Significance of Facial Hair

Facial hair is a common physical marker that is associated with cisgendered males but is also easily accessible to females for use in costume, disguise, or to embody their own manhood. As Halberstam describes, Catherine Opie’s and Del Grace’s portraits, drag kings, and trans males all often make use of natural and theatrical or realistic false facial hair to present gender-ambiguity, dramatic masculinity, or transmanhood.