May 18, 2017 3:53 AM GMT

NYT: Dr. Dixson and colleagues asked 1,577 men and women from Brazil and the Czech Republic about facial hair. Compared to heterosexual women, gay men had stronger preferences for men with more facial hair.
“Homosexual men preferred hairier stimuli than heterosexual women, supporting past findings that homosexual men have strong preferences for masculine traits,” the authors reported.
Brazilians preferred bigger beards than Czechs. Homosexual men preferred men with beards similar to their own.
The study, published in March in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, also found that men often preferred thicker facial hair than their real partners actually had. The authors noted that the fact that people don’t end up with their “ideal” — at least in terms of his beard — may be because their ideal is not readily available, so they “compromise.”
Not every man can grow a beard naturally. More men with hairless faces have begun seeking hair transplants, according to the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery. In 2014, the latest year for which data are available, 13,956 men around the world had hair transplants to enhance their beards, up from 4,707 in 2012. More than 3,100 of the men were in the United States. Beard transplants are most popular in Asian countries, where nearly 4,200 men had the treatment in 2014.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/well/family/are-men-with-beards-more-desirable.html?