Put flowers in your beard. Impress a kind of person while I look for my gun.
Hustlin’ Justin Denman sent me this article from CBC News about how flower beards are a thing. As is often the case with trend reporting, it’s not clear what kind of “thing” we’re talking about. Writer Lauren O’Neil wisely and/or cynically begins from a position of skepticism, toward not just flower arrangement but beards themselves:
Often associated with hipster culture (though you’d be hard-pressed to find a young beardo who’d admit that,) large beards have become so much of a trend in some cities that they’ve actually inspired counter-trends. Earlier this year, GQ declared the facial hairstyle “officially uncool” after the New York Times wrote about how “The Brooklyn Beard” was going mainstream in one of its oft-mocked trend pieces. “Now that the New York Times has officially declared beards to be a trend, that trend is, by necessity, over,” wrote Scott Christian.
Having dismissed the validity of big-media style pieces, O’Neil says that GQ was wrong, too, because “Instagram, Twitter, and many a city sidewalk” prove that beards with and without flowers are totally a thing. Welcome to the postmodern era of trend reporting.