A student in our lab is heading to Cambridge in a couple of weeks. I gave her the contact details of a friend and ex-colleague:
In case you need a friendly face in Cambridge (actually he’s a scary face,
but he’s a nice chap). He’s the hairy one on my left
with this photo:
Student replies, and I quote,
Haha, I actually think he isn’t scary, just very scientist-looking.
boggle
Some days I just give up. All our work fighting stereotypes, is it in vain?
And you’ve got what against beards exactly? At least I don’t wear sandals. Or crocs.
Yeah, and I’ve just grown one to fit in better with the stereotypes – so don’t you go trashing them!
If he had been wearing a labcoat I would have narrowed it down to ‘biochemist’.
I am happy embracing the stereotype! Not to say that I am about to grow a beard or wear old Fisher Scientific T-shirts, but there is a certain comfort in knowing that the community I belong to is distinct, with its own fashions (or lack thereof) and characteristics. There is something familiar and warming about it. I am ok with “scientist-looking”… even if I have no intent of adopting the look myself.
How about Scientist Chic? Could we see Kate Moss in labcoat and sandals with socks?
what, exactly, do people have against crocs ? All part of the Captain Birdseye beach bum eccentric stereotype I try to cultivate . Here in Cromer everyone looks like this.
Many of the medical professionals I know, particularly those who work in the OR or ICU, wear crocs – they’re easy to hose off, and they’re comfortable (so I’m told). I have the same objection to crocs that I do to Birkenstocks: they’re unattractive, especially on people with long feet (like myself).
I have a bearded biochemist father, and several bearded academician uncles, so I grew up thinking that was the normal baseline appearance of adult males.
As an aside from “the beard issue”, follows an interesting remark made to me a couple of years ago by one of my key clinical scientist advisers.
Very roughly speaking, his view is/was that until gray/grey hairs start appearing, in many circles of academia, one might not really be taken seriously by ones peers.
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Is this a legacy from the legal profession engrained into the mindset os the masses perhaps?:-
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Breaking news about this just out from BBC Scotland News
I am famously partial to beards, notably Mr V Mortensen, Sir W Raleigh, Mr Frank Wilson and Mr Dave Lull.
The one being discussed here reminds me a tad of Mr R Branson’s.
Are you a beardist? from the BBC plus there is a fun quiz at the end.
Beard wiki
My newly scrambled MOBARS Award (Monthly Outstanding Beard Award Recognition System) goes to…..
Dr Aubrey de Grey for his significant display at TED in 2006 and more recently at BioBarCamp 2008
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This weeks Bonus Ball.
Dead simple to embed TED talks at NN. Truly fab.
Graham – you may be able to embed TED talks but it’s not playing on my Mac alas…
Enjoyed the court report, though (and am a fan of Still Game)!
Buggeration, that embedded TED Talk worked earlier.
Here is the TED talk in question – splendid beard
In some bio labs, beards are not allowed for safety reasons. If you need to wear a face mask to work with particular microbes or viruses, it doesn’t work well if you have a beard. So I guess in those circles a beard says something about status: no more benchwork = beard?
I don’t know why I remember these details from safety lessons – it’s not like I can grow a beard!
Apparently, the fine folks at NICSO safety have two products on offer, depending on beard size.
Option a) for ‘wee beard’ and room for growth depending on the length of the experiment
and b) this chappy for the capasious variety (aka – long beard)
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models are not sized.
Man’s natural state.
Graham, those pictures are great. I love how the models look so awkward (especially the first guy) – probably how they would actually look if someone caught them wearing a beard-protector!
Wake up Grant, your Country Needs You.
I am shocked. Shocked I say.
Thanks Eva,
I had prepared some further comments about these images, but chose not to post ’em.
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All that I will say is that the “beard-protector’s” look vaugely familiar.
Palaeontologists often have beards. Especially the male ones. Palaeontologists, not beards. One critic of the first LOTR film noted the long hair and beards of most of the cast and called it the Osama bin Laden style of coiffure.
Our minister for sports and youth (roughly translated) promised she would attend the next cabinet meeting in pink crocs if the French athletes brought home forty medals from the Olympics.
She only wore them leaving the meeting “out of respect for the solemnity of the occasion”. But it was a popular enough little gesture that it made it into most news outlets.
I can only imagine what would have happened if she promised to grow a beard.
“I don’t care how comfortable you are: you look like an arse”.
They are comfy but not much good for the tops of volcanoes as my daughter discovered:
“until gray/grey hairs start appearing, in many circles of academia, one might not really be taken seriously by ones peers.”
I got my first grey hair at 19, does that count?
I used to wear croc-like shoes (before I’d ever heard of crocs) for kayaking. These days I prefer neoprene booties.
I got my first grey hair at 19, does that count?
Absolutely – well done !!
Even before mine started appearing, I went to a Barber Shop in the East End of Glasgow and quite amazingly, they managed this transformation within 25 minutes:-
a)
b)
mazing what they can do these days….
Couldn’t do anything about that awful t-shirt, though.
And no beard! When you were in Syriana, you wore one.
spits
I have been advised not to comment.
But people with dark hair go grey sooner, so that means that they’re considered smarter? Wait, did I just confirm the “blonde” stereotype? (I’m kind of reddish-light-brownish-blonde.)
Couldn’t do anything about that awful t-shirt, though.
I’ll have you know Grant that my coolest step-brother ships me one “awful” t-shirt every Christmas and I always look forward to the next one.
My t-shirts beat you silly shorts hands down.