Beards, to me, seem cool in the sense where you can cover and protect a good hunk of your face without even trying. They become less cool when they become a man's definitive personality trait (for example, any dating profile ever that self-describes as "bearded"...left swipe). I really don't want to get into the twee-ification of that time when flower beards went all fetch and tried to be a thing. Regardless, every now and then, a beard-grower will do an interesting thing with their facial hair—like this artist who shaved half his beard to fill the bald expanse with various objects.
Photographer Adriano Alarcon spent four months coaxing his beard hairs to grow in a fabulous and mighty way to prepare for a photo series he calls Fifty Fifty Selfie Barber Shop. The Sao Paolo man sure seems to have a sense of humor about his experiment and face as whole. Not entirely certain what the specific objects placed on his naked facial skin are intended to represent. But he absolutely goes HAM with this idea, selecting a wide variety of items, to create a series that bounces from adorable to icky in just the switch of a frame. Reminder, this is the canvas with which Alarcon started:
Here are some of the shots from FFSBS:
Birthing approximately one million King Cake babies from one's nose does, in fact, look super painful. Perhaps an ode to the distress of allergies? I can relate.
If faces were capable of growing actual, edible popcorn, you'd better believe I'd be currently in the middle of a persuasion campaign to get my partner to grow a popcorn beard like, yesterday.
Picnic season...? This is actually the opposite of incentive to picnic. I guess there's a chance Alarcon is anti-picnic but I don't like to think badly of people I don't know (usually).
Yeah. I do not like this one. At all.
Better, better. Less nightmares, at least. And for one more food-related photo:
Sprinkles! Ice cream sprinkles, I'd confidently guess. Although I wish he mixed in a few more rainbow ones...we can't always win, maybe.
Images: adrianoalarcon/Instagram
