This Nairobi News column takes aim at the growing obsession with facial hair and the social status attached to it. The writer frames the trend as “beardism,” a tongue-in-cheek complaint from men whose chins do not grow the kind of full beards now celebrated online and in everyday conversation.
The piece argues that beards have become a new shorthand for masculinity, even when the rest of a man’s life does not match the image. In the writer’s view, men with thick, well-shaped facial hair are now treated as more desirable, more confident and more complete than those with sparse growth or none at all.
That frustration is presented as personal as well as cultural. The columnist says his own beard stops at about three centimetres and never fills out on the sides, leaving him with only a goatee. He compares the result to Tyrion Lannister, using the character to underline the feeling of being left out of the beard craze.
The article also points to the pressure created by social media. Men, it says, now post photos and captions celebrating beard growth even when there is very little to show. The writer mocks the habit of treating a few strands of hair as a major achievement and suggests that some people are exaggerating what they actually have.
Women are not spared from the criticism. The column says some ladies now praise men mainly because they have “a cool beard,” while qualities such as intelligence and kindness are treated as less fashionable. The writer contrasts that with older compliments about a man’s character and says priorities have shifted in the wrong direction.
The piece closes with a comic account of a blind date in which the woman immediately notices the writer’s lack of a full beard. He says he lied and claimed he had only trimmed it so it could grow evenly, then promised that the next time they met it would be as long as a prophet’s beard in the Old Testament. The joke lands on the same theme: in a culture that rewards facial hair, even the beardless are forced to improvise.
In the end, the column treats beard culture as both harmless fun and a real social pressure point. Its complaint is exaggerated for effect, but the underlying message is clear: in modern dating and male image politics, the beard has become a status symbol.
