Mustache Fashion Covaries with a Good Marriage Market for Women

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 25(4), Winter 2001 � 2001 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 261

MUSTACHE FASHION COVARIES WITH A GOODMARRIAGE MARKET FOR WOMEN

Nigel Barber

ABSTRACT: It was predicted that men would emphasize sexually-selected traits,including mustaches, beards, and sideburns, when they have difficulty obtainingspouses. Using annual data on British beard fashions extending from 1842–1971, itwas found that mustaches, and facial hair in general, are more frequent when thereis a good supply of single men of marriageable age. Facial hair fashions, particularlymustaches and beards, were reduced when illegitimacy ratios were high. Regres-sion analyses showed that the relationship between mustache fashion and the mar-riage market and illegitimacy, respectively, is independent of linear time trend. Re-sults suggest that facial hair is worn to enhance a man’s marriage prospects byincreasing physical attractiveness and perception of social status. Men shave theirmustaches, possibly to convey an impression of trustworthiness, when the marriagemarket is weak and women might fear sexual exploitation and desertion.

KEY WORDS: mustache; fashion; facial hair; illegitimacy ratio; marital opportunity.

Fashion trends have often been viewed as intrinsically arbitrary (Lowe& Lowe, 1990), and this perspective may have inhibited research into itssocial correlates. Silverstein, Perdue, Peterson, Vogel, and Fantini (1986)showed, however, that one fashion trend, the slender standard for women’sbodily attractiveness, as depicted in women’s magazines, is strongly relatedto increased involvement of women in careers. Subsequent research foundthat the slender standard is correlated with a weak marriage market forwomen, i.e., scarcity of marriageable men (Barber, 1998 a, b). Thus, whenmarital opportunities for American women improved in the 1950’s, thestandard of attractiveness reverted to being more curvaceous, suggestingthat women were enhancing their sexual attractiveness to men. The re-search reported in this paper investigated whether men might emphasizesexually-selected traits, such as facial hair when marriage is valued andcompetition over brides is intense.

I am grateful to Trudy Callaghan, Bill Cook, F. Scott Christopher, Randy Thornhill, NancyHenley, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Address correspondence to Nigel Barber, 70 Kent Street, Portland, ME 04102; Nbar-ber�IME.net.

262

JOURNAL OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

Although there is some controversy about whether men’s facial hair isattractive to women, most of the research on this issue has produced posi-tive findings. Pellegrini (1973) performed an experiment in social percep-tion in which women and men evaluated stimulus pictures of college menthat varied systematically in level of facial hair (full beard, goatee and mus-tache, mustache only, clean-shaven). The more hair the faces had, themore favorably they were perceived. Bearded faces were seen as beingmore physically attractive, industrious, creative, masculine, dominant, andmature by both men and women, qualities that would enhance perceivedmate value. Evolutionary psychologists have provided a clear rationale forwomen being attracted by such traits as predictive of reproductive matu-rity, biological quality, and capacity to invest in children and there is goodevidence that choice of a husband is affected by these criteria (see Barber,1995). Thus, women are attracted by indicators of high social status andpersonal traits like industriousness that predict social mobility.

In short, there is a positive stereotype, or halo effect, associated withbeardedness. Bearded men are seen as having the biological and socialqualities that would enhance their value as husbands. Kenny and Fletcher(1973) found support for the stereotype but also found that bearded menwere perceived as dirtier possibly because not shaving may go along withcarelessness in respect to personal hygiene, and as lacking in self-control.Bearded men are also seen as more potent and more active suggestingvirility as well as physical attractiveness (discussed above, Roll & Verinis,1971). The finding of a more favorable impression for bearded men wassupported by Pancer and Meindl (1978).

Such results have been replicated more recently, indicating that theenhanced physical attractiveness of men with beards is not peculiar toAmericans in the 1970’s. Hatfield and Sprecher (1986) found that the rat-ings of physical attractiveness increased systematically with the amount offacial hair in Identi-kit pictures. Addison (1989) found that bearded menwere evaluated as more masculine, more dominant, and stronger by bothmen and women. Reed and Blunk (1990) analyzed the evaluations of pic-tures of job applicants by 188 managers who made hiring decisions andwho ranged in age from 19–70 yr (Mdn 31 yr). The managers evaluatedbearded faces as significantly more socially and physically attractive, morecompetent, more composed, and as having better personalities. Age andsex of the managers had no effect except that women perceived men hav-ing facial hair as more competent than men did. Agreement by males andfemales in such matters of social perception is generally quite strong (Bar-ber, 1995). Hellstroem and Tekle (1994) found that wearing a beard con-

263

NIGEL BARBER

tributed to impressions of unconventionality and goodness among Swedes.Bearded faces were seen as more good-looking, masculine, and congenial.

Four studies failed to replicate the physical attractiveness of bearded-ness. Muscarella and Cunningham (1996) found that when age was con-trolled, bearded faces were not significantly different from others in attrac-tiveness. Cunningham, Barbee, and Pike (1990) found that facial hair didnot contribute to the physical attractiveness of schematic line-drawing facesand found a marginal tendency for mustaches to be negatively related tofacial attractiveness. Wogalter and Hosie (1991) found that bearded digitizedfaces were less attractive than clean-shaven ones but the methodologicaladequacy of the study can be questioned on several grounds. The digitizedfaces were all rated as highly unattractive, averaging two points below themiddle of a six-point scale. This may have been because they were seen asmuch older than the undergraduate subjects. Since the bearded faces werejudged to be 6 yr older than the clean-shaven ones (33 vs. 27 yr) thediscrepant findings were likely a function of perceived age, although this isnot clear because age was not statistically controlled. (Note that the ten-dency for facial hair to increase perceptions of age can have complex effectson desirability as a mate by increasing apparent social status while reducingyouthful vigor). When American college women were asked if they likedmen with beards, the majority denied that they did (Feinman & Gill, 1977).The validity of such self-report data can be questioned, particularly whenthey are in conflict with more sophisticated experimental studies that arearguably less vulnerable to social desirability biases. In summary, there isabundant evidence that bearded men are more physically attractive and areperceived as having desirable qualities in a husband and little convincingevidence to the contrary (Barber, 1995).

This study tested the hypothesis that a marriage market favorable towomen would be associated with beard fashions in men. When men arecompeting intensely for wives, growing a beard should give them an ad-vantage by enhancing physical attractiveness, and perception of matevalue, just as women emphasize the sexually selected trait of bodily cur-vaceousness during periods when they compete intensely for husbands(Barber, 1998 a, b; 1999 a, b). Specifically, it was thus predicted that facialhair fashions would be more common when the marriage market favorswomen, i.e., there are many single men of marriageable age relative towomen. In addition, since women who do not have good marriage pros-pects are more likely to reproduce outside marriage (Barber, 2000, a, b), itwas predicted that facial hair fashions would be inversely related to theillegitimacy ratio.

264


Method

Data Sources

Data on facial hair fashions were obtained from Robinson’s (1976)study which produced annual tabulations of the percentage of men de-picted in the Illustrated London News who wore mustaches, sideburns, andbeards for the years 1842–1971. He also tabulated the annual percentageof clean-shaven faces that had neither beards, mustaches, nor sideburns.This number was subtracted from 100 to yield a general index of the preva-lence of fashions of facial hair (e.g., if 10% of the faces depicted had nobeards, mustaches, or sideburns, 90% had some facial hair). These datawere correlated with British historical demographic statistics.

Demographic variables were obtained from British Historical Statistics(Mitchell, 1988) and the reader is referred to this source for detailed discus-sion of the problems in ascertaining historical population numbers. Theseproblems are considerably lessened in the case of British population datafor years after 1821 when the census was based on a national headcountinstead of being extrapolated from returns of a few localities. Statisticianshave estimated the error of undercounted persons at approximately 1%.Although British Historical Statistics can be considered a secondary source,it actually includes data on marital status that have not been publishedelsewhere.

Marriage market variables for England and Wales (Mitchell, 1988,Population and Vital Statistics section) included the illegitimacy ratio orratio of illegitimate births to total births (Table 10), expressed as a percent-age. A measure of marital opportunity for women was devised by calculat-ing the ratio of the proportion of single men 20–24 years old to singlewomen 15–19 years old since women married men who averaged approx-imately 3 years older than they were (Guttentag, and Secord, 1983; Mitch-ell, 1988, Table 5). (For the historical period of the study, some women didmarry between ages 15–19 years, and they were thus in the marriage mar-ket although the modal age of marriage was later, 20–29 years, comparedto 25–29 years for men). While approximate, this measure was as sensitiveas could be devised using the historical data. Data were available only fordecennial (census) years and marital opportunity values for intermediateyears (i.e. 5-year intervals) were obtained by averaging the data for decen-nial years. The divorce rate was not used in the analyses because it wasalmost perfectly correlated with calendar year. It would also have beentheoretically interesting to examine the relationship between facial hairfashions and female enrollment in third-level education (see Barber, 1999)

265

NIGEL BARBER

but this information was not available for most of the period of this study(Mitchell, 1988).

Statistical Design

Data for facial hair fashions were taken for 1842 (the first year of Rob-inson’s study) and for every fifth year between 1846 and 1971. This laggeddesign was intended to minimize the problem of serial autocorrelation in-herent in annual data (Stack, 1988). A similar approach has been appliedto functional analysis of fashion in the past, e.g., study of trends in bodilyattractiveness for women was performed at 4-year intervals (Silverstein,Perdue, Peterson, Vogel, and Fantini, 1986). The effectiveness of this pro-cedure in eliminating serial dependency in the data was verified throughanalysis of sign changes in the first differences (i.e., the second datum sub-tracted from the first, the third subtracted from the second, and so on).

Data were analyzed by first producing Pearson correlation matrices.This was followed by graphical analysis. Multiple regressions focused onmustache fashions because these were unique in following the same timecourse as the marriage market variables, judging from the graphical anal-ysis. Since linear trends often confound analysis of time series data, yearwas used as a control variable in the regressions.

Results

The correlations between percentage of faces with mustaches, beards, side-burns, and some facial hair and marriage market indices are presented inTable 1 along with means and SDs of the variables. It can be seen thatmustaches, beards, and facial hair in general were positively related tomarital opportunity for young women and negatively related to the ille-gitimacy ratio. Sideburns were not correlated with either measure of themarriage market. Mustache fashion was not significantly related to any ofthe other facial hair variables. The correlations with the marriage marketindices were larger for mustaches than for the other measures of facial hair.Marital opportunity was negatively correlated with the illegitimacy ratio aswould be expected if both reflected the marriage market.

Graphical analysis revealed that mustache fashion traced out U-shaped functions that coincided fairly closely with each of the marriagemarket measures but this was not the case for any of the other measures offacial hair. Figure 1 plots the z-scores for mustache fashion and maritalopportunity for women as a function of the years of the study (1841–1971).

266


TABLE 1

Correlations Between Facial Hair Fashions and the Marriage Market withMeans and SD’s

Variable YearFacialhair Beards Sideburns

Illegitimacyratio

Maritalopportunity

Facial Hair �.80* —Beards �.46* .80* —Sideburns �.42* .38* .38* —Illegitimacy ratio �.02 �.38* �.45* �.00 —Marital oppor. �.42* .56* .40* .02 �.71* —Mustaches .38* .03 �.03 �.35 �.62* .64*

Means (� SD) 1906 60.04 16.63 20.67 5.42 81.04(38.94) (24.85) (14.19) (42.43) (1.21) (4.32)

*P � .05.

Both functions are characterized by a rising phase, a plateau early in the20th century and a subsequent decline. Figure 2 plots the inverted z-scoresfor mustache fashion with the illegitimacy ratio. Both variables trace out asimilar inverted U-function over the 130-year period of the study. As ille-gitimacy rates declined, at the left of the graph, mustache fashion in-creased. As illegitimacy rates rose, at the right of the graph, mustache fash-ion declined.

Regression analysis concentrated on mustaches. From Table 2, it canbe seen that each of the marriage market variables remained strongly pre-dictive of mustache fashion with linear time trend controlled. This meansthat the curvilinear relationships (Figures 1, 2) were highly significant. Itcan be seen that the model containing year and the illegitimacy ratio ex-plained approximately half of the variance in mustaches and that themodel with marital opportunity for women and year explained approx-imately three-fourths of the variance in mustaches. Mustache fashion had asignificant linear increase over the years of the study.

Discussion

As predicted, the proportion of men of the Illustrated London News whowore facial hair increased along with the favorableness of the marriage

267

NIGEL BARBER

Figure 1. Mustache fashions from the Illustrated London News (i.e., percentage ofillustrations with mustaches) are plotted with marital opportunity index for women(see text).

market for women (Table 1). Yet this positive finding masked clear differ-ences in results for different measures of facial hair with mustache fashionemerging as the strongest predictor. Beard fashion also declined signifi-cantly with increases in illegitimacy ratios and rose with marital oppor-tunities for women. Sideburns were unrelated to either measure of the mar-riage market. This was unexpected in view of Pellegrini’s (1973) findingthat the perceived physical attractiveness of a man increases as a functionof the amount (i.e., area) of facial hair he has. This suggests a qualitativedifference between perception of sideburns and other types of facial hair,assuming, as the author does, that some aspects of interpersonal perceptionare shaped through evolution by natural selection and thus have limitedflexibility over historical periods such as that separating Robinson’s studyand Pellegrini’s. Another problem of interpretation arises from the technicalissue of whether people respond to still pictures in the same way as they

268


Figure 2. Mustache fashions (inverted scale) from the Illustrated London News areplotted with illegitimacy ratios. The graph shows that as illegitimacy ratios decline,mustache fashion rises and vice versa.

do to live people. One empirical response to this issue has been to showthat there is a high correlation between responses to still photographs andresponses to video tapes of the same stimulus persons indicating that agreat deal of information can be derived from still pictures (Jackson, 1992).

The regressions indicated that a substantial fraction of the variance inmustache fashions could be explained by variables related to the marriagemarket. These relationships cannot be dismissed as due to the mere pas-sage of time. The associations between mustache fashions and two indicesof the marriage market are independent of linear time trends, thus rulingout time as a confound. Moreover, the persistence of these relationshipsover a long period of time (130 years) makes it improbable that they couldbe accidental. The strength and consistency of the curvilinear relationshipsfound in this study would be difficult to explain without acknowledging afunctional relationship between mustache fashions and the marriage mar-

269

NIGEL BARBER

TABLE 2

Regression Analysis of the Relationship Between Mustache Fashion andthe Marriage Market (Standardized Regression Coefficients in

Parentheses)

Predictor B SE t

A. Marital OpportunityMarital opportunity 2.9 (.80) .38 7.63**Year .24 (.59) .04 5.71**Constant �668.07 86.19 —B. Illegitimacy RatioIllegitimacy ratio �7.90 (.61) 1.84 4.29**Year .15 (.37) .06 2.63*Constant �219.88 109.53 —

*p � .05.**p � .001.Note: Model A explained 74% of the variance, F 1,24 � 33.79, p � .001. Model B

explained 52% of the variance, F 1,24 � 12.93, p � .001.

ket. Thus, even though many scholars see fashion trends as intrinsicallyarbitrary, the data indicate that much of the variance in facial hair fashion,particularly mustache fashion, can be explained in terms of the marriagemarket.

The findings are consistent with the view that when men competeintensely to be married (i.e., when marital opportunities for women aregood), they increase their physical attractiveness to women and create theimpression of having desirable mate qualities, including high social status,by amplifying the male sexually selected trait of facial hair. Conversely,during periods when many women have trouble finding a suitable mar-riage partner and reproduce outside wedlock, facial hair fashions decline.

Some readers, may prefer to interpret the results differently, in terms ofcultural stereotypes related to facial hair according to which men aremoved to grow mustaches, beards, or sideburns when the hypothetical cul-tural stereotype is strong. The main problem with taking this view is that itprovides no explanation for why the cultural stereotype waxes or wanes.Referring to such intervening variables lacks parsimony and does not ap-pear to provide an interesting research agenda by generating testable pre-dictions about relationships between fashions and the marriage market (seeBarber, 1999 a).

Positive findings were produced for mustaches and beards, but not for

270


sideburns. One possible explanation is that facial hair around the mouth(i.e. beards and mustaches) interferes with transparency in interpersonalrelationships by concealing the expression of emotions. Psychologists whostudy deception have found that when people lie, they often betray them-selves through involuntary facial expressions, particularly of the many mus-cles around the mouth (Ekman, 1997).

Whether people can detect deception using facial expressions is con-troversial but this may be surprisingly unimportant. Shaving may, in itself,help to create an impression of trust that women may find desirable inromantic partners when the marriage market is weak and they have goodreason to mistrust the intentions of boyfriends. Thus clean-shaven men areseen as more reliable in occupational roles as salesmen and college pro-fessors (Hellstroem & Tekle, 1994; Klapprott, 1976) and this could general-ize to the sphere of sexual behavior.

This study provides the first empirical evidence for a functional rela-tionship between male fashions of facial hair (or any male fashion) and themarriage market. Robinson (1976) found that beard fashion was correlatedwith women wearing long dresses and Barber (1999) showed that there isan interesting pattern of correlations between dress fashions and the mar-riage market such that a favorable marriage market for women goes alongwith long skirts and a coy reproductive strategy.

The present study suggests many opportunities for further research intothe social implications of facial hair. For example, it would be interestingto investigate whether men with beards or mustaches are perceived asmore likely to deceive, or be sexually unfaithful to their partners, as thedeception hypothesis outlined above would predict. Thornhill and Gang-estad (1994) found that highly symmetrical men have more sexual partners,presumably because they are more sexually attractive to women. This isalso true of men who are physically attractive by virtue of height (Shepperdand Strathman, 1989). The same prediction can thus be made for men withfacial hair. If the deception hypothesis is correct, women who feel securein their marriages should like bearded men more than women who feelinsecure do. Facial hair fashions should also be more popular in countrieshaving stable marriage, high sex ratios, and low illegitimacy ratios.

References

Addison, W. E. (1989). Beardedness as a factor in perceived masculinity. Perceptual and Mo-tor Skills, 68, 921–922.

Barber, N. (1995). The evolutionary psychology of physical attractiveness: Sexual selectionand human morphology. Ethology and Sociobiology, 16. 395–424.

271

NIGEL BARBER

Barber, N. (1998 a). The slender ideal and eating disorders: An interdisciplinary “telescope”model. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 23, 295–307.

Barber, N. (1998 b). Secular changes in standards of bodily attractiveness in women: Tests of areproductive model. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 23, 449–454 (1998).

Barber, N. (1999 a) Women’s dress fashions as a function of reproductive strategy. Sex Roles,40, 459–471.

Barber, N. (1999 b). Reproductive and occupational stereotypes of bodily curvaceousness andweight. The Journal of Social Psychology, 139, 247–249.

Barber, N. (2000 a). Why parents matter: Parental investment and child outcomes. Westport,CT: Bergin and Garvey.

Barber, N. (2000 b). On the relationship between country sex ratios and teen pregnancy: AReplication. Cross-Cultural Research, 34, 26–37.

Cunningham, M. R., Barbee, A. P., & Pike, C. L. (1990). What do women want? Facialmetricassessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 61–72.

Ekman, P. (1997). Telling lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. NewYork: Norton.

Feinman, S., & Gill, G. W. (1977). Female’s responses to male beardedness. Perceptual andMotor Skills, 58, 533–534.

Guttentag, M., & Secord, P. F. (1983). Too many women: The sex ratio question. Beverly Hills,CA: Sage.

Hatfield, E., & Sprecher, S. (1986). Mirror, mirror: The importance of looks in everyday life.Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Hellstroem, A., & Tekle, J. (1994). Person perception through facial photographs: Effects ofglasses, hair, and beard, on judgments of occupation and personal qualities. EuropeanJournal of social Psychology, 24, 693–705.

Jackson, L. A. (1992). Physical appearance and gender. Albany, NY: State University of NewYork Press.

Kenny, C. T., & Fletcher, D. (1973). Effects of beardedness on person perception. Perceptualand Motor Skills, 37, 413–414

Klapprott, J. (1976). Barba facit magistrum: an investigation into the effect of a bearded univer-sity teacher on his students. Psychologie Schweizerische Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie undihre Andwendungen, 35, 16–27.

Lowe, E. D., & Lowe, J. W. D. (1990). Velocity of the fashion process in women’s formalevening dress, 1789–1980. The Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 9, 50–58.

Mitchell, B. R. (1988). British historical statistics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Muscarella, F., & Cunningham, M. R. (1996). The evolutionary significance and social percep-tion of male pattern baldness and facial hair. Ethology ans Sociobiology, 17, 99–117.

Pancer, S. M., & Meindl, J. R. (1978). Length of hair and beardedness as determinants ofpersonality impressions. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 46, 1328–1330.

Pellegrini, R. J. (1973). Impressions of male personality as a function of beardedness. Psychol-ogy, 10, 29–33.

Reed, J. A., & Blunk, E. M. (1990). The influence of facial hair on impression formation. SocialBehavior and Personality, 18, 169–176.

Robinson, D. E. (1976). Fashions in shaving and trimming of the beard: The men ofthe Illustrated London News, 1842–1972. American Journal of Sociology, 81, 1133–1141.

Roll, S., & Verinis, J. S. (1971). Stereotypes of scalp and facial hair as measured by the seman-tic differential. Psychological Reports, 28, 975–980.

Shepperd, J. A., & Strathman, A. J. (1989). Attractiveness and height: the role of stature indating preference, frequency of dating, and perceptions of attractiveness. Personality andSocial Psychology Bulletin, 15, 617–627.

Silverstein, B., Perdue, L., Peterson, B., Vogel, L., and Fantini, D. A. (1986). Possible causes of

272


the thin standard of bodily attractiveness for women. International Journal of Eating Dis-orders, 5, 907–916.

Stack, S. (1988). The effect of domestic/religious individualism on suicide. In D. L. Thomas(Ed.), The religion and family connection: Social science perspectives pp. 175–204.Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.

Thornhill, R., & Gangestad, S. W. (1994). Human fluctuating asymmetry and sexual behavior.Psychological Science, 5, 297–302.

Wogalter, M. S., & Hosie, J. A. (1991). Effects of cranial and facial hair on perceptions of ageand person. The Journal of Social Psychology, 131, 589–591.

Mustache Fashion Covaries with a Good Marriage Market for Women

Documents

Transcript of Mustache Fashion Covaries with a Good Marriage Market for Women