Beard (companion)

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A beard, in slang usage, is a person accompanying another (usually of the opposite sex) for the purposes of misleading others present about actual or preferred relationships.

[edit] Concealing unfaithfulness with a beard

One well-established usage applies to camouflaging the relationship between two people by making it appear one of them is present in order for that person and the beard to be companions to each other.^{[citation needed]}

An example is a central premise of Woody Allen's 1984 film "Broadway Danny Rose", where the title's Danny Rose character is the beard, pretending to be Tina's date at an event where Danny's married musician client Lou Canova will be playing: she can see her lover Lou perform, and Lou can be perform better knowing Tina is there, without an unaccompanied Tina raising doubts about Lou's marital fidelity. The term "beard" is used four times (e.g. "I'm only the beard") when Tina's suitor's relatives assume Danny is Tina's previously mysterious lover.

[edit] Concealing sexual orientation with a beard

Another recognized usage applies to a person who serves to camouflage the sexual orientation of their companion, by being of the gender that conflicts with that orientation.^{[citation needed]}

A media example is the episode "The Beard" of the television series Seinfeld, in which Elaine Benes acts as the beard accompanying a male homosexual friend, to suggest that they have a heterosexual relationship.

Many of the reported lavender marriages of 1920s Hollywood, and the reportedly similar 1955-'58 marriage of Rock Hudson, could be cited as involving such beards (though the word in this sense is said to have arisen only in the mid-1960s.)^{[citation needed]} Taking seriously the claim of his wife, Phyllis Gates, that she was heterosexual (or assuming she may have had no real need to avoid being seen as lesbian), and in light of the danger that Hudson's homosexuality is accepted as having posed for his film career, it would be said that she was a beard for him, but not the reverse.

By the analogy between merkins and fake beards, a male acting as a beard for a lesbian is sometimes called a merkin.