Beard equiping bug

Beards equip automatically, they're assigned to certain head skin. So you have to own the head skin for your character, and they will automatically grow the beard connected to it 

If you would like to change what beard you are wearing, so for example if you'd like to use the Gladiator beard on a Survivor skin, you need to use the clean sweeper. It's an item that sometimes drops from chopping totally normal trees which lets you change the skins of items and structures, but also your beard if used on yourself.