Cool Fundamentals

When those people quick to identify trends pick them up because they're basically non-conformist and adapt to what is seen as a new presentation or style, they're expressing their individuality. They're so profoundly non-conformist that they cannot conceive of themselves as individuals without external contrivances. They convince themselves of their uniqueness, separate and apart from the common herd, grasping coolness.

It's been a number of years since the cool and the hip of the male persuasion have been sporting facial stubble. Obviously thinking themselves pretty hip. Even young men who thought it fashionable to grow beards just to level the playing field between themselves and fundamentalist young Muslim men, readily sawed off all that facial hair and happily left a rubbable stubble.

Now, years later, fashionistas are suddenly identifying the trend. Eligible young celebrities of the Hollywood landscape have been themselves looped into the trend, and suddenly it's been noticed. Now you're conforming to a prevalent statement of hirsute manhood. All those non-conformists will have to drop the stubble as though it's now a burning half-bush identifying them as having something in common with those losers just picking it up.

Women have bought into the trend; who would want to be seen dating a man so behind the times that he's clean-shaven, after all? And young marrieds, not willing to be left out of the latest cool trend - even though it's no longer the latest and certainly no longer cool - are also opting in. A new British study tells us so. That women are now identifying male cool with facial stubble.

"The results were very clear cut" according to Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University in Britain. "The face that had the light stubble was thought to be much more attractive, much sexier. It was preferred for a short-term partner, it was preferred for a long-term partner." Doesn't that grate on the cerebrum, an evolutionary psychologist having nothing better to do with his research time...

So that's it; women looking for a prospective partner need look no further than the casual marks of manhood, the careful grooming of days-old stubble. What a sweet conceit. No need to discern intelligence, values, interests in common, even whether life can be sweet in the short term - never mind the long term - with someone who sports a stubble but hasn't a sense of humour and thinks women are silly enough to be won over by externals.

Oops, guess he's right, along with all those other young men trusting to trends to enrapture potential partners - and stubble it is. The prevailing zeitgeist. They deserve one another, those trifling, palpably immature, regrettably insecure men and women incapable of reaching beyond the pedestrian facade of fashion. Shallow does it every time.