Beardiness

I grew a beard in 2002, and at the time it was considered really "edgy". I worked at an insurance company at the time and I later found, when I quit, that the CFO of the company thought it was a fireable offense, and that I was only spared by the head of my department (the actuarial department) intervening and pointing out that a number of employees had goatees and mustaches and that a full beard wasn't that far removed from those things.

And now... everyone has a beard. I went to the bank the other day and the teller had a beard longer than mine, which would be unthinkable ten years ago. Disneyland, which is notoriously conservative about the appearance of their employees, recently permitted men to have beards.

I once read something that said in times of prosperity, men and women became more androgynous and that in less prosperous times they would revert to standard gender norms.  This would explain the 90s, when every guy had long or shaggy hair, or dyed hair, and girls had bobs or even shorter hair (I even knew a few girls who shaved their head) and the present day, when most guys have short-cropped hair and beards and most girls have shoulder-length hair.