Recently a customer emailed asking if it’s possible to use beard oil if you don’t have a beard, and if you do, what will happen. So we went down to the lab and did some exhaustive research by putting beard oil on other non-bearded parts of our bodies to simulate the horrifying scenario of not having ample facial hair. We came up with a list of 5 things that may happen if you use beard oil with no beard because, as you know, the only articles allowed on the Internet are lists of 5 things.
1. Your face will become more oily.
It might also be surprising to note that the more beard oil you slather on your cheeks, the oilier they will get. Unless you begin with a severely dry face (or other body part), and then it may end up just pleasantly moisturized.
2. Hair on other parts of your body may become more soft, conditioned, silky, and/or smooth.
Experience has taught me that I need to specify: you should apply the beard oil directly to the target hair that you want to condition. No, you can’t soak up beard oil through your face and sweat it out somewhere else. In all seriousness, I have applied beard oil to the regular old hair on my noggin as a proxy conditioner at times when it was particularly dry.
3. You may (not) grow thicker, more abundant, or any facial hair.
I’ve seen numerous articles and YouTube testimonials claiming that beard oil may help you grow thicker, more abundant, etc, facial hair, and I’m not so sure of the science behind this. I guess maybe you could absorb some of the oil into your hair follicle cells, much in the same way a frog breathes a bit of oxygen directly through its skin, and then the follicles would have more nutrition to make healthier, super-sized hairs. But, I have to warn you, if you apply beard oil with no beard, there is also a possibility that you will (not) grow a beard.
4. You have no beard, but you use the beard oil on someone else’s beard.
This could happen in the case of a very subtle frat prank (in which all parties have agreed to consensual non-consent), when you apply it to an unconscious comrade’s face, and they wake up the next day thinking, “holy shit, my beard is now incredibly soft, conditioned, silky, and/or smooth.” You could also apply the beard oil indirectly to someone else’s beard by giving them the beard oil to do it themselves in a scenario known as a “gift.”
5. You suffer from Schrodinger’s beard.
You’ll have to forgive me in advance for my imprecision with this last point, but my command of physics is arguably lousy. On more than one occasion, a couple of women have come to my booth at a gift show and joked, “yeah, we totally need this (beard oil) for our beards.” They had no beards that I was aware of, and I could only imagine they were invoking some concept of hypothetical beard-or-non-beard-ness. As if there may or may not have been a beard somewhere just out-of-sight (perhaps nestled against an unconscious comrade’s face), but impossible to be know by the casual observer. Maybe they were only looking for hypothetical beard oil, which is why they didn’t buy any. I couldn’t quite grasp what they were talking about!