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When Boys Wore Dresses, and Other Fascinating Traditions and Conventions From History

Khalid Elhassan May 16, 2024 29 min

Tradition - A young King Louis XIV, in male clothes after he was breeched, and his young brother, the Duc d Orleans, in a dress before he was breeched — A young King Louis XIV, in male clothes after he was breeched, and his young brother, the Duc d Orleans, in a dress before he was breeched. Pinterest

Shifts in Medical and Cultural Traditions About Beards

Hipsters brought beards back into fashion in the twenty first century. Pinterest

After generations of being out of fashion in the West, beards have become stylish lately, thanks in no small part to hipsters. It is not the first time that beards fell out of fashion, then made a comeback. In archaic and early classical Greece, beards were stylish, but they went out of fashion in the Hellenistic era. Early Roman Republic leaders rocked beards, but within a few generations, Romans adopted the clean-shaven look. That endured for centuries, until Emperor Hadrian made facial hair fashionable once again.

In the Middle Ages, beards fell in and out of fashion. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical opinions deemed facial hair to be bodily waste. To shave one’s beard was to rid the body of a potentially harmful substance. In the eighteenth century’s Enlightenment, men went about clean shaven. The ideal enlightened gentleman’s face was smooth, youthful, with a clear countenance that suggested an equally clear and open mind. Then came the nineteenth century when, beards roared back into style in a big way. As seen below, the renewed popularity was helped by a change in medical opinions, that now came to see facial hair as good for men’s health.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.