Peak Beard
Homeland Security Lessons from the Fickle World of Fashion
With cultural phenomena such as the World Beard and Moustache Championships, hipsters and beard clubs and consumer goods such as mustache bandages, beard phone covers and, yes, mustache pacifiers it’s been hard to miss the mustache and beard trend of the past few years.
A not-made-up study explored what appears to be the beginning of the end of trendy hirsutism — Peak Beard. The study’s main finding was: the more men who wear beards, the less attractive the beards are. Similarly, when most men were clean shaven, the attractiveness of a clean shaven face decreased. The key to attractiveness of a bearded or clean shaven visage was linked to the frequency of that style — the more common the style, the less attractive. The style becomes a victim of its own success.
So what does this have to do with homeland security?
“Homeland Security” is a relatively new concept. It came into widespread use after the terrorist attacks on September 11. It garned a huge amount of attention and money. A Cabinet-level Department, a merger of 22 agencies, was created to provide it. It spawned new or repurposed goods and services. It inspired TV shows. It fostered a new area of academic studies. It prompted a huge redistribution of wealth, in the form of grants, from the federal government to state, local and tribal entities. In short, to the extent that something governmental can be cool and trendy, it was.
And this is where Peak Beard has many things to teach the homeland security enterprise.
Beards are popular when they are somewhat exclusive. When they become common, they lose their appeal. As they lose their appeal, they lose their social support and become passé. As they become passé people wonder why they thought something so mundane appealed to them in the first place. Now scarification or subdermal implants — those are cool. And so the cycle continues.
Being a trendy new thing, “homeland security” as a concept faces the same challenges as any fashion trend — maintaining its credibility and appeal in the face of mass adoption. As “homeland security” becomes a common concept, it loses some of its allure. It becomes workaday and a little less bright and shiny than it was before — the iPhone 5c in the wake of the iPhone 6 Plus.
All of this is the normal order of trends. But when the trend involves the safety and well being of our nation and its citizens, it is important to pause and examine the implications of becoming passé.
If “homeland security” disappeared from our lexicon, would our nation be any less safe? The only way to know for sure would be to let the idea die out and wait to see what happens. But “homeland security” may have become too big to fail — there is too much invested in terms not only of money, but time and effort and belief for the idea not to succeed.
So while beards may (hopefully?) become less popular soon, leading to fewer appearances in the population, homeland security seems to be here to stay, for the foreseeable future.
