Young Mayor Zohran Mamdani is going to make history by keeping his beard

This time, the first Muslim mayor of New York in the United States, a Muslim politician of South Asian descent, has been elected. With his election as mayor, New York is not only getting its first Muslim mayor, but also its first mayor of African descent. Who is the youngest mayor in more than a century.

After Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor, his success has created a stir all over the world. Along with this, a new chapter in Democratic politics has been opened.

Meanwhile, a report in the New York Times said that if Zohran Mamdani decides not to cut his hair, beard, and mustache before his inauguration, then he will be the first mayor of New York to be covered with a beard and mustache since William J. Gaynor, who died in 1913. However, it is difficult to say for sure that no mayor had a beard on his face after that. But the official portraits of the mayors showed that they were all beardless. David Dinkins's mustache was the exception.

Although 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani's beard looks like Gaynor's, this young man is different. When Gaynor was elected in 1990, he was 60 years old. The gray-white, trimmed beard and silk hat made Gaynor look like a mature man. The culture of the time was also different. A 1951 biography of Gaynor says that some of those who had full, unkempt beards at that time held prestigious positions in society. And this beard presented him as a successful businessman, a Wall Street middleman or an experienced politician.

Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani is only 34 years old, a representative of the millennial generation. This young man's beard now symbolizes a commitment to change the old political structure. As such, his beard is not like that of current US Vice President JD Vance or middle-aged Donald Trump Jr. Both Vance and Trump Jr. are white. However, Zohran Mamdani is a brown-skinned Muslim.

Zohran Mamdani understands very well what it means to be a bearded or brown-skinned Muslim in the United States. He knows everything about the tactics of shaping public opinion and his own image.

In 2013, before entering his senior year at Bowdoin College in Maine, Zohran Mamdani wrote an article in the college's weekly newspaper titled "Bearded in Cairo." In it, he wrote about the hardships of his time studying in Egypt. At that time, the country was experiencing a political movement against the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the Arab Spring.

Zohran Mamdani wrote in that article that he had started growing a beard in the United States a year ago. Which was a kind of symbolic protest against the prevailing idea in the country, which is not said very publicly. However, many believe, ‘Brown skin and a beard? Means a terrorist!’

After arriving in Cairo, the young mayor noticed that the locals thought he was an Islamist. So he went to a salon to trim his beard. He wrote, I thought of myself at that time as one of the countless brown citizens who shaved their beards in the United States after the September 11 (2001) attacks. Since then, he has mostly grown a beard. However, in 2022, during his first term as a member of the New York State Assembly, he grew a mustache for a few days. Since then, this young man has grown a full beard again.

During the campaign for the mayoral election of Zohraan Mamdani, supporters of his rival Andrew Kumor tried to portray his beard negatively. During the Democratic primary in June, supporters of Andrew Cuomo were creating posters for a super PAC campaign, and the photo of Zohran Mamdani was altered to show his beard thicker and darker. This, however, was immediately protested by Zohran Mamdani's supporters.

In this regard, the young mayor said, "My beard is being depicted as thicker and darker, which is an attempt to incite racist ideas. It is an attempt to portray me as a threat. Because the donors who are trying to sustain Andrew Cuomo and his failed campaign are scared."