Students and faculty were involved in the facial hair festivities, lasting from 3 p.m. to around 11 p.m. All proceeds from the event went to the Central Ohio Men Against Prostate Cancer, a nonprofit organization.
The annual event featured beard-based contests, games, discussion panels, artwork and photography. Vendors from the tri-state area adorned the aisles of the Grand Battelle Ballroom, offering a diverse range of items. Facial hair friendly items such as mustache wax, anti-itch cream for beards and beard coloring liquid were sampled and sold. Many no-beard-required organizations were also represented, such as Alexander’s Pipe Emporium and Press Coffee House, located in Dayton.
Wright State Professor Christopher Oldstone-Moore, Ph.D., spoke in some of the discussion panels, and Wright State student Brandon Tussing competed in the contests.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Tussing said. “This is the largest competition I’ve ever been to.”
Tussing is a member of the Gem City Gentlemen of the Gilded Beard, which is a club of facial hair enthusiasts in the Dayton area that are a part of the larger organization, Beard Team Ohio, as well as the first Ohio chapter of Beard Team USA.
“For Beard Team Ohio this is the culmination of a year of very intense effort,” Nate Stevens, a founder of the Gem City Gentlemen and active member of Beard Team Ohio, said. “This is one of the biggest and most extravagant and most well-attended facial hair events in the country.”
The evening’s contests included a variety of categories including best mustache, best partial beard, best groomed beard and best full beard. Those categories were split between “styled” and “natural.” Fake beards from women and children were also judged earlier in the evening.
Though laughter and applause blasted throughout the hall during the evening, Stevens said the core of the event was about more than just celebrating beards, but fighting the judgment and stereotypes that come with them.
“We just want to show people that beards [are] a personal choice,” Stevens said. “We’re as normal and productive as everybody else, and we’re just a bunch of fun loving, happy guys that want to do good things.”
