Stephen Strasburg

Stephen James Strasburg (born July 20, 1988) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball. He has a handsome golden-red beard and an incredibly effective repertoire of pitches. Strasburg was selected by Washington with the first pick in the 2009 Major League Baseball draft. He played in the 2012 MLB All-Star Game, led the National League in strikeouts in 2014, and has an impressive average fastball speed of 95.3 miles per hour. In the 2019 postseason, Strasburg recorded five wins, tying the record for most victories in a single postseason. He just won the 2019 World Series with the Nationals and he was named the World Series Most Valuable Player.

Changing The Facial Paradigm: Taking Male Youth Past Shaving

by Bill Alley, Media Director, Beardsley and Company

To any guy reading this article, take yourself back to when you found your first wispy whiskers growing. Age when it happened not the point here; what probably comes to mind is the awe—or panic—that the early signs of manhood were making a grand entrance.  Personally the first whiskers were making a presence in the latter part of 8th and 9th grade, and I was admittedly panicked.

My mind was developing a beard sense in my early teens but the fact I was surrounded by razors from dad, granddad and a long Coast Guard history, getting rid of the evidence of emerging whiskers meant secret rendezvous with tweezers. Yes, I plucked for a good year, regretting it but not wanting to cave toward a shaving habit. The whiskers were growing well in the upper lip and I could not wait to sport a moustache; yet the thought of having one by age 14 didn’t register a sense of achieving; it was quite the opposite.

Schools were all to eager to teach about hygiene in gym classes in the 1970s. It didn’t matter that we still had a maturing hippie movement. Part of me wanted the look of my neighbor Bennett—great curls, thick full beard, etc.—and the denier in me felt somehow ashamed of bearing that image thanks to family lineage. By my latter freshman year (1973) the plucking stopped, and the whiskers on the lip were thickening enough to enhance them with a product called Pinaud Moustache Wax. Despite the lessons on proper shaving, I maintained that ‘stache —and other male teens did likewise with their whiskers. Thankfully the old Bristol High School was facial hair tolerant, and I’ve got five years of Yearbooks to attest to it.

Today shaving appears to be an epidemic on high school campuses (as well as some colleges). It is clear Gillette has the market on education (or should I say, ‘conditioning’). This article is my clarion call to get the beard world on the level playing field at schools everywhere.

“Manshaming”—a relatively new term to identify male maturity backlash—is not a new phenomenon. Nearly every male child is exposed, if not accustomed, to being told by educators, sports leagues, activity groups, etc. that shaving is acceptable, fashionable and suggested if not mandated. As much as my effort to break the power of the razor over jobs, club memberships and other civic arenas has added to the fifteen-plus years of a glorious Beard Revolution, very little if anything has been done to introduce and encourage the growing, nurturing and maintenance of whiskers where youth are most of the day: in class, in gym or sports, and in social and developmental organizations.

Young men have resources of peers utilizing the Internet with movements like Jeff's Beard Board 19 & Under Board or beard positive youth crafts like The Youth Collective's Wolly Willy Christmas Beard Project. Highly recommended personally is this comprehensive article from the website Men’s Care entitled 42 Mustahces and Beard Styles For Teenagers. These three examples are great conversation starters for male youth in forming natural, accepting maturity as a male from his DNA code. These are also great materials to take to school boards and classrooms, religious and civic groups and activity clubs which can deepen the importance of the natural male in full origin.

The Movember Primer II:
No-Shave November and the Things That Get to Grow

by Bill Alley, Media Director, Beardsley and Company

The From a moustache, a beard eventually emerges. So is the case with the twenty plus years of the Movember phenomenon as No-Shave November has taken its stand-alongside place as a viable fundraiser and awareness campaign in regard to deadly diseases men fight. Here is where the Beard has better traction and where men get to a more wholesome start at facial hair cultivating and maintenance. Women as well end up saving money on razors and hair removal products as both sexes ‘get hairy’ and fill their money jars then donate what has been saved toward mens cancers—and cancer in others—by funding prevention awareness, colorectal cancers (claimed to be the #2 cancer condition) and the ongoing heroic work of Danny and Marlo Thomas’ Saint Jude’s Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Dur-a-Flex No-Shave November get to shave something after all...balloons...and the one who executes his moves that cleans up the shave cream with the razor is heralded as ‘winner’ of the contest. Beardsley products are awarded, and add to the competitiveness.

The site has an explanation for those wishing to participate who may be in a whisker-restrictive profession to get growing. It’s the time when you will see typically shorn law enforcement openly involved as five-o-clock shadows turn into a great starter beard, as will be the case for officers of the Ludlow, Massachusetts Police Department who sanction the banning of razors for the month to fundraise for Home Base. This event funds the charitable work of the Boston Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital’s relentless fight to end cancer.

Jason Cormier, Customer Service Representative of Dur-a-Flex Atlanta has been a key strategist in awareness and beard advocacy over the past six years at the company. He’s no stranger to Beardsley as well: each year Beardsley provides products as prizes for goals reached during November moustache and beard campaign fundraisers. He’s been very influential, obtaining the OK of the management and company CEO Bob Smith in the donating and growing of their whiskers. Jason says it has literally changed the face of Dur-a-Flex: permanent beards, goatees and moustaches can be found throughout the corporate culture. You can hear all about Jason’s corporate culture adventures and the company’s enthusiasm in its charity toward fighting disease and other good works on this month’s Radio Beardsley.