But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
—1 SAMUEL 16:7
You know one of the things I dislike most? False advertising. When I was a young kid, I stumbled across an ad in the back of a comic book. Some company was selling magic shrinking dust in a small bottle for only $9.99, plus shipping and handling. The ad featured a life-size cartoon of a young boy with his miniature parents and pets hanging out in the pockets of his shirt and jeans. I remember thinking, Now that’s what I am talking about! I saved my money for months and mailed thirteen dollars to the address in the magazine. I went out to the mailbox every day in great anticipation of my magic dust arriving. Hey, I also didn’t want anyone finding the package before me, because I planned on making a few surprise changes around the Robertson house. Well, the package never arrived. Since I was a kid, I figured there must have been some sort of shipping mishap—until I took a class called physics in school! Then I realized I’d been duped through the power of marketing.
Another pet peeve of mine is receiving a crappy gift that is deceitfully wrapped in fancy packaging. I learned the hard way that when giving a gift to a woman, you should never put anything besides jewelry inside a jewelry box. The sheen and shine of the package can be very deceptive!
People are the same way. When I was in high school I became enamored with a stunningly gorgeous girl. I passed her every day at the same spot during a class change. After doing a little research on her, I rearranged my schedule after midterm to take a class in “home and family” because she was in there. As I entered the classroom, it seemed like destiny—or at least a scene from a sappy chick flick—because my seat was right beside hers! Unfortunately, I quickly ascertained from the first words out of her mouth that she was one of the most vile, obnoxious people I’d ever been around. My attraction immediately vanished, so I looked around the class for other potential candidates. Not only did I not find any girls I might be interested in but I also realized I was the only guy in the class! It was fate gone woefully wrong, but at least the class included a great cooking segment, which I actually enjoyed. Plus, it was an easy A—and there never seemed to be enough of those.
Through those two life experiences, I learned a lot about false advertising. The fact that someone wears a nice tailored suit, shaves his face every day, and has a big smile doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a nice person. Conversely, just because someone has a big beard and long, shaggy hair and wears camouflage doesn’t always mean he’s a danger to society. Before Duck Dynasty came along, you wouldn’t have believed some of the looks people gave me while I was walking through an airport or grocery store. People were literally scared of me because of the way I looked.
People talk about racial profiling all the time, and it’s hard to argue it doesn’t exist in America. For whatever reason, some people make unfair judgments of others based on the color of their skin. It’s stupidity, and it’s sad that discrimination still occurs in the twenty-first century, but it’s something our country is struggling to overcome even today. Well, believe it or not, people will even form an opinion of someone based on whether or not they have facial hair. I call it “facial profiling.” If I’m in the grocery store and I walk by a woman who doesn’t recognize me, she might clutch her children as I pass her. If I’m at a gas station, people sitting in their cars might lock their doors if they see me coming. It’s a subconscious reflex. Some people look at me and immediately think, There’s trouble right there. And they don’t even know me!
I was recently pulled over by the police in the wee hours of the morning on my way to vacation in Alabama. I was traveling with my family, and my wife and kids were asleep. I was on the phone with my brother Al, trying to get directions to our beach house. There was no one else on the road as I was driving through a small town. All of a sudden, flashing lights appeared out of nowhere and I pulled over. The lights woke up everybody in the car, and one of my kids said, “Maybe the policeman watches Duck Dynasty.” The officer came up to my window and asked for my driver’s license and insurance card.
When I began to speak to the policeman, he put his hand on his holstered gun. My wife said, “Guess he’s not a fan.” The cop gave me a speeding ticket for driving forty-four miles per hour in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone, which was fine. Hey, I broke the law! But what made me a bit uncomfortable was that every time I opened my mouth he put his hand on his gun!
Recently, I was in New York with most of the Robertson family promoting the season-four premiere of Duck Dynasty. We were staying at the Trump International Hotel, which is a really nice place near Central Park. I was already uncomfortable being in the big city. I don’t like traffic or concrete, and there are a lot of both in New York. After we checked in, we gathered downstairs to go to a Broadway musical show. I know it might seem bizarre for me to be going to a musical, but my very attractive wife can be mightily persuasive, especially when I have nothing else to do.
As we were waiting for the others in the lobby, I asked a doorman if there was a nearby bathroom. He gave me directions to the nearest restroom, which included a walk through the hotel restaurant. As I entered the restaurant, a well-dressed staffer offered his assistance. I informed him I was only going to the restroom. But he very nicely continued to offer assistance and took the role of my escort, which I thought was quite courteous and professional. At his direction, we took a quick left turn and walked out of the hotel. Befuddled, I asked him, “Where is the bathroom?” He pointed down the street or maybe toward Central Park and said, “Good luck to you, sir. Have a nice day.” I circled back around to the main entrance of the hotel, where I found Missy, who had witnessed the entire episode.
“I thought you had to go to the bathroom,” she said.
I laughed and told her I had been escorted out of the hotel because of the way I looked. It was no big deal to us, and I laughed about the incident later that night with my family over dinner. I shared the story the next day with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on Live! with Kelly and Michael because I thought it was funny. Well, the story went viral and was all over the news and Internet the next few days. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and various media outlets were trying to contact me. I’d jokingly labeled the incident “facial profiling” because in my mind that’s exactly what it was. People were surprised that it didn’t bother me, but my family and I have endured those kinds of things our entire lives. I figured the hotel employee was only trying to protect other hotel guests. The incident culminated with a call from Donald Trump’s office. They offered an apology for any inconvenience. I assured them that no apology was needed, and I asked them not to punish my courteous escort.
Some incidents of facial profiling have been more inconvenient than others. I’ll never forget walking through airport security when I was flying to give a speech to a Christian men’s group in Montana. The Department of Homeland Security screeners obviously didn’t recognize me as “Jase the Duckman” from Duck Dynasty, and I felt like I was one wrong answer away from being led to an interrogation room in a pair of handcuffs! Hunting season had recently ended, so my hair and beard were in full bloom! The security screeners saw a Bible in my bag, and I guess they figured I was a Christian nut because of my long hair and bushy beard. Somehow, I made it through the metal detector and an additional pat-down, and I guess they couldn’t find a justifiable reason to detain me. But as I was getting my belongings back together, I accidentally bumped into a woman. She screamed! It must have been an involuntary reflex. It was a natural response, because she thought I was going to attack her.
Once she finally settled down, I made my way to the gate and sat down to compose myself. After a few minutes, a young boy walked up and asked me for my autograph. Finally, I thought to myself. Somebody recognizes me from Duck Dynasty. Not everyone here believes I’m the Unabomber! Man, I could have used the kid about twenty minutes earlier, when I was trying to get through security! I looked over at the boy’s mother, and she was smiling from ear to ear. I realized they were very big fans. I signed my name on a piece of paper and handed it to the kid.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Sure, buddy,” I said. “Ask me anything you want.”
“How much does Geico pay y’all?” he asked.
My jaw dropped as I looked at the kid.
“Wait a minute, man,” I said. “I’m not a caveman!”
“What do you mean?” the boy asked.
“I’m Jase the Duckman,” I said. “You know—from Duck Dynasty? Quack, quack?”
It didn’t take me long to realize the boy had no idea what I was talking about. In a matter of minutes, I went from being a potential terrorist to being a caveman selling insurance.
I guess it might have been worse. A couple of summers ago, my brother Willie and I went to New York on a business trip. He was going to meet with executives from A&E about our TV show, and I was going to give a duck-calling seminar to a group of hunters in New Jersey. As luck would have it, the New York Yankees were playing the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium, so we decided to attend a game to see our friend John Buck, who was catching for the Royals.
On the morning of the game, we were standing outside our hotel in Manhattan, drinking three-dollar cups of coffee as we waited for a taxi to take us to the A&E headquarters. Some guy walked by us and dropped a few coins in Willie’s cup. He thought Willie was a homeless man! Obviously, Willie was stunned, and mad that he had to buy another cup of coffee, but I thought it was hilarious! Here we were standing in New York, meeting with television executives about a reality TV show based on our family and hanging out with Major League Baseball players, but some guy thought Willie needed a few bucks! I actually took a lot of happiness from the fact that the guy thought Willie looked more pathetic than me! The bottom line: when people see our beards, they figure we’re either homeless or dangerous.
Here’s one thing you have to understand about our beards: We’re not growing them; they’re growing on their own! Since Phil’s beard is so long, people often ask him how long he’s been growing it. His response is always the same: “I’m not growing it. It grows by itself.” When I was young, Phil liked to compare shaving to mowing the grass, both of which he views as a complete waste of time. One day someone asked him, “Phil, you know, your grass is four feet high. You ever thought about mowing it?” I wondered what Phil’s answer would be because I was a little embarrassed about our yard myself. When the school bus driver dropped my brothers and me off at our house, people liked to ridicule us about how tall the grass was. You could have gotten lost in our yard! But Phil said, “Nah, the frost will get it.” In the end my dad’s prediction came true; the frost did get the grass, every winter.
Researchers have determined that the average man will spend thirty-three hundred hours shaving during his lifetime. Folks, that’s almost five months of your life, which is equivalent to two whole duck seasons! There are up to twenty-five thousand whiskers on the average man’s face, and it takes him up to six hundred strokes to scrape his entire face. Surely we can come up with something more productive to do with our time!
Phil likes to tell my brothers and me that men only shave because the advertising executives at Schick and Gillette have convinced the world that men have to shave their faces to be civilized. Phil claims they’ve fooled the world and become millionaires by doing it! Well, guess what? American men spend an estimated $2.4 billion annually on razors and shaving cream. Have you seen the price of razors nowadays? You have to spend fifteen bucks to get a piece of molded plastic and a cartridge of three or four razor blades! Then they trick you into spending twenty bucks on a pack of replacement cartridges! Remember: a beard grown is a lot of pennies saved.
Of course, the Robertson beard tradition started with my dad. I think Phil started growing a beard because he was self-employed and enjoyed the pleasure of not having to shave every morning before going to work. When he was commercial-fishing on the Ouachita River across from our home in West Monroe, Louisiana, and then making duck calls in the early days of Duck Commander, he didn’t have a boss. He was never very good at following orders (maybe that is where I got that from). Because Phil’s formative years occurred during the hippie movement of the 1960s, he was kind of antiestablishment anyway. After Phil left teaching to become a fisherman and hunter, he thought, I’m going to do what I want. There ain’t no dress code out here, and there aren’t any rules as far as grooming.
I think the last time Phil shaved his beard was in 1988. He lost a gentlemen’s bet to a preacher, shaved his beard, and wore a suit to church, which caused mass chaos among the congregation. Phil said he would never do it again. The bet was over predicting how many people would attend a church service put on by our family and a few friends in an African-American neighborhood. We had a huge fish fry, followed by singing and sharing the Gospel. My dad didn’t think many people would show up because we were white and bearded. But they showed up by the hundreds, and some of the people accepted Christ and became good friends of ours that we have to this day. It was a good lesson for everyone that God’s message to humanity is colorblind. The Son of God brings all men together like nothing else on earth.
If Phil is anything, he’s comfortable in his own skin, and he made sure to pass on that self-confidence to his sons. So that’s where the Robertson men’s famous beards came from. We don’t care what other people think about our hair or beards. We realize not everyone is blessed with the ability to grow a full, masculine beard, but we’re not going to judge someone for having less facial hair. There is a place in our society for people with smooth faces; it’s called the ladies’ room. That’s a redneck joke. When I was younger, my dad would tell us, “Number one, you’re wasting time if you shave. Number two, God made you have hair on your face for a reason.” Phil even quoted Shakespeare when preaching to us about the virtues of having a beard: “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man.” Phil also used to say, “God made women to have smooth faces.” But then he spoke at a conference in Arkansas. From that day forward, he amended his speech to say, “God made most women to have smooth faces.” That’s a Louisiana joke, folks, and my apologies to beard-sporting women everywhere. Like Phil says, “Whiskers on a woman, it’s a bummer.” But I would add, “It is not necessarily a deal breaker.”
Since we’re duck hunters, our beards come in handy. Whiskers are really the greatest things you can have in a duck blind during Louisiana winters. The skin tightens up when it’s cold. When you’re boating down the river before daylight—running forty miles per hour when it’s thirty degrees outside—if you don’t have a beard, you’re out of luck. Whiskers keep your neck warm and prevent your lips from getting chapped. And then, of course, a beard is great camouflage, which is so important in duck hunting. If you have enough gray hair in your beard, it might even look like moss hanging from a tree! All of our beards are different. One of the questions I get asked most often about our beards is why Uncle Si’s is shorter on one side. Well, here’s the answer: If your beard is caught between your shoulder and your shotgun when you fire, it’s going to be pretty painful. The whiplash will literally rip the whiskers out of your beard, and that’s why Si’s is shorter on the right side!
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that while I might stand out in public because of the way I look, it’s exactly the opposite in the hunting world. A lot of the guests we take duck-hunting show up clean-shaven. They look completely out of place. I mean, they almost look like freaks in the blind because everything else (and everyone else) is rough and dirty. Of course, left alone they wouldn’t shoot as many ducks as we do, because their faces look like a full moon and the sun reflects off their mugs like a tin roof. That’s the easiest way to spook ducks. By the end of the hunt, our guests are almost embarrassed about the way they look, which they should be. To me, if you shave, you’re not using the resources that God gave you as a provider. You’re just not using your head.
Now, I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to growing a beard. Heck, I was a late bloomer when it came to growing. If you looked at pictures of me in a yearbook from elementary or middle school, you probably wouldn’t think it was me because I was so short. But then between my junior and senior years of high school, I grew from five feet tall to six one. My facial hair quickly followed.
I shaved most days before school, but I wouldn’t shave during the holidays, when it was also duck-hunting season. After I married my wife, Missy, I only kept my beard during hunting season. Hunting was kind of a crisis for her during the early days of our marriage because I was gone every day for about three months straight. So I let my beard grow throughout hunting season, and then on the last day of the season, I would shave my beard completely off. It was kind of a peace offering to Missy for enduring the previous three months.
For whatever reason, Missy is the only Robertson wife who doesn’t like beards. Willie’s wife, Korie; Jep’s wife, Jessica; and Alan’s wife, Lisa, all love my brothers’ beards, and I’m pretty sure my mom, Kay, couldn’t imagine Phil without a beard because he has worn one for so long. But Missy is consistent in her distaste for facial hair. I hoped that one day my beard would, ahem, grow on her, but it hasn’t. Missy once tried to get me to shave by threatening not to shave her legs or under her arms. It actually worked once, but the next time I decided to call her bluff and, well, she was bluffing.
My tradition of shaving on the final day of hunting season lasted until Duck Dynasty started. Now I keep the beard year-round because we’re filming episodes all the time. The last time I completely shaved my face, my daughter, Mia, was about five years old. I had to go to the barbershop to get my beard shaved off because it was so thick and long. When I walked in, the look on the barber’s face was priceless. We both knew I was fixing to get my money’s worth. When I came home, I walked in the door and Mia started crying. She even took off running! She didn’t know who I was! She wouldn’t speak to me for about a week out of fear. Finally, she realized it really was me. That was the last time my face was ever completely smooth.
Like most things in my life, there’s also a spiritual side to my beard. Look at John the Baptist, one of the most important people in the New Testament. According to Matthew 3:4, “John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.” He baptized Jesus, who was God in human body, despite his appearance being that of a deranged vagrant. When I try to visualize John the Baptist, I see a bearded hunter who had to have some sort of weaponry to function in the wild. I would also assume he dipped the locusts in wild honey before he ate them. Based on what I read in the Bible about John the Baptist, I actually tried to eat a locust once, but it tasted terrible, which gave me the idea that John the Baptist probably dipped them in honey first. Then again, almost everything tastes good with honey.
What I realized is that God used a bearded, animal-skin-wearing, locust-eating wild man to prepare the way for His Son’s ministry to the people of the earth. But John the Baptist didn’t look religious in any way. God told Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” It is the heart of a man that counts; the beard, in my opinion, is the exclamation point. If you believe a man’s heart is right and his spiritual qualities are good, why would you judge him based on how much he shaves his face? As it says in Matthew 7:15, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” After I thought about that, I decided I would rather be a sheep in wolves’ clothing than vice versa, you know?
I think the fact my brothers and I look so different from everyone else has helped us learn to accept others for who they are. Phil and Kay have always believed that judging a person by his or her outward appearance is ridiculous. In other words, they taught my brothers and me that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. We were taught that, regardless of a person’s skin color, clothes, or facial hair, God made every one of us from the same stuff. Acts 17:26–27 says: “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would . . . find him.” If God made the first man from dust and the first woman from a rib, it’s not hard for me to believe He could individually knit us together in our mother’s womb. We are made on purpose, for a purpose, and that makes each individual a masterpiece created by an almighty God.
Everyone is made in the image of God, which means that we are not junk, mistakes, or accidents. This also causes us to realize that life is a gift. We did not choose our existence, and there is no one on earth who is exactly like any one of us. Therefore, I won’t judge another person by his or her external appearance. Over the years, I’ve learned that there is a lot more to having a meaningful life than outward appearance, how much money you have, or whether you’re famous or not. I’m not into those materialistic things. It’s nice having the blessings of a successful business and popular TV show, but that’s never been our motivation in doing what we’ve done. In my opinion, fame is not about being recognized; it’s about recognizing that the God who made you makes us all famous.
Here’s the last thing you need to know about my beard: if my life ever gets too chaotic from the popularity of Duck Dynasty, my beard will be the first thing to go. In the back of my mind, I have comfort knowing that if I ever become too recognizable, I only have to shave my beard to become anonymous. Not many people outside of West Monroe, Louisiana, would know me without a beard. I think there are a few photos of me without a beard floating around the Internet, but I’m confident I’d be largely unrecognizable with a smooth face. It might sound kind of ironic, because a lot of people grow a beard or wear a fake one for a disguise, but I’m the exact opposite. Shaving is my exit strategy, and it might end up being what ultimately keeps me sane.
With or without a beard, I know I’ll be the same guy. I learned a long time ago that it’s what’s in my heart that matters most.