Join our (beard) club! The rise of beard societies

As we spoke about in our last post about the hairy history of beards, the beard has been on the rise in the past ten years and the face fur is showing no sign of stopping. Bearded men have been uniting around the globe to create clubs and societies where competitions can be run, photos shared and issues discussed, and we’re shedding light on just a handful.

Beard clubs

There’s The Society of Bearded Gentlemen, which requires members to pass quite an intensive vetting process to access the site including answering questions like ‘How long have you been wearing facial hair?’ and ‘A Hollywoodian is a type of what?’. With over 5,500 global members including beard admirers, they emphasise their non-discriminatory policy to encompass all genders, sexualities, backgrounds and nationalities.

The British Beard Club was founded in 2008 and has almost 400 members with a great gallery to inspire and a ‘beard care’ section featuring some really useful tips. It also has a handy calendar so you can keep track of any meet-ups or competitions. The £10 annual subscription fee is worth it just for one of their swanky pin badges, but you can also feel good knowing that most of your cash goes towards their yearly donation to Prostate Cancer UK. How’s that for good karma?

Then there’s the local groups – Liverbeards are a Merseyside-based subgroup of The British Beard Club, who last year hosted The British Beard and Moustache Championships which featured in our blog (and whose Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TBBMC/ is great for keeping in the know with competitions) and enjoy monthly beer-fuelled gatherings. For those who are students of Brighton University, you can join Brighton Beard Society whose purpose is to bring bearded and non-bearded people together to socialise on holidays, nights out or via a little healthy competition.

What does a beard symbolise?

There’s something somewhat tribal about these hairy rendezvous, bringing men from all walks of life together through a common interest and encouraging a sense of belonging, with societies and clubs like those mentioned in this post providing the gateway. Here at The Brighton Beard Company, we’re all for uniting souls around the world for whatever reason, and we’ll be waiting with open balms (see what we did there?) for when you’re ready to join our bushy customers.

Are you a member of a beard club or know of any local ones to you? We’d love to hear about it – drop us an email at hello@brightonbeardcompany.co.uk.