Where Toxic Masculinity Goes to Die

There’s no elegant way to put this, but I’m in love with an online forum devoted to facial hair. Naturally, and like many other discussion boards, Beard Board is full of men—but the men here are kindhearted and supportive of one another. Cruelty is forbidden; generosity is encouraged. The site can feel like a haven, which is important, because while it’s nominally about beards—growing them, grooming them—in practice it offers a kind of group therapy.

I stumbled across Beard Board in June. I hadn’t let myself go more than a week or so without shaving in more than a decade, but now, at 30, I was self-employed and about to start graduate school. It was a time of transition, of Saturn return, of instability and possibility. I remember watching Always Be My Maybe on Netflix and thinking that I could probably grow a patchy beard like the one Keanu Reeves had. But my decision to stop shaving was ultimately mysterious to me. Before long, my casual stubble gave way to a wiry purgatory, and the strange drama unfolding on my face became an obsession. I began searching for answers in other men’s scruff.

Beard Board was founded in