Is It Too Late To Jump On Goatee Trend?

The goatee, I have discovered, owes a little too much to the goat.

This realization has cooled me on the entire goatee concept. Here’s how the Oxford English Dictionary defines goatee: a beard trimmed in the form of a tuft hanging from the chin, resembling that of a he-goat.

Resembling that of a he-goat - now there’s the fashion statement I have always dreamed of making. That ranks right up there with “resembling a marsupial” or “resembling a muskrat” in the pantheon of things I want to resemble.

I admit I have been toying with the idea of a goatee. I wanted to look avant-garde and non-conformist, just like about 7 million other American men. Here in the 1990s, non-conformism is all the rage.

When I told my wife and children about this goatee idea, I don’t think they were entirely supportive. I couldn’t get a true reading on their feelings because they wouldn’t stop making humorous gagging noises.

But I was willing to buck that kind of peer pressure. Millions of men are wearing goatees at this very moment in defiance of their close relatives’ gagging noises.

The goatee boasts a fine and long tradition in America. The goatee originated in the American South and West, perhaps reaching its full flower during the Civil War when many officers, including Gen. George Pickett, marched into battle with goatees a-wavin’ in the wind. The goatee was revived briefly in the 1950s by about seven beatniks, and then again in the 1990s by about 7 million beatniks.

Still, I can’t shake that he-goat image. I suppose I always knew, subconsciously, that the goatee was named after a certain barnyard animal. But now, whenever I see a guy with a goatee, I can’t help but hear a faint, yet unmistakable, bleating sound.

Which is not fair at all, because what most of us are referring to as a goatee these days is not a classic goatee at all. It is more of a Van Dyke.

A goatee, as you may remember, is a mere “tuft hanging from the chin.” For the classic goatee, merely cast your memory back to the immortal Maynard G. Krebs on “Dobie Gillis.” Do you remember a small marsupial wrapped around the bottom of his chin? That was a true goatee.

The Van Dyke, however, is shaped like a V and comes to a sharp point. It usually, but not always, has a mustache with it, suitable for twirling.

It is named for the most famous Van Dyke of all: Jerry. No, actually, it was named for the Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyke (1599-1641), which is a clue right there that the Van Dyke goes back much further than the goatee.

Van Dyke painted portraits of King Charles I of England and plenty of other guys with these V-shaped beards, which is how the beard got the name. So if you see a guy at a coffee bar who appears to be whiling away the morning, sipping a hazelnut latte, ordering the galleons into action against the Armada, then you’re probably looking at a Van Dyke.

But a lot of the beards you see today are not classic Van Dykes either. They are a kind of full-mouth frame, in which the cheeks are clean shaven, but the mustache and beard wrap seamlessly around the mouth and chin. It’s like a furry nest with the mouth smack in the middle. I don’t know exactly what the facial-hair authorities call this, although I think “The Marsupial” is as good a name as any.

Yet I do know that once guys my age (40s) start growing these things, or even contemplating them, the style has probably played itself out. I don’t want to be like one of those 40-year-old actuaries in 1969 who started wearing love beads and Nehru jackets.

So I guess I’ll just emulate the great Anthony Van Dyke himself. He painted lots of guys with Van Dykes, but according to his self-portrait, he was clean-shaven. I don’t know for certain, but I think he might have been bothered by that faint bleating noise, too.

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