A good shave


Today I bought a shaving brush, an implement that I’ve never used before. It was a revelation.

There are lots of different ways to remove hair from your face. There are electric razors, which never seem to go close enough. There are cut-throat razors, which to me are a dicey proposition; some of the barbers I’ve been to have nicked me all over my face with little cuts, and then suggested I was at fault for having "delicate skin". I don’t see particular advantages in having skin that’s leathery and tough, so I don’t generally allow people to shave me with a cut-throat razor any more. Finally, there’s the safety razor. (I know, I shouldn’t say finally, because there are plenty of other alternatives: kitchen knives, scissors, tweezers, sandpaper, pulling hairs out with your fingers, but let’s concentrate on what seems practical.)

Then once you have your razor, there’s a wide range of unguents and liquids you can apply to make the depilatory process more pleasant. I did read once that the main purpose of shaving foam was to allow you to see where you had and hadn’t shaved. Having tried to shave dry once, and been in increasing pain, I can only assume the author of that was being malicious, stupid, or possessed of either peach fuzz or the aforementioned Face Of Leather. Don’t do it.

In the house, we have cans of shaving gel. This spurts out in ever excessive quantities, and foams up into a thick foam that tends to clog the blades of the razor. We have tiny cans of seventeen year old Japanese shaving foam, which is wispy and doesn’t clog my razor, but fails to provide any lubrication. There’s shaving oil, which is either there to prepare for the shave, or to replace the foam entirely, and then there are tubs of shaving cream; last Christmas I had a present of some very expensive, sweet smelling L’Occitane stuff, which I used up and then replaced in Seattle with some Art Of Shaving cream, which smells of damp and misery. Then when I’m done, I have the choice of four or five different after shave balms (again, the L’Occitane is the nicest, but I’m saving it for special occasions). But I’ve never had a brush, until today.

That meant I had to scoop up shaving cream from the tub with my fingers, which is messy, and also very wasteful. I hadn’t realized how much so until I used the brush to lather up my face; I only needed a tiny fraction of what I would have applied by hand, and still covered my entire face. I didn’t have a vast amount of cream that I then needed to wash off my hands.

The other advantage of the brush is that I could apply a much thinner layer of cream, just enough to cover the bristles on my face. That meant my razor blades were much closer to my skin, and didn’t clog with extraneous foam or cream. As a result, I had a shave that was much closer than usual, giving me a smooth face rather than the perpetual 3-o’clock in the afternoon look I have after my normal shave.

I have to confess, I’m amazed it’s taken so long for me to discover this. I’ve been removing hair from my face for over twenty years, and never considered, even after barbers had used a brush on my face, to use one myself. I think for a long time I’d assumed the shaving brush was an affectation of the fop, and quite unnecessary. Instead, it turns out to give better results, and save on resources (apart from some unlucky badger, I guess), and make less of a mess as you don’t coat your hands with a liberal amount of shaving cream.

I suppose that means that all the time I used supposedly convenient shaving foam in pressurized aerosol cans, I was making more of a mess than necessary, for substandard results. If only I could go back to the younger me and explain this.

My daughter probably won’t have any need to shave a beard. Studies have been conducted in the past to show women cut themselves shaving more than men do, because legs are bigger than faces, and that encourages the poor shaver to rush things, and although men can pull silly faces, to stretch their skin and have an easier contour to slice across with a razor, women are slightly more limited in reconfiguring the geometry of the surface they’re attacking. So perhaps I should present La Serpiente Negra with an enormous shaving brush when she’s sixteen, so she can have an easier time of shaving her legs. Or encourage her not to shave them at all.


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