The genetics are still murky when it comes to how, exactly, we inherit the quality of our facial hair. But circumstance has led me to an utterly unscientific but wholly plausible theory. We make dad jokes; some of us even have dad bods. Even dad style is cool now. Does it not follow that we have dad beards now as well?

When I look in the mirror, I see a face very close to what my father’s looked like in 1978: long sideburns, thick mustache, and bushy brows. Now, I realize that much of this styling is my choice. But let’s be honest: How much can we consider anything in the slow march to becoming our parents a “choice”? I comfort myself by recalling that my current look evolved gradually over a number of years.

When hair started cropping up on my face, scraggly though it was, the first area it laid claim to was my sideburns. As a show of nascent adulthood, in college I encouraged them to creep down past my ears. There were hairless patches along the way (which, to my mortification, my mom suggested I color in with eyebrow pencil), but I thought my burns were just groovy. They went along with my vaguely vintage vibe and the flared jeans and wide collars that were de rigueur in the early aughts. Plenty of my peers were embarking on their own experiments with chin pubes and other dorm-room grooming looks, and my burns became a subtle signature.

But I shaved the rest of my face clean nearly every day, running a three-headed Norelco over my cheeks and neck, even when the only place I had to go was to class across campus. I felt my whispery stubble and uneven growth betrayed that I was still just a kid, when what I wanted to be was a man. I eventually graduated to a real Gillette razor, maintaining a hairless mug through my early 20s, when I worked as a baby-cheeked assistant in a small, casual work environment.

I must have let myself go for a few days when, at my friend’s grimy Williamsburg apartment, a guy I hardly knew at the time told me that my patchy stubble looked “so Hollywood.” I demurred. (He was not even hitting on me.) “Look at Heath Ledger!” he exclaimed as we threw back PBRs. That was all it took. I realized he was right: Everyone’s facial hair grows in differently, even movie stars’. All you have to do is own it.

I haven’t laid eyes on my bare face since that night, nearly 10 years ago. I moved on to a job at a flashy Hollywood agency soon after, and no one at my new office had ever seen me without a short beard. Just like that, I had a new identity. Razor-clean faces seemed to be the industry norm, so I kept my stubble relatively cropped, my neck smooth, and my jawline neat. I also found that I needed to clip my mustache one length shorter on my trimmer; the hair grows in denser there than on the rest of my face. If I didn’t keep it in check, the effect was one of a slight mustache.

When I moved on from the company to become a student again, it felt incumbent upon me to remake my face once more. I stopped trimming the hair under my nose shorter than the rest, then I stopped trimming it altogether. Introducing a mustache into a work environment of wall-to-wall suits and ties and call sheets? Of course, it can be done. Matriculating into a grad-school class as the guy with the righteous black ’stache? It was practically mandated from on high.

At first, it looked like walrus whiskers had chosen my upper lip as base camp for their sudden attack on mankind. A friend assured me that once the hair grew to a certain length, I could direct the whole bushy mess downward. I started placing my finger under my nose and pressing down, using a tiny pair of nail scissors to snip any hair that crossed the border onto my top lip (still works like a charm). I also learned a simple hack from my Sicilian barber (think Mr. Clean with a mustache): A plain old toothbrush works just as well as pricier tools designed specifically to tame the beast. He suggested brushing down on it while I sat around watching TV, to train wily strays to eventually fall in line. And they did.

I’ve only ever used one product on my mustache, a wax from Man’s Face Stuff. It was suggested to me by a hipster on a train barreling toward my home of New York City; he was visiting for the first time ever and spent the whole ride nervously rubbing the wax between his thumb and forefinger, twirling his ’stache into whimsical shapes.

Looking back, I didn’t consciously set out to cop the facial-hair style my father had when he was my age, or ask his expert tips along the way, either. (He’s been clean-shaven for more than 25 years.) Though, of course, the first time I showed up at my folks' place for the holidays sporting a mustache, they immediately appreciated the resemblance.

I've always thought my dad looks like a total badass in photos from his early years in America—a mustachioed doc embarking on a new life. He was my OG idea of cool, so maybe his ’stache and burns were as destined for my face as his distinguished nose. Though I may be fooling myself, I can still maintain that my own look unfolded naturally and on its own time—albeit in a way that incidentally strikes me as very ’70s.

Like the clothes we choose to wear or how we style our mops, facial hair is a way of expressing who we are: It is literally the closest thing we have to our mouths. What could be more personal than that? The next time you’re considering a change of growth, whether to embark on a new phase, revamp your current one, or invent a fresh persona, take a break from Pinterest boards and Insta hunks to rummage through some old photos. Find some #TBTs of your pops and take a closer look at his mug. His styling may just inspire you, if it hasn’t already.

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