(Note: This post is from Halloween 2009… check out this year’s bearded costume ideas here! Or check out the ideas from 2010!)

Let’s face it, bearded men, thinking up a great costume just isn’t as easy as it is for our non-bearded brethren.  Lots of hilarious celebrity ideas idea go out the window along with any current politician.  Masks are out… why hide that glorious beard you’ve worked so hard to grow and maintain?  As a result of my own personal frustrations, I’ve decided to create this list as a reference for future Halloweens.  In the brotherly spirit of the bearded community, I want to share it with all of you.

#1: Paul Bunyan

Items Needed:

• Work Boots
• Blue Jeans
• Buffalo Plaid Flannel Shirt
• Suspenders
• Wool ski cap
• Axe

This is a super easy one as most bearded guys have these items lying around anyway.  I know I do.  When I first thought of this idea, I was pretty excited until I looked in the mirror and realized I was already wearing the “costume” minus the suspenders, hat, and axe.
Note: Please don’t ask your wife to be Babe the Blue Ox.  Trust me on this one.

#2: Zeus/Socrates/Pythagoras

Items Needed:

• White Sheet
• Safety pins
• Sandals
• Cardboard lightning bolt if Zeus
• Cup of hemlock poison (fake!) if Socrates
• Cardboard right triangle if Pythagoras

Let’s hearken back to the glory days of beards… ancient Greece!  A sheet is not ideal toga material, but it will get the job done.  Just fold it so that it is only about 3 feet wide.  Then wrap the folded sheet around your waist 1.5 times, pin it together, and throw the rest over a shoulder.  Bring the material back down to the waist and pin it again.  Choose an accessory to make and get into character.  Smite people with your thunderbolt!  Pretend to poison thyself!  Teach people math!

#3: Gorton’s Fisherman

Items Needed:

• Yellow vinyl rain suit
• Sky blue turtleneck
• Hair gel
• Cornstarch

If you are okay giving Gorton’s some free advertising, this is another super easy costume.  Just wear whatever you want and wrap the scarf around your neck.  Put on the rain suit and you are good to go!  Now for the distinctive white beard.  If you have already attained a naturally white beard, you can ignore the following.  However, if you need a bit of help, just comb a small amount of hair gel into your beard and liberally dust it with cornstarch.  It would also be pretty great if you baked up a mess of fish sticks and gave them out to people instead of candy.

#4: Alan Garner – i.e. Zach Galifianakis’ character from The Hangover

Items Needed:

• This T-Shirt
• White Jeans
• Baby Bjorn
• Baby doll
• White baby ski cap
• Blue baby shirt

Finally, a hip pop-culture-reference costume for a bearded guy! Even if you haven’t seen The Hangover, if you can scrounge up all the above items, all you have to do if put them on and keep saying, “It would be so cool if I could breast-feed.”  People will love it!  No jokes, people are buying terrible fake beards to be this guy for Halloween.  Be glad you can one-up them with the real deal on your face.

#5: Fidel Castro

Items Needed:

• Green Army fatigues
• Castro Hat (of course!)
• Cigar

Lastly, another easy and recognizable costume for the bearded man.  To really pull this one off, you have to have a pretty big beard; because, honestly, love him or hate him, Fidel has always had a great one.  Beyond that, it’s just a matter of putting on the right clothes and carrying that ever-present cigar.  If you could somehow borrow a friend’s old rusty 1950’s Packard and drive it around blaring revolutionary rhetoric, that would be ideal.

There you have it, my bearded friends.  A good five year’s worth of costumes.  But there’s no reason to sit around to keep on brainstorming.  Help me expand the list even more by adding your own ideas in the comment section!

Happy Halloween, everybody!  As you can see, I like to get in the spirit of the season by having a good old-fashioned pumpkin carving.  I think my friend above fits right in here at The Beard Coach, don’t you?

Halloween, for the beard fan, is filled with things that make him or her light up with delight, quite like a Jack o’ Lantern if you will.  It is a time for people of all ages and sexes to don fake beards.  Nothing tickles me quite like seeing a bearded six-year-old.  I think one reason is that it reminds me so much of the year that I dressed up as a pirate for my trick-or-treating adventure.

I’m not sure where they got the idea, but Mom and Dad gave me the best fake beard ever that year.  Sure the homemade pirate costume would have been sweet as it was, complete with silver spray-painted cardboard hook and Mom’s clip-on earring.  But the greatest part was definitely the fake beard.  Have I hyped it up enough yet?  I probably can’t.  It was that awesome.

As my Halloween treat to you, here’s how you can give any non-bearded person an amazing fake beard.

Materials Needed:

Any thick, sticky, edible substance (i.e. honey, corn syrup, molasses, sorghum)

Ground coffee (unused!)

Step 1: Wash and dry the beard-wearer’s lower face.  This is especially important for the kids.  You don’t want that Kool-Aid moustache peeking through the one you’re creating.

Step 2: Use your hands to apply the sticky foodstuff to the subject’s face where you want the beard to be.  Feel free to get creative.  Just be sure to look at where real beards fall on men’s faces.  Don’t get too high up on the cheek or too low on the neck.

Step 3: Use your hands to pat dry coffee grounds onto the now-sticky areas of the subject’s face.  Be sure to get a nice even coating.  Don’t skimp!  I recommend doing this outside or over a sink so that the excess grounds can fall where they may.  If you’re good, you could even try to catch the excess in your coffee maker’s basket and brew up a pot!

Step 4: Just try not to smile at the insanely good fake beard you just made.

Helpful Tips:

• Don’t use your good coffee.  That’s for drinkin’! Get to the store and buy the cheap stuff.
• Don’t send your child to trick-or-treat in bear country.  This is probably good all-around advice anyway.
• Don’t be too obvious when smelling the bearded person’s face.  Because this beard smells amazing.

There you have it!  And you thought I only coached people on real beards.

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Alright all you mathematicians out there.  You’ve been thinking, “The Beard Coach has poetry and art, but where’s the math?”

Here’s the answer.

A Mathematical Beard Theory

And here is a photo of bearded mathematician Grigori Perelman.

In 2006 Perelman successfully proved the Poincaré Conjecture winning him the Fields Medal, the top honor a mathematician can receive.  Then in a move fittingly awesome for his beardedness he declined it.  Here is how he summed up his reasoning.

“[Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union] proposed to me three alternatives: accept and come; accept and don’t come, and we will send you the medal later; third, I don’t accept the prize. From the very beginning, I told him I have chosen the third one… [the prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed.”