Beards, bald-heads, presidents, and me

Yes, this is me. I wanted to find out how I would look without facial hair--it has been a number of years since I last did this. Not bad, eh!

One of the most admired presidents--Lincoln--had a beard. Teddy Roosevelt had a big fat mustache. But, think about this: we no more have presidents with facial hair. And, at the same time, we no longer have male presidential candidates who are bald. With female presidents, we will not have beards and baldies--well, it will be rather strange to have a bald and bearded female president. Heh heh!

The last president who had a shiny dome? "I Like Ike". Ike was also the last president to almost alays ever wear a hat while out in the public.

JFK, photographed often on beaches and on sea, eliminated hat-wearing, and also set the trend that baldies are ineligible for the Oval Office.

As Time put it, it was the simple sartorial gestures of John F. Kennedy that really shaped 20th century American style. The images are iconic now—a rolled-up sleeve, an untucked shirt, a shaggy head of hair—like something out of a J.Crew catalog or a Ralph Lauren advertisement. But in 1961, Kennedy's confident, carefree style was a radical departure from the copycat boxy gray suits and felt hats that had defined men's fashion for previous generations.
Among other things, Kennedy banished hats for men, even disposing of the top hat for his inauguration speech.

I like wearing a wide-rimmed summer hat. My favorite was a hat I had purchased when we visited the Amish countryside in Pennsylvania many years ago. I wore it a lot when we lived in the hot and dry Bakersfield. Until my daughter sat on it and crushed it one day :-(