The last time I had grown a beard was this summer, and it was out of necessity. I was taking care of 12-year-olds at a summer camp, and I was almost the same height as the campers in my bunk. The beard was used to make myself seem older. It worked; my campers thought I was 27. Since I didn’t get too much flak for it at camp, I figured I would try it again for No Shave November.

I soon learned that teenagers are not nearly as complimentary as 12-year-olds.

When I first embarked on this month-long challenge to avoid shaving, I thought that I would grow frustrated with the way my beard felt. As someone who has been able to grow facial hair since the seventh grade and someone who has grown beards before, I knew that facial hair could be annoying, but I had never gone this long without even trimming the hair on my face. I prepared myself for a month of itchiness and distraction.

However, having a beard felt pretty cool. It gave me something to play with during class, and it made me look about five years older. In fact, I probably would have kept the beard, albeit with some serious trimming, had it not been for one thing:

My friends are terrible people.

Let me rephrase that.

My female friends are terrible people.

Once two peaceful weeks without shaving went by, it was like all of my girl friends had turned into Regina George from the film “Mean Girls.” No insults were held back.

I distinctly remember walking into school on that Monday, making eye contact with my good friend Jackie Gazerro ’12. When I walked over to her, she looked at me like “The Human Centipede” was playing on my chin. She didn’t say, “Hi Eric,” or, “How was your weekend?” Instead, she just exclaimed, “Oh my god, shave already!”

For the next two weeks, girls called me a hobo, a creep and other cruel names. Some even had the nerve to call me a terrorist, which was less an insult of my beard then it was an insult to my race.

I jokingly told my Red and Whites date, Chloe Randich ‘12, that I was planning on keeping it for the dance. I guess she didn’t find it very funny, because she replied “hell no” without expression.

When talking to girls, I noticed that they rarely made eye contact with me, instead staring at my beard with their mouths agape. I had to fight the urge to tell them, “Hey, my eyes are up here.”

Some just stopped interacting with me altogether.

“It makes me not want to have a conversation with you,” Charlotte Weber ’12 said.

The closest thing I ever got to a compliment from a girl was from Meghan Hill ’12 after she felt my beard and told me that it wasn’t that bad. For a moment I was elated.

Then she dropped this bombshell:

“It’s like when you don’t shave your legs for a really long time.”

I have never felt more disgusting in my entire life.

This brings me to my main point: I was completely aware that my beard was gross. It was overgrown, patchy and parts of it were orange. Or, as Amanda Beusse ’12 so endearingly put it, “It looks like you have Halloween on your face.”

However, this beard should not have been an open invitation for every girl in the student body to verbally abuse me. It’s not like I was going to suddenly say, “You know what? You are right! I had no idea I looked like Tom Hanks at the end of Cast Away. I’m going to go shave immediately. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways!”

In the end, the girls won. I have learned that growing facial hair is just asking to be mocked by the female population.

I’ll just start pointing out all of my girl friend’s physical flaws with mean insults.

Hey, an eye for an eye, right?