Zohran Mamdani will not only be New York City’s first Muslim mayor, first South Asian mayor, first African-born mayor and youngest mayor in more than a century.
Barring a tonsorial overhaul before Inauguration Day, it appears that he will also be New York’s first bearded mayor since William Jay Gaynor, who died in office in 1913. While it is hard to prove that no sitting mayor has sported a beard since then, a search of official portraits shows a succession of clean-shaven men interrupted only by David Dinkins’s mustache.
Mr. Mamdani’s beard, despite its categorical similarities to Gaynor’s, signifies very differently. Gaynor was 60 when he was elected in 1909, and his beard was gray-white and neatly trimmed, marking him as a man of great maturity, especially in combination with his high silk hat.
The cultural context was different, too. A 1951 biography of Gaynor notes that by “affecting the full Vandyke beard worn by so many men of substance of the day, he might have been a successful merchant, Wall Street broker or an elder statesman.”
Mr. Mamdani is 34, and his beard marks him as a millennial with a mandate to shake up the system. In that sense, his is not unlike the beards of Vice President JD Vance and the somewhat older Donald Trump Jr.
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