Not long ago, Herrick sought to figure out why so many senators and representatives stay clean-shaven. To do it, she gathered up photos of the male members of the 110th Congress, which was in office in 2007 and 2008, who had facial hair. She matched each photo to an image of a bare-faced member of similar age, race, party affiliation, and other characteristics, and showed the photo pairs to a group of students. The students were asked to rate the men’s masculinity and their likely stances on feminist issues.

The congressmen with facial hair were thought to be more masculine, less feminist, and less likely to support women’s rights, Herrick wrote in a blog post about her work. As a consequence, women and self-identified feminists in the group said they were less likely to vote for them. (In Ryan’s case, this comports with his vow to defund Planned Parenthood, which many women view as an anti-feminist move.) In the same blog post, Herrick suggested that this might be why so few political candidates have sported facial hair since women gained the right to vote.