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Monday, December 20, 2004
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VARIETIES OF BEARDEDNESS
AMONG SENIOR ACADEMICS Via The Cranky Professor, UD notes with interest the following article in The Telegraph: WOMEN IN ACADEMIA LOSE OUT BY A WHISKER By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 17/12/2004) A correlation between having a beard and being a professor has been uncovered by scientists, suggesting a reason for discrimination against women in academia. A study of 1,800 male academics has revealed professors are twice as likely as lecturers to have bristles. The survey, which appears today in The Pharmaceutical Journal, was done by doctoral students Sarah Carter and Kristina Åström who were inspired by an "impressively hairy" supervisor at the University of London. "Sixteen members of our 18-strong research group are female. Would we, and do we, face discrimination?" they asked. The answer appears to be yes. While 10.5 per cent of lecturers were bewhiskered, the figure rose to 13.6 per cent for senior lecturers, 16.7 per cent for readers and 21.4 per cent for professors. One theory is that being unshorn makes men more likely to be appointed to professorships, as facial hair is linked with high testosterone and aggression. First, let us dismiss with the contempt it deserves that little testosterone theory tacked on at the end of the piece. When you look at a bearded professor, you do not say 'Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair.' UD offers eight varieties of beardedness among senior academics (some categories blend into others), in alphabetical order: I. BUM. This professor believes himself to be, wishes to be, jimmies his life so that he is, more or less, poor. Despite a goodish salary and no wife or kids to support (too shy to date), the Bum lives like Jeremy Irons at the end of that horrible Louis Malle movie, Damage. Remember? Subsisting in a North African slum and with infinitely pathetic meticulousness reusing the same crinkly Baggie… II. CAVEMAN. Cavemen is a wild untrammeled force who growls and shakes his mane at his students and shouts SHIT and FUCK. Blind to the desperation behind his acting out, Caveman’s students adore the wooly wacky ways of this fraudster. III. DRUNKARD. The endpoint of academic despair (see UD post dated January 30, 2004 for a discussion of this) may be the bearded Drunkard, whose beard is one of many emblems of his inability to look after himself. There is indeed a testosterone angle to the Drunkard, whose core affliction usually involves self-hatred at being a sissy professor when he could have been something manly. IV. LEATHERMAN. Closeted for years, now that he’s senior he’s out with a vengeance. A slim man in jeans, he has a sculpted beard that follows the same jaw lines as a helmet strap. V. OGGSFORD -- as Meyer Wolfsheim calls it in The Great Gatsby. The Oggsford beardman went to a British university and introjected Bernard Berenson. A cultured, judgmental aesthete, Oggsford is buffed and studly. As studly as professors get. VI. ORTHO. An Orthodox Jew. VII. PIRATIC. Libertarianism run amok, Piratic is often seen being escorted out of his office by campus security because he won’t stop smoking his cigar in there. While lecturing on Wordsworthian daffodils, the Piratic bearded professor makes random references to the Derringer he keeps in his desk. VIII. RADICAL FRINGE. Abbie Hoffman sans suicide. |