The Most Attractive Type Of Facial Hair, According To Science

It's difficult to imagine a time where mutton chops and chinstrap beards were considered desirable traits, and yet these beard styles were a symbol of health, virility, and attractiveness back in the day. Today, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone wearing a pencil 'stache — not that anyone could pull it off quite like Clark Gable anyway. Instead, modern men rock clean-shaven faces, neatly-trimmed stubble, or full zaddy-esque beards. The opinions on facial hair attractiveness also vary depending on gender and personal preference. However, a general consensus has finally been reached thanks to a group of curious researchers, who found that heavy stubble was deemed the most attractive type of facial hair, according to a 2013 study published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior.

This 2013 study sheds light on one of the most heavily debated questions of our time, but the results are a bit more complicated than you would think. Researchers photographed men at each stage of facial hair growth: clean-shaven, lightly stubbled, heavily stubbled, and fully bearded. When they asked participants to judge the faces based on attractiveness, researchers found that women rated faces with heavy stubble as more attractive, while men rated both heavy stubble and full beards as the most attractive. As such, the women rated men with lightly stubbled, stubble-free, and full bearded faces as less attractive.

Heavy stubble is considered the most attractive beard style between both men and women. However, attraction is subjective and doesn't necessarily factor in other elements which affect an individual's desirability. For instance, many women tend to value physically masculine traits when judging attraction, which affects the way they perceive potential partners. Therefore, the 2013 study took this into account and created a separate category to assess the relationship between attractiveness and masculinity. According to the study, the participants associated fuller facial hair with masculinity. Simply put, when women were shown faces with heavy stubble and full beards, they rated them higher on the masculinity scale compared to those with clean-shaved faces or light stubble. Interestingly, this observation was amplified for the women who were in the fertile (ovulatory) phase of the menstrual cycle, while the ratings for attractiveness remained the same during the fertility phase.

Moreover, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology discovered a surprising connection between the way women perceive facial masculinity, facial hair, and attraction. Research indicated that men with extremely masculine or feminine facial features — such as strong jaw lines or smaller facial features — were considered least attractive when clean-shaven. In contrast, the same faces were found to be more attractive if they had stubble or a full beard, which created a dampening effect and masked the unattractive qualities of an overly masculine or feminine face shape. Therefore, men and women may perceive faces with full beards as more masculine, but masculinity is not necessarily synonymous with attractiveness. Only when the beard or stubble can obscure or neutralize the undesirable facial traits — overly masculine or feminine — is the face considered attractive.

Although studies have shown that personality traits play a much larger role in attraction than physical traits — for instance, compassion is considered the most attractive trait a man can have — your chosen beard style is a major factor in how others perceive you. Your beard can say a lot about your desirability as a partner, and as it turns out, growing a bit of scruff can go a long way to help you enter into a long-term relationship. Researchers from the 2016 study observed that beard growth affects attractiveness in a relationship context. Individuals with full beards and stubble were rated as more attractive than those with clean-shaven faces when judging long-term relationships. The authors of the study chalk it up to a signal of "formidability" among male candidates and the potential to provide benefits such as enhanced fertility and survival to females.

As such, it makes complete sense that beardedness is also associated with enhanced parenting abilities. The men and women from the 2013 study perceived the full-bearded men as having better parenting skills and overall health than men with light scruff, heavy scruff, and clean-shaven faces. Now, the study didn't look into the validity of these observations, so no one is out here saying that clean-shaven men make terrible parents or anything of that sort. These findings represent assessments of male socio-sexual attributes, not facts. And, ultimately, the research shows that both men and women think beards are hot.