Beard Liberation Front
28th March
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Would a beard have protected Chris Rock against Will Smith’s punch?
There is much news currently and the fact that Will Smith punched host Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars presentation is at best an also ran. Rock’s comment aimed at Smith’s wife, who was in the audience, might well have been seen as offensive. Rather it merited a punch is perhaps another matter.
It does however raise the question of whether if Rock had worn a beard- he sometimes has a moustache- he would have been better protected from punches any Oscar winners threw at him due to comments made at their expense.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Utah suggests this might be the case
The study argues ‘that hair is indeed capable of significantly reducing the force of impact from a blunt strike and absorbing energy, thereby reducing the incidence of failure. If the same is true for human facial hair, then having a full beard may help protect vulnerable regions of the facial skeleton from damaging strikes, such as the jaw. Presumably, full beards also reduce injury, laceration, and contusion, to the skin and muscle of the face’
The researchers did not test their theory by whacking men with full beards in the face, prudently for them. Rather they constructed a model using sheep wool to test their thesis. A link to the full results is below.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, while the study is interesting it does stereotype men with organic beards as masculine types not averse to the occasional punch-up. In reality not just biological but also cultural and social factors at a play. Men with organic beards are just as likely to be pacifists and pugilists. As for the Oscars we think there should be more beards all round, punches or not
Impact Protection Potential of Mammalian Hair: Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair
E A Beseris, S E Naleway, D R Carrier
Integrative Organismal Biology, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2020
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