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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Polly Hudson

Beards may be dirtier than toilets – but all men should grow one

Man with a beard sitting by a river
‘Helping prevent microbial buildup’ … phwoar! Photograph: Posed by model; Westend61/Getty Images

It’s a convenient truth of our time that if you Google for long enough, you will eventually find the answer you want. In other words, there’s a lot of anti-beard propaganda out there, and I’m not falling for any of it. I love beards. So I keep scrolling.

Past the recent Washington Post report that some toilets contain fewer germs than the average beard (that’s pretty much true of phone screens, and we happily rub them on our faces). Not even pausing on an investigation into whether it would be hygienic to scan canines and humans in the same MRI machine, which found most beards contained more microbes and bacteria than dog fur. La la la, I’m not listening.

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