Fun Fact Friday - Frisky Facial Hair

Hello, dear reader. I have missed you. I cannot help but feel partially responsible for my long absence from the wonderful world of the interblag, probably because I am, in fact, responsible. Sometimes you just have to graduate from college. And then spend a week lying around your room watching what some might consider an irresponsible amount of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit while you should really be doing other things like, I don't know, unpacking from school or looking for a real job so you don't spend the rest of your life living in your parents house and working at a water park where people poop in the pools. But enough about you, dear reader! It's fucking Fun Fact Friday!

Fun fact: Cleopatra sometimes put on a fake beard to perform her duties as queen. Maybe.

"With curves like these, who needs scruff?" - Cleopatra

With all my facts, I try to find some extra information in order to weed out the scurrilous rumors that sometimes masquerade as trivia. This fact is no different, dear reader. I don't know how I could live with myself if, after leaving you to fend for your own fun facts for two weeks, I returned only to feed you false information.

There seems to be a great division on whether or not Cleopatra ever wore a false beard. It is widely acknowledged that Hatshepsut (the fifth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, if that means anything to anyone) did often wear fake beards.

Hatshepsut rocking her beard like it's 1463 B.C.E.

But Cleopatra? It's less clear. I've found sources that say Cleopatra still whipped out her beard because lots of women wore false facial hair to appear more powerful. Some believe that by the time Cleopatra ruled people were more okay with their leader having tits and a lack of chin hair.

And while I am perturbed that I cannot find an absolute answer to whether or not Cleopatra wore a fake beard, I am more perturbed there are no speculations on style. Was it a long chin beard like Hatshepsut's? Or was Cleopatra a pioneer of the soul patch much like James K. Polk was an early supporter of the mullet? Or, and we can only hope that this is the case, did Cleopatra invent the monkey tail?

People's sexiest man alive 2013.

The answers to these burning questions may be lost to history by now, but at least we still know what Cleo's o-face looks like:

She must've been thinking about men with monkey tails.... Until next time, dear reader!