Why did prominent politicians start shaving circa 1910 Onwards?
I was going to say women’s suffrage had a lot to do with it: The self-governing colony of South Australia granted both universal suffrage and allowed women to stand for the colonial parliament in 1895.[8] The Commonwealth of Australia provided this for women in Federal elections from 1902 (except Aboriginal women). The first European country to introduce women’s suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland. The administrative reforms following the 1905 uprising granted Finnish women the right both to vote (universal and equal suffrage) and to stand for election in 1906. The world’s first female members of parliament were also in Finland, when on 1907, 19 women took up their places in the Parliament of Finland as a result of the 1907 parliamentary elections. In the years before World War I, Norway (1913) and Denmark also gave women the vote, and it was extended throughout the remaining Australian states. Canada granted the right in 1918 (except in Quebec, where it was postponed until 1940),
I have heard that beards became unpopular because of various hygiene and Clean Living movements that became popular in the late Victorian era, and that beards became considered not very sanitary. Wikipedia (here) mentions something about doughboys in WW1 having to shave their beards to better fit their gas masks and because of lice.
Another reason beards in general fell out of favor was the Industrial Revolution, which prompted a mass migration from small guilds to large factories where many wage slaves labored under the eye of an overseer. Factories implemented strict hygienic protocols, which was partly due to the Clean Living act mentioned above, and partly because beards are a demarcation of fully-realized masculinity. Many sociologists suspect that ordering adult men to shave their beards was a way to emasculate and infantilize people who would have to answer to a handful of powerful superiors.
You could try Allan Peterkins History of Facial Hair. He ascribes it mostly to changing fashions. Facial hair has gone through several cycles. In the 1890’s he credits the popularity of the beard to Edward VII. Then the declining popularity due to a few things: Once an upper class affectation, beards were now becoming middle class. And so Yeats and Wilde, among others publicly decried them. He also mentions the appearance of the Gillette blade in 1895 and the hygienic movement.
Don’t forget that prior to Wilson, it wasn’t a straight line of presidents without facial hair. You might say that politicians and facial hear, at least in America, was actually non-conventional. Until Abraham Lincoln, American presidents did not have facial hair (he grew his famously after the suggestion of a little girl). One of the key turning points for beardage in America was the Civil War. When the war arrived, a lot of officers appeared to have simply decided it was too much of a hassle to shave every day and thus, allowed beards to grow. If you look at pre-war pictures of many of our famous generals, many of them at most had a mustache or were completely unshaven. For example, here’s a before and after picture of Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. It was the generation of politicians who then retaine
