Paul Ryan: House speaker, Wisconsinite, Republican standard-bearer, and now, lumber-sexual? In an Instagram post late last month, the congressman unveiled a spray of chestnut stubble across his face. “I’m the first Speaker to sport a beard in about 100 years,” he said. (Close: The last was Frederick H. Gillett in 1925, according to The New York Times.) Because it’s politics, there were critics.