Can You Identify the President Based on Their Facial Hair?

Would you vote for a presidential candidate with facial hair? It seems that some modern politicians worry that people might not: No president-elect has sported facial hair since William Howard Taft left office in 1913.

For a time, face fuzz was all the rage. From Abraham Lincoln on, all but two presidents sported whiskers. See if you can match the commander-in-chief to their soup catcher.

Not all presidents stepped into the public eye with fuzz. Abraham Lincoln was famously clean-shaven until a letter from an 11-year-old girl from Westfield, New York, prompted him to reconsider.

“I have got [four] brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you,” Grace Bedell wrote. “You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president.” By the time of his inauguration, Lincoln had a chin strap.

Why did close shaves take over? It’s possible American tastes shifted in the 20th century, with beards perceived as more indicative of countercultural thinking or worthy of suspicion. It also didn’t help that Thomas Dewey, who ran in 1944 and 1948, sported a reedy little mustache and lost both times—one erroneous newspaper headline notwithstanding.

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