Wholesome

A New Study Found That Women Are More Attracted To Men Who Have Beards

Can you imagine there was a time when dudes were expected to be smooth-shaven? It’s 2020, folks, and times are changing. Gone are the days of bare-faced boy bands and baby-faced hunks. Because according to a new study, women are more attracted to men with beards.

Remember when Justin Timberlake decided to do a hipster rebrand a few years ago? He threw on a manly lumberjack jacket and started playing an acoustic guitar? That could only be pulled off...with a beard. 

In fact, science backs beards up. The Royal Society Open Science, a scientific journal, published research conducted at the University of Queensland and the University of Stirling—and found some interesting results.

In terms of hetero attraction, women like men with beards way, way more than men without. But the way they found this bit of info out is sort of, well, weird. 

919 mostly-straight women responded to the men they were most attracted to, and it was always the men with beards and traditionally ‘masculine’ features, using these images:

via University of Queensland/University of Stirling

The study also found that women who “expressed higher levels of disgust toward parasites and other pathogens were more likely to judge a man’s beard as unattractive,” according to CNN.

And women who were cool with ticks and lice liked beards. Huh. The idea is that humans evolved to have less hair because it would mean fewer parasites—and no woman likes a man covered in parasites. Definitely food for thought.

via University of Queensland/University of Stirling

Twitter definitely had some thoughts, ranging from, “Is this real journalism?” to men tooting their own horns about their beards.

Of course, not everyone was on the beard train—for understandable reasons:

But mostly, people were rightfully confused about the study’s beard-bug correlation:

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