In Search of a Close Shave
Dear Shaving Companies,
I am a man. Since I don’t want to look like a Scottish bagpipe player, I have to shave at least somewhat regularly.
However, like most men, shaving remains one of my least favorite morning rituals, ranked somewhere between bathing in scalding hot water and drinking burnt coffee in the list of things I’d like to be doing after I wake up.
Yet, the other day, as I was taking a Bic razor to my freshly prepared face, a thought flashed across my mind. In the past fifty years, man has been to the moon, we’ve turned the “supercomputer” into a “personal computer” and built this whole newfangled Internet thing, why the Hell do I still bleed after every shave?
Then it dawned on me, it’s YOUR fault shaving companies. You, the purveyors of foams, gels, razors, lotions and more, you are the reason shaving still sucks. Your laziness and/or incompetence has kept this ritual of manhood every bit as painful and violent as it was hundreds of years ago and, dammit, I want that to change.
It’s time you got off your collective asses and brought real change to this industry. If you need some advice, I’ve got a few suggestions.
So-Called Advancements
This disposable razor blade was invented in 1901 by King Camp Gillette and patented in 1904. In the 106 years that have followed not a damn thing has really changed other than making the actual razor, not just the blade, disposable.
When I look at the “progress” in shaving over the last half century it seems to me that it is largely a numbers game. First you had one blade, then two, then three, then four and finally, five. Big fucking deal. The next logical step is to let you drag a Ginsu Knife collection (now available at closeout prices) over your face.
Even patents don’t mean progress in your business. What does 62 patents and years of development get you in this industry? A vibrator hooked up to a Mach3. Women will go crazy over this, but I’m not too keep on paying $15 for something that produces “micropulses”.
As far as I am concerned, this game of oneupmanship is nothing more than you guys playing “whose dick is bigger” while I bleed every time I shave.
Thanks a bunch.
I hope you sell a lot of razors because a lot of us aren’t too thrilled with what we’re getting.
It doesn’t matter if the damn thing has 12 razors, dances on your skin and sings a song, we’re still dragging a blade over our face and tearing flesh away from our skin.
If you can’t improve that, then we have a real problem.
It’s Electric
I can already hear the catcalls, “But John, what about electric razors?”
What about them?
They’re battery-powered miniature lawnmowers for your face, that’s what they are. They come with a screen to keep you from nicking bone and yet, somehow, manage to never actually take any hair off of my face.
I must have bought dozens of these damn things and they’ve all done the same thing, given a great shave… exactly once.
Seriously, every time one of you guys advertises your electric as being “close as a blade’ I bust out in laughter. You might make a shave that looks good, but it feels like gravel. Also, God help me if I skipped a day and my hairs are a little bit longer. Then the blades don’t so much cut the hair as pluck them one at a time from my face. Not pleasant.
It doesn’t matter if I buy a $100 “advanced shaving system” that cleans and charges the damn thing nightly or a ten dollar Chinese knockoff, the results are the same. My skin feels like crap, my arm gets tired and I’m late for work.
Does it beat bleeding? Yes. But so does getting shot in the ass with a pellet gun and you don’t see me doing that voluntarily.
Money Trap
Shaving is nothing but a giant money trap. I mean, you guys make sure razors go obsolete faster than computers and video games put together. Yet, nothing changes. You tick a number up one, name this version “power” or “ultra” and rake in the cash.
Your whole industry is about making money and not about actually making shaving tolerable. If shaving ever stopped sucking, you wouldn’t be able to sell a new product. You have to keep all of us just miserable enough that we are completely desperate to try the next thing.
Well, great job. It worked.
But I’m not having it, I’m rebelling. I can see clearly that the whole blade across the face thing isn’t going so great and I’m looking for alternatives. Don’t like it, well, maybe it’s time you got to work making the alternative I’ll actually want to use.
To give you a heads up, I’ll tell you where I’m starting.
Viva La Revolution!
Like I said, the whole blade/face thing isn’t doing it for me. I trained in martial arts to keep knives away from me so bringing one to my face every morning just seems wrong.
So where do we go from there? Well, our wives and sisters might have had an answer. For decades they’ve used chemicals to dissolve hair. The experiences have been mixed, some good, some bad, and a few similar products have been created for men but have failed.
Why? I don’t know. Maybe some men think it’s sissy to use a chemical on their face, maybe the burning was just too bad. I don’t know. If you think something is sissy just because a woman uses, remember that you don’t have a right to call them weak until you can crap a watermelon. If it doesn’t work, well, it wouldn’t be the most expensive dead end I’ve tried.
Either way, I’m not going to walk away from this idea without at least trying it. It might work, it might not, but the bar is pretty low on this one. If it gets rid of the hair, keeps it gone for longer than a shave and doesn’t put me in intensive care, I’m not going to be too upset.
The worst that can happen is an allergic reaction. I don’t know if I am allergic to these chemicals but I know I’m allergic to sharp things going across my skin. At least I have a chance at happiness by putting chemicals on my face and, besides, when I use a razor I already have shave lotion, shave gel and alcoholic after-shave, at least this way I’m only dealing with one foreign substance.
If that fails, it is back to the drawing board, looking for solutions to a complicated problem.
But that’s where you, the shaving companies, fit in. Why the Hell am I trying to figure this out? You have the millions of dollars, the scientists and the laboratories, you figure it out.
This is your fucking job and I’m going to be doing it for you, making myself a human guinea pig because your solutions suck so bad that medical experimentation on myself can’t be any worse. That is a shame to your entire industry.
Bottom Line
Reading this, I hope all of you are hanging your heads in shame because you owe me and all of your customers and apology for over 100 years of mediocrity.
And men, it’s time we saw this bullshit for just what it is, a marketing scam.
We’ve been duped for too long, kept in line by a false sense of machismo, constant misery and a need to have the latest and greatest in everything.
It’s time we joined forced with the fairer sex and demanded a better solution for all of us. The quest is on and, shaving industry, you need to get scared and get to work.
Vibrators with blades on the end isn’t going to cut it anymore. We demand real solutions.
You can take your patents and shove them, I want answers, not marketing.
And that, as they say, is that.
Sincerely,
John Black
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I may not be a man, but being that I’m a woman, I’ve had to shave my legs for years and ended up with cuts here and there, until they finally came out with 4 blades and for over a year have yet to cut myself! You should try one made for a woman!
I know, I know, you probably don’t feel like holding a pink shaver up to your face worrying your wife might walk in.
Alisha,
At this point, I think I’ll try just about anything. I’ve always wondered if the products for women worked better, maybe it’s time to add that to my list of things to try.
And don’t worry, my wife has seen much worse out of me.