A Close Shave
The Most Controversial Item Ever Posted on Any Weblog Ever
Our fathers and grandfathers shaved better than we do. They had better equipment, honed sharper skills, and I’d bet they enjoyed themselves more, too. That’s no small thing, either, for something you’ll spend five or ten minutes doing almost every morning for your entire adult life. And I’d bet, too, that the same held true for our mothers and grandmothers.
I should know — because I’m the perfect test case.
When you’ve got baby butt skin and a barb wire beard, getting a good shave takes years of practice and a willingness to experiment. Near endlessly it sometimes seemed. Two things helped: No teachers and no preconceived notions. Shouldn’t those be hindrances? Not when it comes to a good shave.
Look. Most guys just drag whatever razor is popular across their faces. And when their sons come of age, they teach them to do the same thing. This is the blind leading around the blind — with sharp objects in hand. No good can come from this.
NOTE: I’ve also included a couple items for the ladies, so just keep reading, girls.
By the time my beard was really coming in, I’d been sent off to military school, where, in my mind, asking for help was an admission of defeat. So I taught myself. Badly, at first. Then, eventually, better. And after a quarter century of pure trial and error, of trying everything without any preconceived notions, I think I’m finally pretty good at the whole shaving thing. Here’s what I know.
Shaving comes in four parts. Pre-shave, lather, shave, and post-shave. Let’s look at each in excruciatingly close detail. And everyone faces the same two enemies: Friction and tearing.
Pre-Shave
You’re about to drag a razor-sharp, uh, razor blade across your throat. You’ll want to take care. A pre-shave oil is a nice touch, although possibly unnecessary. That said, I’ve found that a pre-shave oil can make it slightly more work to get as close a shave as you might want, but makes the closest shaves put less stress on your skin. You’re working on the margins — but small margins make the difference between a great shave and a a merely very good one.
I prefer my shave in the shower. The steady supply of steam keeps your beard soft, puffed up and lifted away your skin. A hot towel applied to the face post-shower is the next best thing. But the towel is applied only once and briefly, and, besides, who has a hot, wet towel?
The VodkaPundit Call: Shave in the shower, and use a pre-shave oil if you still experience post-shave discomfort. If you must shave in the sink, I’ll have other recommendations later.
Lather
That can of shaving cream on your counter? Do yourself and your face a favor and throw it out.
Friction is Enemy Number One, and nothing you get out of a can, can beat the lubrication you’ll get from a proper shaving soap and a badger hair brush. Shaving cream — or gel — sits on your face. It’s good for marking your territory so that you’ll have some indication of where you’ve already shave. I mean, you’ll hardly be able to tell by the length of your beard.
When you use a good brush and soap, two things happen. First, you get a better, denser lather than anything you can squirt out of a can. Second, the badger hair brush gets the lather under your whiskers. That’s lubrication — a slick barrier between the blade, the beard, and your skin. Merely rubbing canned stuff on your face can’t be as effective.
So how do you make the best lather? That’s totally personal. I like the combo of Taylor’s shave soap, a badger hair brush (that part is a must), and a shaving bowl. You might prefer to use a cream and to make the lather on your face. Or some other combination. I haven’t noticed that a cheap badger hair brush is any worse than an expensive one — but that badger hair is completely necessary.
Don’t lather your whole face. Lather one cheek, then shave it. Then the other. Lather and shave your neck third. Finish up with everything between your nose and chin — those are the toughest hairs, and will benefit from spending the longest in the steam.
Still insist on shaving in the sink? Before you even apply your pre-shave oil, fill your shave mug with hot water and let the mug warm up. Anything room temperature is the enemy of a good shave, and that’s doubly true of your lather.
The VodkaPundit Call: Shave oil is OK (American Crew makes the best I’ve tried), if your skin is super-sensitive. But it does a better job of protecting your skin (and clogging your blade) than it does of providing a close shave. And anything that comes out of a can is no better (and possibly worse) than aerosol cheese.
Random Tips for the Ladies
I’m not a woman, but I’ve provided the occasional helping hand in the shower over the years. So here are a few things I’ve learned.
Women’s shave cartridges are overpriced, and no better or different from the men’s stuff. Also, the ones labeled “for women” are usually a year behind the newest men’s stuff. Your best bet? Buy the latest and greatest cartridge system for men, and be happy. Because you can’t live long enough to shave your legs with a double-edge razor and not bleed to death.
Also, I was once acquainted with a professional clothing-removal engineer, who made an important discovery. She noticed that, although her armpits and bikini area were both quite sensitive, only one ever suffered razor burn. The only difference between the two, shaving wise, was that her pits got treated afterwards to a clear stick antiperspirant. So she tired applying her clear stick antiperspirant to her bikini line, and — low and behold! — no more razor burn down under.
I can’t count the number of women’s showers I’ve seen with a bottle of Neutrogena body oil sitting on the shelf. I’ve used it a time or three as a shaving oil or a pre-shave oil, and I can tell you — it’s good stuff. In a real pinch, Kama Sutra brand almond-scented massage oil can work wonders, in or out of the tub.
Otherwise, just get everything waxed and then laugh at us men for worrying so much about being so safe over shaving such a small area.
The VodkaPundit Call: Never trust a man who can’t handle a blade, whether it’s near his parts or yours.
The Shave
Let’s get one thing out of the way right away: Electric razors suck. Almost literally. They don’t shave — they pull and tear. An electric gives the appearance of a good shave, by yanking each hair up and away from your face, then tearing it in two. The jagged remainder then pops back down, close to your skin. That’s not a shave; that’s dermal abuse masquerading as a pricey barbershop.
Now then, let’s get on to the real stuff.
Choose the right tool. For the absolute best shave ever, use a straight razor. Unfortunately, I can’t. Or at least I won’t. For two reasons — I prefer to shave in the shower, and I’m a klutz. If I drop a safety razor in the shower, the worst thing that happens is a broken razor and a bloody toe. If I drop a straight razor in the shower, my son might never get a baby brother or sister. I do own a straight razor, and it’s a beautiful tool; but it’s one I only use before special nights out, when Melissa showers first and has the bathroom all steamed up for me so I can shave in the sink. Otherwise, forget it. A straight razor is just too much maintenance and, in my clumsy hands, too damn dangerous to use naked.
If you insist on using a disposable cartridge razor, I have three words of advice: Death Before Schick. In the never-ending Silly Wars of adding more and more blades to ever-expanding cartridges, Schick has got it all wrong. By the time Schick got up to three blades, their cartridges became so heavy, they were like dragging, well, an electric razor across your face. Their new four-blade jobs are terrible. Friction city.
Starting with the Mach 3, Gillette had the right idea, by changing the form of the cartridge/handle combo into a “paint brush” configuration. Held properly, you won’t apply any unneeded pressure to the blade — and you’ll spare your face a lot of wear and tear. So if you insist on using a cartridge system, go with Gillette. Also, using a modern Gillette system provides decent training to help you graduate to a double edge razor.
But at nearly four bucks a cartridge for a second-rate shave, the question is: Why?
With my horrible, terrible, no good, very bad skin/beard combo, I used to go through two Gillette Fusion cartridges a week. That comes to almost eight dollars a week, or nearly $400 a year. And that’s to get a shave no better than the one I got when my beard was still soft and my age was still in the teens. Personally, I prefer to get better at things as time goes on. So I tried out the shave of our fathers and grandfathers.
(Well, not my dad and granddad. Grandpa, for all his genius, used an electric, and Dad died so young I hadn’t yet taken an interest in how he shaved — so I have no idea what he used. But by and large, the generations born before the Idiot Boom used double edged safety razors. And as I said before, they shaved better than us, and got better results than we get.)
The safety razor was invented by King Gillette a century ago — and abandoned by his company once it realized greater that profits could be gotten from disposable cartridges. And if the shave wasn’t as good? Well, you could be sure they’d come out with a new and improved cartridge in a year or two.
Double-edge razors just work, although they do take some small amount of skill. The heads don’t rotate, so you’ll have to learn how to — gasp! — flex your wrist. But the best ones — from Germany’s Merkur in Solingen, home of some of the world’s finest knives — are adjustable. From safe to aggressive, you can dial in your own shave. Just remember to develop your skillset before you ramp up the aggressiveness. Even better: at about fifty cents a blade (or half that for the Walgreens no-name brand), even the most expensive DE razor will pay for itself in months.
Don’t believe me? Gillette and Schick have tacitly admitted that DE razors work best. Their newest cartridges feature a “plus-one” virtual DE blade, supposedly for shaving those hard-to-reach areas under your nostrils. Tomorrow morning, try using that “plus-one” blade on your entire upper lip. You’ll get the next best thing to a DE shave, and you’ll wonder what the hell the other four or five blades on that stupid cartridge are there for, anyway.
There are two kinds of DE razors to choose from: Flip top and butterfly. The butterfly tops open beautifully, and are marvels of precision engineering. They’re also so bulky that you’ll need a nose job before you can get the blade under your nostrils. That, or you’ll give yourself an accidental rhinoplasty one morning. The clip-top models are also generally cheaper.
Finally: No matter what tool you use, use it slowly. Shaving isn’t a speed contest, and you are, after all, dragging a sharp blade around your face. Remember: You want to slice those little hairs off, not tear them. Because whatever you’re doing to your beard, you’re doing worse to your skin. So be gentle.
The VodkaPundit Call: Straight edge razors rock, but are too much work for anything but a Saturday Date Night shave. Schick sucks, full stop. Gillette is passably good. Electric razors are for men with more money than beard. Double-edge razors are the smart compromise. They take some acquired skill, and some money up front. But in the long run you’ll save both money and skin.
Post-Shave
Underrated, but still important. Wash your face after you shave, not before, or you’ll strip off your skin’s natural oils — your best, natural protection against friction. Also, shaving is the perfect exfoliant, so you’ll only need to scrub the parts where hair doesn’t grow. Convenient.
After you wash, gently towel dry and apply a good toning lotion. Or if you don’t mind the scent, just borrow a dollop of whatever facial moisturizer your wife uses. Then — if you still need to — and only then, apply an alcohol-based aftershave. And that’s pretty much all there is to it.
The VodkaPundit Call: The post-shave is easy, takes no time at all, is vital to good skin care, and is almost totally overlooked by most guys. Don’t be most guys. Ever.
But the margin separating most guys from the rest of us can be razor thin.
>For the absolute best shave ever, use a straight razor. Unfortunately, I can’t.
You had me until this point.
Straight razor shaving is a metaphor for life. I won’t claim to have ‘arrived’ either, but there is a learning curve. Do it.
I first started shaving in the shower when I noted a girlfriend shaving her legs in the shower. She said it was much more comfortable. It seemed to make sense to me so I’ve been doing it that way for … oh probably 30 years now. Williams Shaving soap and a badger brush are my required equipment and since my beard is pretty scraggly, a cheap Bic works fine.
But the key points are “in the shower”, “shaving soap and a badger brush”
Smitty –
I do still use my straight razor, but only in the sink, before a big date when Melissa has the bathroom all steamed up. The idea of me wielding that thing in the shower daily is just too dangerous to contemplate.
Ok, how about some links to your preferred products?
Shaving in the shower doesn’t work for those of us as blind as a bat and can’t plop contacts in first thing in the a.m. (Heck, you’d even have to do it before anything else, lest having to vigorously wash hands, then touch the contacts. And I find sleeping in them horrible — which has the benefit of not being able to spend the night — nor will I let any darn laser touch my eyes.)
Great tips–I’ll have to employ a couple. However, I must take an opportunity to plug the aftershave cream from Calvin Klein Eternity for Men. Very soothing stuff for the post-shave.
Or, just be a proper hairless ladyface and get lasered. I’m considering doing that since I can’t grow a decent beard (good goatee, decent sideburns, but the cheeks look spotty as far as hair is concerned, and I’m never going to grow that neck hair into something fashionably masculine.) Cheeks and neck can’t cost that much to get removed, can they?
Seeing the results of my girlfriend’s laser treatments makes me see their usefulness. If I could figure out a time when my face doesn’t get any sun–in Arizona–is going to be harder than the process she had to avoid sun on treated areas, but it’s a tempting idea and one that would probably save money in the long run.
Tips for women: Use your husband’s/boyfriend’s razor to shave your legs and then videotape him shaving his face later on. If nothing else, you’ll have a submission for American’s Funniest Home Videos.
I’ve been shaving on a regular basis for thirty-eight years. I’ve used, in order, an electric shaver, an injector razor, a Wilkinson bonded razor, a straight razor, a double-edged blade, a Gillette Trac II, and, most recently, a Gillette Mach III, all for several years or more each. My beard is probably a bit slower-growing and a bit less heavy than average. My experience is as follows:
Electric shavers don’t shave anywhere near as close as blades. Straight razors, despite what I had expected, don’t shave as close as safety razors.
A brush and mug does result in a better shave than shaving cream out of a can. Badger bristles work much better than boar bristles in a shaving brush.
It was very difficult to avoid cutting myself with a straight razor. A straight razor is also extraordinarily difficult to sharpen properly, even if you, like me, do a good job of sharpening knives. I cut myself far fewer times with double-edged blades than with a straight razor. I cut myself far fewer times with the Trac II than with double-edged blades. I have never cut myself in eight years of shaving with the Mach III. I suspect that this has to do with the fact that the cartridge is not fixed in place relative to the razor, rather than with the number of blades or anything else.
The Mach III gives me the closest and most comfortable shave of anything that I’ve tried.
I think after all that effort for your sensitive skin, you should consider growing a beard. Get one of those Civil War, Robert E. Lee beards that cover the entire neck and face, that is don’t even trim.
Otherwise, don’t worry if your beard isn’t shaved so close. It grows back so fast, the difference in length at the time of shaving is moot. Cut it to look presentable, don’t cut so close to get ingrown hair, and don’t fret so much. It’s an unpleasant little chore necessary only to be socially acceptable in some fields of work (like I have to shave to stay in the Marines), but real men don’t worry if the shave is so close. They just want to get the shaving chore over with for the day and get on to what’s important in life, like playing with your child and spending time with your wife.
But as for me, I’ve started using a battery powered razor for when I’m in the field and that prompted me to get a really nice rotary electric razors for occasional use at home. Generally, I hate electrics.
I’ve found that an electric shaves much closer than a blade, by far, but they are very unreliable and tend to miss a stray hair or two. As the hair grows longer it gets harder for the electric to cut it. In an environment with few mirrors, I find that soon I have hairy spots on my face that I have to cut with a blade anyway.
The convenience of an electic is great when you don’t have running water, but otherwise, they suck. I’ll stick with my mach 3. Using a mach 3 is one of the few times in my life where I was victimized by an advertizing blitz to switch to a new fad that has virtually no real benefit over the old single bladed cartidge.
Come follow the way of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and leave your decadent shaving to the infidels. Do the math, it will cost-justify in mere months.
I cut myself far fewer times with the Trac II than with double-edged blades. I have never cut myself in eight years of shaving with the Mach III. I suspect that this has to do with the fact that the cartridge is not fixed in place relative to the razor, rather than with the number of blades or anything else.
My experience is exactly the opposite. The only time I get cut with my safety razor is if I catch the edge of my lip or carve the top off the rare zit. Any sort of cartridge razor, though, turns my face into hamburger.
The fact that I hold the razor between my thumb and forefinger and let is sort of “float” against my face might have something to do with that. Changing your grip may be all that you need.
The tip for ladies is: wax.
Gosh, what next?
Manscape- Control of Unruly Eyebrows?
The Earhair Debate- to Trim or to Braid?
Been using a DE razor (The Merkur Futur) for years and it’s almost a pleasure to use than a chore.
Now, years ago when I used a straight razor for a time, I learned from an old acquaintance was that the straight razor is what the barber uses on you, not you on yourself. That back in the “old days” no man shaved himself because all there was were straight razors, that someone else always did it for you except in the most dire of circumstances. And then you just grew a beard.
So let me ask this question, has anyone ever had the pleasure of going to a skilled barber for a shave? The whole steaming towel treatment? It’s something you should try at least once.
Thanks for the razor tip, VP. What I go by is this: In the shower, get hot water on your face, lather up some shaving soap and put it on your beard. Rinse it off first or shave with it on there. A lot of razor burn is from germs that needed to get washed away with some soap before getting smushed into scrapes in your skin made by the razor.
Please tell me that you won’t be covering the Boyzillian next week.
Phelps -
Interesting. I don’t doubt that that’s your experience. Thank you for not doubting that what I wrote is my experience. I really didn’t expect that things would be that different between two different men while shaving, but I guess they are.
I’ve been a Mach3 user for years. I shave whole head minus a mustache. Recently, I was in a rush, needed refills and saw a package of Pace 6 blade (I thought they were 4 or 5 blade) disposables at Freakin’ Dollar General for $3.50 a 3 pack.
Egad.
I used the first well over a month, and only changed to see if a newer one was much better. Nope. I bet I can use one for 2, maybe 3 months and still get a good shave. Korean made. They use the “paintbrush” style like the Gillette, and when shaving in the Shower (the best place, I agree) that style handle is easiest to, well, handle. Especially when shaving the back of the head.
My tip for keeping razors sharp (I use the disposable ones, though I’ve long been tempted to get a double edge razor) is to keep them in a mug of mineral/baby oil. It’s not a good idea if you have toddlers about since it may look like something to drink, but it really works well.
Merkur razors and Proraso shaving cream are the axis of a great shave.
Second the Prorazo shaving cream. I got a RetroRazor for X-mas, and life has been much easier. Had to figure out which blade was best (It comes with three brands), and settled with the Dorco. The Derby’s ripped my face up!
Chuck
As someone who has a fairly thick beard and is NOT a morning person, I’ve got three words for you: Braun electric shaver.
I do have a goatee so avoid having to do my chin and upper lip, admittedly the most annoying and stubborn areas to shave, but for anyone who can get away with using an electric at all, try the Braun before you give up on it entirely. Whatever else you want to say about it, it’s a time-saver and cheaper in the long run than buying disposable razors.
jvon,
I have an electric razor, and it works pretty well for maintenance. But it sucks if I let the hair grow for even two days. Electrics work okay on stubble, but not if it gets just a bit longer than that.