03.20.08
Shaving journalism
Last night I had a phone message from a newspaper reporter in North Carolina. He was writing an article on shaving—highlighting the Gillette/Schick competition—and had stumbled into the world of traditional wetshaving and wanted to know more about that. I enjoyed the interview. One question he asked was about using an electric razor (Braun, Norelco, et al.), and I told him that my impression was that guys who use an electric razor really have no interest in shaving or in getting a particularly good shave. Their main criterion is that they want to be able to be doing something else while they shave: driving, reading the newspaper, whatever.
I told him the story about reading (while I was in high school) a novel in which the protagonist shaved, and the description was that he lathered his beard, shaved with the grain, and then lathered his beard again and shave against the grain. I was astonished: he lathered twice?! Only when I really started to learn to shave did I learn that one lathers before each pass. The reporter was also surprised: he didn’t know that you lathered more than once.
At any rate, it will be interesting to see whether the interview results in an article and any increased interest. Certainly it does seem as if more and more guys are finding out about traditional wetshaving and liking it. Two factoids I learned from the article:
1. He had talked to a dermatologist who said that cartridge razors were very hard on the skin—the tug-and-cut action is not good.
2. John F. Kennedy shaved with a straight razor, as mentioned in Teddy White’s first Making of the President book.
Chris said,
20 March 2008 at 11:16 am
Please let us know if it does lead to an article.
Eric said,
20 March 2008 at 5:48 pm
Re electrics - and I say this as someone who has shaved religiously with a DE and brush for the past two years - a good close shave is in fact quite possible. The impossibility is a *lastingly* close shave.
Let’s take an arbitrary ‘five o’clock shadow’ reference point, established by the use of a cartiridge razor. Shave with a DE, you get your five o’clock shadow at nine p.m. But use an electric, you’ll get it at *two* p.m.
(Use a straight razor, and your FOS will show up at two a.m. the next day … )
I switched from my DE to a Panasonic Lamdash a month back, so that I might get out the door and on the way to the office on time. Now I get a close and entirely presentable shave in about four minutes with no extra time needed for prep or cleaning up. It’s true that I now shave twice a day, but hey, shaving is fun … even with an electric!
Steve said,
20 March 2008 at 6:16 pm
Nothing beats this one:
A couple of years ago I was driving along a main thoroughfare in Montreal and came to a stop at a red light. A car pulled up next to me and as I glanced over at the driver I noticed that he was shirtless (it was Summer, so that didn’t surprise me so much). But then…he proceeded to pick up a cup from his cupholder, pulled from it a shaving brush loaded with lather, scrubbed it up on his face until he had a nice thick foam, grabbed a DE razor from the dash, and started wet-shaving in the rear-view mirror!