The last U.S. president with facial hair was William Howard Taft.

 History

Original photo by Pictorial Press Ltd/ Alamy Stock Photo

On Inauguration Day in 1913, mustachioed President William Howard Taft passed the presidential baton to clean-shaven Woodrow Wilson. What Taft couldn’t have known at the time was that his departure began a long streak of clean-shaven faces occupying the Oval Office. 

In fact, out of the 45 people who have served as president in U.S. history so far, only 13 have had any facial hair whatsoever. Although John Quincy Adams (the sixth president), Martin Van Buren (the eighth), and Zachary Taylor (the 12th) sported impressive mutton chops, the first serious presidential facial fuzz belonged to Abraham Lincoln — thanks to an 11-year-old girl whose 1860 letter convinced him to grow out his whiskers. After Lincoln, eight of the next 10 presidents sported some sort of facial hair.

The mid-to-late 19th century saw an explosion of beard-wearing in both Europe and America. Whether it was scientists such as Charles Darwin or poets like Walt Whitman, many influential men sported impressive beards, mustaches, or newly popular sideburns. The reasons for this sudden popularity are as varied as the styles of facial hair themselves: Scholars have argued that it might have been a reaction to first-wave feminism, or simply reflected the rise of romantic (or naturalistic) thought. In the early 20th century, facial hair suffered some serious PR issues as medical experts began to see it as unhygienic, and the introduction of the disposable razor in 1901 encouraged its demise. Although facial hair’s cultural fortunes have ebbed and flowed in the ensuing century, a fuzzy face has yet to return to the Oval Office.


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