You prefer men hairy or bare-y?

Must. Lose. Mustache.

Men, if you want to be attractive to women, whisk off the whiskers, unhandle the handlebars and buzz the beard.

Your facial fur is limiting your sex appeal, fur real!

I’m not trying to get in your hair. I’m merely sharing scientific developments. An actual journal, Biology Letters, recently published a study (“Negative Frequency-dependent Preferences and Variation in Male Facial Hair”) on its website that concluded: “Women … judged heavy stubble and full beards more attractive … .”

Oh, there’s more.

And this is why men should lop lip foliage this very minute! If only for this very minute.

Facial hair, the study said, was deemed more attractive “when presented in treatments where beards were rare than when they were common.”

It continued: “Likewise, clean-shaven faces were least attractive when clean-shaven faces were most common and more attractive when rare. This pattern in preferences is consistent with negative frequency-dependent selection.”

Let’s make that - and your face - less fuzzy: Women appreciate beards and mustaches more when they are less popular.

And right now, with prominent men from Duck Dynasty dudes and actors like Jared Leto and George Clooney to hipsters wearing kooky crumb-catchers and shaggy soup-strainers, plain skin has probably never looked so “in.”

“We may well be at peak beard,” one researcher told the Guardian Australia.

Study participants rated the attractiveness of 36 men, photographed when clean-shaven, with light stubble (five days’ growth), heavy stubble (10 days’ growth) and a full beard (four or more weeks of untamed growth). The same researchers who have previously studied beards noted women exposed to more bearded faces at first preferred the clean-shaven ones and vice versa.

We needed science to tell us women desire what we don’t have? I could have done that without grants and advanced degrees.

Speaking of science cred, who authored this study anyway?

Robert C. Brooks and Barnaby J. Dixson of the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Of course I checked both of them online to check for facial fuzz. And to rate their attractiveness.

I did my own scientific poll (OK, so I just sent a quick email to the visible women in the newsroom) to determine who is better-looking between Brooks of the smooth baby face or Dixson of the rugged full beard.

One was the victor, not by a hair.

Of the 14 women who responded, nine preferred bearded Dixson to bald Brooks.

Clearly gals don’t mind beards all that much.

(Especially the one who swooned over Dixson: “The beard and the short-cropped hair. He just looks like a mountain climber, Zen kind of guy who is confident in his own skin. Plus he’s got that ‘hinting at a smile’ crinkle to his eyes. I bet he embarks on a lot of adventures. And reads Hawthorne novels.” Insert smiley face here.)

Well, maybe some women do mind - several said they voted for Brooks only because they’re opposed to facial hair.

So, we’ll leave it at this, guys: Shave your face. Or don’t. Hair always grows back, and so do trends.

And whether you’re hairy or bare-y, always expect women to give you a rough time.

Got your goat(ee)? Email: jchristman@arkansasonline.com What’s in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman ’hood.