The well-groomed Georgian

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New Generation Thinker Alun Withey on what made 18th-century men shave off centuries of manly growth. Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. You can hear audience questions from the event as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.

To be clean-shaven was the mark of a C18 gentleman, beard-wearing marked out the rough rustic. For the first time, men were beginning to shave themselves instead of visiting the barber, and a whole new market emerged to cater for rising demand in all sorts of shaving products - soaps, pastes and powders. But the way these were promoted suggests there was confusion over exactly what the ideal man should be. On the one hand, razor makers appealed to masculine characteristics like hardness, control and temper in their advertisements whilst perfumers and other manufacturers of shaving soaps, stressed softness, ease and luxury. So enter the world of Georgian personal grooming to discover the 18th century's inner man.

Alun Withey lectures in the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter and is a Wellcome Research Fellow and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has edited an essay collection on the history of facial hair (Palgrave), curated a photographic exhibition of Victorian beards in the Florence Nightingale Museum in London and has written for BBC History Magazine and History Today. He blogs at dralun.wordpress.com

Alun Withey on C16 medical history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022kyp1 Alun Withey visits Bamburgh Castle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036l4q0 Alun Withey's article about the C19th attitude towards beards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/31SKHd61RYxJBryrQ4NfmWJ/nine-reasons-victorians-thought-men-were-better-with-beards

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, thank you for downloading the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast.
0:41.2	In this episode, we'll be asking what it is to be a man. I'm Sophie Colombo, a new generation thinker.
0:48.3	That's a scheme run jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and by the BBC
0:52.4	to help share some of the new research
0:54.8	going on in our universities with a wider audience. So that's what we'll bring you after this
0:59.5	short message. Hello, I'm Jess Gillum. I play the saxophone and I really think you should
1:04.7	subscribe to my new podcast, This Classical Life. If you're like me and always listening to music,
1:09.8	this is a great new way of discovering sounds for your playlists.
1:12.6	It's when I want something really groovy and really funky.
1:17.6	Every week I'm joined by a special guest and we share the latest tracks we just can't stop playing.
1:22.6	I also have this playlist on my phone called 5am and it's full of classical music. Just head to BBC Sounds and subscribe to this classical life.
1:33.2	Welcome to New Generation Thinkers, To Be a Man, a series of the essay recorded for BBC Radio
1:40.3	3 before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas 2019. Alan Withy is a senior lecturer in
1:47.5	history at the University of Exeter, is a welcome trust research fellow, and there will have been
1:53.1	few in human history who know as much about man and his facial hair. Alan's edited a book on the
1:59.6	subject, curated a photographic exhibition of Victorian
2:02.9	beards, and he blogs about matter follicular at Dr. Allen. WordPress.com. Today he stands before us
2:11.2	to tell us of an identity crisis for the well-groomed Georgian. Alan Withy.
2:24.7	Thank you, Sophie.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.