Beards: the new hipster's history

Would he fare better in 2016 than he did in 1916?

Here’s the Enlightenment: “Only a few years before Newton’s [Principia Mathematica] appeared, King Louis XIV of France and his court abandoned their pencil-thin mustaches, the last remnants of the Renaissance beard movement. The turn to reason and the razor were not directly linked, nor were they mere coincidences. As the mastery of nature now seemed more necessary and possible, it was fitting that authoritative masculinity was being redefined as a matter of refinement and education.” What causal structure is being proposed by a word like “fitting”? Or is it not so much a causal structure as just, you know, a vibe? 

Other case studies, starting in Sumerian times, are more robust. The problem is they still mostly feel like rationalisations post hoc. In a mirror universe where, on the contrary, European men had grown bushy beards during the Enlightenment, Oldstone-Moore would no doubt highlight Locke over Newton: “As individual will and natural rights now seemed more necessary and possible,” he would say, “it was fitting that authoritative masculinity was being redefined as a matter of authenticity and self-realisation.”