Actually, the reason for the shaving fixation is that most guys can't grow anything like a full beard worth anything... in highschool of a sample of 5-600 guys literally two people in the school could actually grow them. Beards use to be signs of masculinity and virility. Beards were a sign of manliness... having a beard was a good thing. Peach fuzz, antibeards (where everywhere, but the basic beard growth places grows a beard), scraggly, patchy not beards and such were signs of a lesser man. Distinctive and well groomed facial hair was often a sign of notable historical figures.
Then the eugenics movement comes around and decides humans should be breed for traits, because it worked so well on cattle and the like (their words not mine). One of the traits they decided was disposable was beards (at least in the North East of the US blond guys are horriblly bad at growing beards). They loved those smooth faced, near identical drones. Individually must be breed out of the population for the greater good. Except Hilter (not Godwins law being invoked and he was rather distinctly a major hypocrit on these things) and his snot-catcher... I literally can't think of a eugenicist that wasn't completely clean shaven.
So I would take the sign of Gendo Ikari (with a distinctive beard he always is canon) shaving his beard off in canon Evaverse as a sign of very, very bad things... like bowing out to SEELE's demands or that he really, really needed funding and the excitement is faked so he can keep things going financially. So this in canon Evaverse would be a sign of the world being very, very, very screwed.
Which is one of the reasons I said episode 25-26 altverse was where that was happening... Rei is WAY too emotional there for her to ever fake things. Being Asuka's escape world makes sense and her killing the beard is entirely in character for her crazy.
Then the eugenics movement comes around and decides humans should be breed for traits, because it worked so well on cattle and the like (their words not mine). One of the traits they decided was disposable was beards (at least in the North East of the US blond guys are horriblly bad at growing beards). They loved those smooth faced, near identical drones. Individually must be breed out of the population for the greater good. Except Hilter (not Godwins law being invoked and he was rather distinctly a major hypocrit on these things) and his snot-catcher... I literally can't think of a eugenicist that wasn't completely clean shaven.
So I would take the sign of Gendo Ikari (with a distinctive beard he always is canon) shaving his beard off in canon Evaverse as a sign of very, very bad things... like bowing out to SEELE's demands or that he really, really needed funding and the excitement is faked so he can keep things going financially. So this in canon Evaverse would be a sign of the world being very, very, very screwed.
Which is one of the reasons I said episode 25-26 altverse was where that was happening... Rei is WAY too emotional there for her to ever fake things. Being Asuka's escape world makes sense and her killing the beard is entirely in character for her crazy.