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I had to stop reading this New York Times article about learning to shave with a straight razor with Seth Kugel wrote the following:
Like back-scratching, shaving is an act much more easily performed on others than on oneself. Which explains why our grandfathers went to the barber for a shave (though not why they wore ties to baseball games — that’s still a mystery).
Modern men have been spoiled by today’s razors, taking for granted the ever-increasing number of blades from Trac II to Mach3 to Quattro to the five-bladed Fusion. The new technology allows us to shave our face in just about any direction at any reasonable speed, like a freewheeling painter working on a shaving cream canvas.
I know, what a shame, all this convenience of easy shaving without slicing your cheek open! We’re not "spoiled" by the current state of razor-technology. We demanded it over the years because our grandfathers — the stalwart sort who wore ties to the stadium and had office-couch dalliances with Miss Holloway — were sick of paying money for a shave or hacking up their faces when they tried it themselves. This is progress. The good sort.
Maybe twice I have paid for a barber to shave my face. I left the experiences with two thoughts: first, Hmm, my face is marginally smoother than if I shaved myself, and second, I really can’t justify this expense. We are on the verge of a global economic nightmare. The fellow paying a Kugelesque $70 to learn how to use an antiquated piece of grooming technology is either not going to survive the coming winter or deserves to be hung by the suspenders from a lamppost as an example.
Update: Eric Rauchway informs me that bearers of my name have complicated relationships with the straight razor.
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Hmmm. I musta missed this article the first time through.
I started shaving at age 11. I started shaving everyday at age 14. (I’m now 56). I started with the standard Gillette double-edged blade. Never even attempted to use a straight razor. I went from the double-edged to single-edged to Trac II to Mach 3 (with some time spent using a ”band” razor – you actual turned a dial and the blade moved to a new area showing – I believe it was a Schick product). The cuts to the face got progressively fewer with the improvements to the blades (and improvements to the shaving cream as well).
My father would periodically treat himself to a barber shave but that is a luxury I have never tried and given the dearth of barbers these days, probably never will. Oh well.
Huh?
Labor was cheap in the day, and the technology didn’t exist, so straight razors existed. The barber shop also provided a social network — it was the Facebook/MySpace of the day, allowing men to network and share information without having to go to the saloon to do so (different network, not popular with the wife).
Men also didn’t always go to the barber, or even shave themselves at home; they often had help from their spouse. That’s something you miss out on today.
You also missed out on the experience of having older males in the family spending time teaching you to shave — the $70 plunked down at the Cut Throat 101 is a replacement for male bonding events that happened for hundreds of years between fathers and sons. Today’s young men are lucky if they get more than 10 minutes of time in total with their father on shaving techniques.
The safety razor wasn’t invented so much to replace the cumbersome and awkward straight razor, as it was to simply make money. The device itself wasn’t where the money was made, but on the repeat sales of replacement blades. With a straight razor, there’s very little turn-over; a well-maintained straight razor and a leather strop could last for years and years.
Think too, about the societal pressures we’ve placed on men’s appearance now that razors are so easily purchased and used; in the day of the straight razor, society didn’t expect men to be clean-shaven all the time, only expected the very wealthy to be that way. A man with stubble was a working stiff — and that was okay. Now if you have stubble and you’re in a particular class of people, you’re a slacker.
I’m not advocating getting friendly with a straight razor, mind you. I just think that they haven’t had healthy respect except for the damage a man can do to himself with one.
Forgot to mention that the very worst shave I ever gave myself with an old fashioned double-edged safety razor was better than the best shave I’ve ever gotten from an electric razor.
But then I’m one of those who has to shave against the grain or it would never get cut off. Nothing like having a five o’clock shadow at 1PM
I’m with Spencer on this. While I’m sympathetic to the NYT guy in that I have an appreciation for old fashioned ways of doing things, I’ve been down this road with shaving. For a long time, I used a shaving brush and a block of soap for lather… but I finally gave it up. Canned shaving cream is simply better – the quality of lather you get is far superior, it’s a lot faster to do, it’s no more expensive, etc. I also got to the point of actually looking for a straight razor, but finally admitted to myself that as cool as it would be to use one, that wouldn’t make up for the possibility of cutting my face off.
Of course, now that I wear a full beard this question has gotten a lot more academic. I shave about twice a week – from the top of the adam’s apple down, and upper cheek region – and that’s it. The advantage of having a beard (I mean, aside from the awesome stylistic aspects): no one notices if you blow off shaving the rest of your face.
Does anyone else remember the mocking SNL ad that appeared, I think, on their inaugural episode, about the three-bladed razor? We roared at the time, still laughing as we were about the double-bladed razors that were new then.
5?!