Despite the mild blowback on beards I’ve noticed recently, I formed one.
Thus sayeth Clement of Alexandria:
How womanly it is for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, and to arrange his hair at the mirror, shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and smooth them! …For God wished women to be smooth and to rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane.
But He adorned man like the lions, with a beard, and endowed him as an attribute of manhood, with a hairy chest–a sign of strength and rule. 2.275
This, then, is the mark of the man, the beard. By this, he is seen to be a man. It is older than Eve. It is the token of the superior nature…It is therefore unholy to desecrate the symbol of manhood, hairiness. 2.276
It is not lawful to pluck out the beard, man’s natural and noble adornment. 2.277