The Stewart Family Newsletter!: The Beard Saga

The Beard Saga: A Tribute to the Fallen

This is my husband Spencer. Peach complexion, dashing jawline, hazel wonderland eyes.

Except, for the past 6 months or more, Spencer has been very attached to growing a beard. As we all know, a man's beard is ultimately subject to the wishes of its master's wife. I was mostly okay with it the first few rounds, but after months of this:

It was time for it to go.

The problem is that Spencer loves his beard. He is very proud of it. It takes a real man to grow a beard. And I mean, everyone who is cool, has a beard. Let me introduce you to a few key figures in Spencer's life:

Our good friend Alex:

Spencer's OSU professors,

Christopher Reed:

and Philip Brown:

I mean, even Jonathan Spence (!), god of all gods, has a beard:

I knew the persuading would be hard, but just how hard, I knew not.

My methods of persuasion started primitively. Mostly comments in passing such as, "Hey, when are you going to shave?" and "You should shave." After weeks of this, Spencer started to get tired of my simple questions, and childishly responded with "Every time you ask me if I'm going to shave I'm not going to shave for another week." And so it began.

As I delved thicker into more serious methods of persuasion, the resistance only became stronger.

My first step was to try appealing to reason; logic or proof.

For example, I read Spencer an excerpt from Roald Dahl's "The Twits:"

and I showed him the pictures:

This was mildly effective until he thought I was making fun of him, and continued to read the description of Mrs. Twit, which we don't need to go into.

My second step was to appeal to emotion through presentation, manipulation, seduction, and bribery.

I tried subtly leaving all the shaving utensils on the bathroom counter for easy access:

When that failed, I tried making shaving FUN! by buying a special razor and shaving cream, and displaying them in a quaint gift basket.

Bribery and seduction were short lived and didn't produce substantial results. As soon as the object was consumed, it lost its effectiveness.

When I became desperate, I moved to the more controversial and not scientifically proven effective methods of coercion.

Mainly,

Threats: "If you don't shave, I'm not shaving either," (which he didn't seem to care about), "If you don't shave... I'm going to do something you really don't like..." (which wasn't specific enough), or "If you don't shave, I'm going to shave you in your sleep" (which I should have actually done).

Hypnosis & Brainwashing: jedi mind trick hand waves "you do want to shave," or talking to him about shaving while he is sleeping

Power/Force: "You HAVE to shave." "Shave RIGHT now."

Subliminal Advertising: "Captain America is so hot. I had a sex dream about him."

Torture: Lots of nipple twists

These were not so effective, but still fun.

I finally had to just get really mad and use the silent treatment for awhile, combined with the outburst of accusatory and truthful hurts, like "The only reason you want a beard is so that you can have complete control over something in your life!!!" which seemed to actually work, or at least deflate the stalemated situation.

Surprisingly, the most effective method to date has been "immortalizing the beard" through pictures. While hot weather and beard maintenance have played a significant role in the nuisance of having a beard, I believe that immortalizing the beard has been an effective strategy in allowing Spencer to "let go" without fully "letting go." Every time it becomes time to shave, Spencer asks me to snap a picture of his beard (the whole "before and after" idea, except by the time its gone I no longer care about getting the after picture).

good bye, beard!