Talk:Beard (companion)
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This article was the subject of a VfD nomination at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Beard (female companion). The consensus was keep. -- Karada 12:06, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] change
beard may have started this way, but is certainly now used by anyone, queers, breeders, kids going home for holidays...
How about changing "great many" to "some" - I think you're unlikely to find a citation describing the number of people who did this? Nwynder 16:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Origin
Is there a reference for the origin of the term, or is this the author's assumption? I always thought it came from the idea of a fake beard as a disguise. 24.128.69.169 16:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- The term "beard" is not unique to the gay community at all -- at least as far back as the 50's and 60's, it was used in reference to situations where a married man who was having an affair would go out in public with his lover, and bring along a male friend -- the "beard" -- who would pose as the woman's date. This was a common practice for prominent men and celebrities -- it was often used in connection with some of John F. Kennedy's social outings in his years as a Senator. (I would expand the article with all of this, but really don't have the time right now to look up any citations or references...) StanislavJ 23:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
- SJ is surely dead on with this: the scene where Woody Allen's character says "I'm only the beard", and the later scene in the warehouse for the "Macy's Day Parade" where he, Farrow's character, and the gangster all use the term in quick succession with no signs of incomprehension, are set in the 70s before gay slang was being borrowed into the mainstream; the director who put all the female actors in The Purple Rose of Cairo into 1930s underwear (hidden by their visible costumes) is unlikely to have repeatedly misportrayed the slang of a time he had himself experienced (when he was 40ish).
--Jerzy•t 07:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
- SJ is surely dead on with this: the scene where Woody Allen's character says "I'm only the beard", and the later scene in the warehouse for the "Macy's Day Parade" where he, Farrow's character, and the gangster all use the term in quick succession with no signs of incomprehension, are set in the 70s before gay slang was being borrowed into the mainstream; the director who put all the female actors in The Purple Rose of Cairo into 1930s underwear (hidden by their visible costumes) is unlikely to have repeatedly misportrayed the slang of a time he had himself experienced (when he was 40ish).
[edit] Omissions in rewrite
I refactored and reworded parts of what i found, but removed these:
- ... is derived from the notion that a man with a woman on his arm looks more masculine, like a man with a beard.
- Unsourced, and conflicts with the obvious theory that
- -- the heterosexual use came first,
- -- the original etymology was that having a beard with your date and putting on a fake beard are both means of concealment, and
- -- the "masculinity" theory is just folk etymology.
- In the early years of the gay rights movement, some homophile organizations required members to bring beards with them to meetings, for protection in case the police raided the meeting.[citation needed]
- Unsourced,
- vague (Required, not advised, and if so why? Protection against what, against an identifiable booking photo, bcz you didn't have a fake beard that the police would let you put on during booking?) and
- even when sourced, would violate SYNTH until a source is found to support its relevance: this is of no interest, unless some connection is made between actual fake beards at meetings and the quite different role of beards in our sense. A hypothetical fake beard is more similar to this sense than an actual fake beard, by the same degree that real and hypothetical ones differ from each other.
- Closeted gay men and lesbians may also take part in this kind of relationship to their mutual advantage. In the past many gay men and lesbians married in order to fit in with heterosexual society; this practice continues today, but less frequently in many countries (particularly in the developed world) where the society has become more accepting of "out" gay men and lesbians.
- Rambling and loosely connected; probably there should be a lk to the closet in the accompanying article, but the paragraph above is more pertinent to [[the closet] than to "beard", and should be added there, if it won't duplicate what's already there.
- This term should not be confused with fag hag.
- Nor should it be confused with Boston marriage or diesel dyke. We don't need to document what it's different from. Those trying to clear up such confusion in their own minds should also read fag hag, and deduce that they shouldn't be confused by the differences between the two articles. (Including a ref in the accompanying article is unnecessary, seldom useful, clutter, and may cause confusion in readers who remember 6 months later having seen "fag hag" in the article, but can't remember that it it was said to be different, not similar.
