likely to get stuck in it as I chew with my mouth closed. When I have worn it long I find that girls often want to plait it. So no one seems repulsed. Little kids love stroking it as if it is a kitten clinging in a most unlikely way to my face.

However in the main, I tend to forget it's there, even when as big as my avatar wears it (Postodave will bear witness to the avatar's accuracy). From my viewpoint I can't see it as I am a young bloke looking out from these eyes. Except when I see it in mirrors when I jump and say "who's that old Greek guy following me?"

What's the Orthodox "line"? We men are to be ikons of Christ. That is helped by copying his style.

A reminder from the OP (I didn't intend to become "it", but that choice was out of my hands) - that the title on beards is misleading to the intent of the OP.
If you refer back to the OP you'll see that the thrust is broader - it is about modern views in general and their opposition to historical Christianity.

I'm right with you bluegoat.
Back in the seventies there was a lot of talk about equality - as in equality of pay for people of different sexes doing the same job - today we talk about equality and diversity. We no longer say, certainly here in the UK, that justice demands that all are treated alike but rather that justice demands the recognition of legitimate diversity. Personally I'd like to see William Blakes slogan - One law for the lion and ox is oppression - written outside every public building. Christians can certainly take advantage of this focus, for example during a recent diversity event we had a local pastor come into the College where I work to talk about the Christian view of abortion.

As bluegoat is implying we need to make a distinction between political pluralism - different views should be tolerated by the state - and ontological pluralism - different views even though contradictory are all true. To put it another way and rather simplistically we can chose between modernism which says we must all seek truth but may differ and postmodernism which says there is no truth to seek. What I think we are unlikely to do is return to a historically earlier period where people in a given culture all tended to have basically the same worldview. We need to seek civility in diversity.

Incidentally - and this is controversial and I personally have no easy answers - Rus has suggested that we need to recognise the differences between sexes but opposes gender realignment on the grounds that God cannot have made a mistake. The argument seems odd because the logic would imply that a person born with a sight defect cannot have it corrected because to do so would imply that God has made a mistake. The whole basis for anyone seeking gender realignment is an assumption that men and women are different not only physically but psychologically - that a person can feel male or female. So this is really supporting the idea of the kind of gender differences Rus wants us to recognise. It gets really complicated when you get a person who develops characteristics of both sexes. Should there be an opperation to push them definitely one way or the other or should we leave them as hermaphrodites on the grounds that God must have intended this. I don't know.

I grew up with pluralism, and on the whole it was salutary. my education did not prevent me from questioning pluralism, nor absolutism - questioning both, for me, was necessary. and pluralism expects to turn out a percent of absolutists, people who take one of the roads available.
for a critique of modernism that does not fall into neo-authoritarianism, conservatism, or the sort of remedies worse than the problem, read Yannaras, perhaps Person and Eros. He has no truck with the external moralism or the tough-love, strong-father, siege mentality common today. Fully and deeply Orthodox, he explains a way of freedom and authenticity in love, that can examine the faults of modernism and of conservative reaction.

re: "our" society - problem is, it's "their" society, too. Should 'they' be forced to live under laws that contradict their beliefs? or should they refrain from making law to suit their views? the "family" has become an idol, partly in the process of defending it against phantom enemies; no, gay marriage does not threaten straight marriage. I see screwtape in the licence to anger, uncharity, malice, and rejection that the current crop of traditional moralists allow themselves. The idea that precious things are under attack [false, because these things are indestructible], and that a culture [that never existed] is under dire threat, make it seem like any tactic against the supposed enemy is justified - the stakes so illusorily high, the urgency so delusively great.
this can play out in as apparently benign an arena as beards and clothes. most people want to be normal: dress in normal gendered clothes, marry the opposite sex, have a kid or two, believe what their parents do. that has not changed, and will not change. What is really up for grabs is the view of, or treatment of, the few who don't follow the given path; who want to dress out of gender, marry the same sex, have no kids [or a great many], or generally find themselves not fitting, and not willing to fit. I, normal in most regards, feel completely safe in allowing such people to find whatever happiness they can, anticipating that they are no greater sinners than many a straight stiff.Nothing bad will happen if we all fail to disapprove.

Rus, you think women ought to wear long skirts? pants are modest enough, and the skirts/pants divide is really no later than about 1400 a.d, - before that, we all wore gowns or very long shirts. for most of history, male and female silhouettes were about the same.

FWIW, I agree that transgender is a delusion - no one is the wrong gender relative to his body - and doctors are criminal in allowing such persons to be cut up or stuffed with hormones in pursuit of their delusive goals. But about 1 in every 10000 or so is born with some intergender structures and some do not know, as adults, that they were carved into one or the other shape as infants.