A goatee is a style of facial hair incorporating hair on one's chin but not on one's cheeks. The exact nature of the style has varied according to time and culture.
Description
Until the late 20th century, the term goatee was used to refer solely to a beard formed by a tuft of hair on the chin—as on the chin of a goat, hence the term 'goatee'. By the 1990s, the word had become an umbrella term used to refer to any facial hair style incorporating hair on the chin but not the cheeks; there is debate over whether this style is correctly called a goatee or a Van Dyke.
History
The style dates back to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The godPan was traditionally depicted with goat-like features, including a goatee. When Christianity became the dominant religion and began copying imagery from pagan myth, Satan was given the likeness of Pan, leading to Satan traditionally being depicted with a goatee in medieval art and Renaissance art. The goatee would not enjoy widespread popularity again until the 1940s, when it became a defining trait of the beatniks in the post-World War II United States. The style remained popular amongst the counter-culture until the 1960s before falling out of favor again. In the 1990s, goatees with incorporated mustaches became fashionable for men across all socioeconomic classes and professions, and have remained popular into the 2010s.
In the media, goatees have often been used to designate an evil or morally questionable character; the convention has most consistently been applied in media depicting evil twins, with a goatee often being the sole physical difference between the twins. Goatees have also been used to signify a character's transformation from positive or neutral to evil. The use of goatees to designate evil characters has become enough of a trope that researchers from the University of Warwick conducted a study to assess the reasons for its prevalence. The study found that the human brain tends to perceive downwards-facing triangles as inherently threatening; brains tend to perceive goatees as making the human face resemble a downwards-facing triangle, causing individuals to subconsciously perceive those with goatees as inherently sinister or threatening. In media depicting members of counter-cultures, goatees have also been used to differentiate between average characters and those belonging to some subgroup. Examples include Bob Denver on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, whose goatee serves to identify him as a beatnik; Shaggy Rogers on Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, who is, in part, identified as a hippie by his goatee; and the DC Comics superheroGreen Arrow, who was visually redesigned with such a beard in the late 1960s, inspiring writer Dennis O'Neil to re-imagine him as a politically active counter-culture hero. In India, the popularity of keeping a goatee was revived after the movie 'Dil Chahta Hai' released which showed actor Amir Khan supporting a trendy goatee.
