Definitely Not in Recession: Facial Hair

Beards have become the slim silver lining for men laid off amid the recession. Everyone from out-of-work hedge-funders to the Foo Fighters seems to be hirsute, the Wall Street Journal reports. With proper trimming, facial hair can even be carried to job interviews, but most are indulging in the short-lived unruliness before, they hope, returning to corporate America’s rigid grooming requirements.

“They joke with me about it—‘I feel like a real man,’” a Manhattan stylist says of new clients. Adds one laid-off New Yorker: “Everyone who’s lost their job may be changing it up, but I think we’ll all be very happy to go back to a more regular life.” (More financial crisis stories.)