How We Guys Should be Shaving
I read a blog called “The Art of Manliness”. It’s a site about being an old-fashioned guy. Being a gentleman, dressing well, grooming, etc. One of the things that they talked about a while back was shaving. The guy was extolling the virtues of the safety razor. At the time, it sounded interesting but it wasn’t something I’d ever spend my own money on. Well, Jess bought me a shaving kit for Christmas, including a beaver fur brush, a safety razor and face soap. I tried it for the first time this week. I have no idea why I’ve been wasting money on my Gillette piece of crap all these years.
I’ve used some of the typical razors all these years with increasing numbers of razor blades that don’t seem to improve my shave. Some would argue that I don’t replace my blades often enough, but I’d say every 2-3 weeks should be sufficient for the price you have to pay. I’ve been using the same safety razor blade the past week and each shave is as good as the last. The instructions I read said that I should replace it every week. Oh, dear. That’s awful, right? A set of 10 razors will last me over 2 months at that rate. The price? 5 bucks. 50 cents a blade. For a 2 month supply of my current razors costs almost 40 bucks, and that’s if I feel like I need to change the blade every week. However, it’s just the price. The whole experience is so much better. The shave feels so much better. I spent the first day after I shaved just rubbing my face thinking I had never managed to shave that closely. That’s another thing. I can shave the night before, skip it the next morning, and it’s still looks better by the end of the day than my prior shaves.
Get your significant other to get you one you’ll thank me. Before you start shaving, let me give you a couple of observations and early lessons learned:
- When you are applying the soap lather brush it on against the grain. Gets the bristles to stand up a little bit.
- You’ll basically be putting the top of the razor on your face and then tilting it down a bit. You need to remember that this is a rigid razor and not a nice flexy bendy razor.
- Your face is going to gesticulate a lot. To get to those hard to reach places you aren’t going to have the advantage of the angled disposable razors. Pucker your lips. Stick out your chin. Stretch your cheeks.
- Apply ZERO pressure. It is a safety razor but it is not the lawsuit-proof razors from Gillette or Schick, so you don’t want to slip and cut yourself. More importantly, though, the more you press down, the more razor burn you’ll get. (This goes for disposables, as well but you’re scratching a bare razor blade against your face in this case, rather than a series of tips of razors covered by wire.)
- It’ll take a little more time but I think it’s worth it. You can get to the point where it only takes a couple more minutes than a more typical shave.