Naturally, a market split of the adult population between “wet” and “dry” continued to stimulate fierce competition and industrial innovation. Gillette marketed “long lasting” stainless steel blades in 1960. Though available as early as 1945, cartridge razors reappeared and were heavily marketed in 1965. Plastic disposable razors proliferated through the take-out, throwaway ’60s and ’70s. (No one worried about landfills back then.) ...

The most popular of these were produced by Frenchman Marcel Bich (of “Flick Your Bic” fame), who introduced his yellow disposables in 1972. A design war proliferated: razors needed to be even more high-tech, scientific, reliable, sharp, and earnest, like the men who used them. If shaving was an unconscious act of castration (see Chapter 7), the man performing it needed a state-of-the-art tool that rendered him macho and restored his sense of self.


Gillette Razor Blades, 1960

In 1971, Gillette marketed a twin-bladed razor called the Trac 2. Six years later, a pivoting head which followed the contours of the face, called atra (automatic tracking razor) – an acronym akin to a space age defence program – exploded in popularity. By the 1990s, “comfort strips” were introduced, containing lubricants or polyvinyl perched above blades. The new “sensitive” male of the ’90s wasn’t afraid to cry and didn’t seem to mind being told that he also had sensitive skin. In 1998, Mach-3, a triple-bladed razor, was launched by Gillette after top-secret research allegedly costing almost three quarters of a billion dollars. Interestingly, the advertising budget for all razors seems to have dropped over the last ten years. It is now rare to see advertisements for razor products in magazines or on television or billboards. The market is essentially sewn up, and no doubt companies are throwing their money at some new gizmo, which they will soon convince us is indispensable.


American soldier shaving during a lull in the fighting which came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, 1945

What’s next? Quadruple-blade razors? Possibly quintuple? Whatever is in store, shaving is simply too compelling ever to disappear entirely. It is clear that men have never been consumers of topical products which epilate (a word used by women to distance themselves from the notion of hairiness and shaving), although these substances which remove hair without the need for razors have been perfected over the years. However, in the 1990s, a somewhat more permanent form of hair removal option emerged – laser technology. The trend first caught on with transsexuals, men plagued with excessively hairy areas such as backs, and gay guys wanting smooth legs. Increasingly, however, men of all stripes are using the technology for facial hair, especially if they suffer from heavy growth, sensitive skin, or a tendency to produce ingrown hairs. Here’s how it works: melanin, a pigment in skin, absorbs laser energy, and takes it down the hair shaft, where heat actually damages the follicle. If hair does grow back, it is finer and easier to manage. The process is costly – $400 U.S. a session, requiring five sessions for total beard eradication. So far, reaction to the process has been mixed. Few men want to regain a complete baby face, resemble women, or lose the option of having facial hair sometime in the future. Meanwhile, whatever the latest facial hair craze, shaving companies follow them closely; it didn’t take them long to unleash a whole new batch of high-tech electric clippers for ultra-precise goatee pruning, sideburn trimming, and soul patch shaping. It is clear that no matter what utensils are available, fashion trends and perceptions of masculine power will continue to dictate whether a man shaves or grows.


Man shaving outdoors while his wife looks on at their camp on a Sunday morning outing in Cleveland National Forest, 1922

Something else became clear to me about shaving as I reviewed its convoluted origins: it’s all about ritual. In today’s modern world, there are few enduring ceremonies that continue to engage men, no matter what society they live in. Anthropologists tell us that for any true ritual to take hold, the following elements are necessary: an artifact, a script, repetitive re-enactment, and a ritual audience. Men shave with the knowledge they have gained from watching their fathers and possibly their grandfathers, brothers, and uncles over the years. For boys, the act is defined as a masculine pursuit, and an introduction into manhood; although men tend to shave privately in the confines of their bathroom, all shaving-related advertising, with its images of macho-men and the latest phallus-shaped gadgets, confirms this notion publicly. It’s no surprise the ancient Greeks and Romans celebrated the ritual of the first shave – the clippings of which were offered to the gods as part of fertility and fecundity rites.

Even now, the youth who shaves for the first time looks in the mirror and he doesn’t see peach-fuzz – he sees a man. His repeated use of shaving implements thus becomes part of a complex gender construction in addition to reinforcing prevailing professional, class, and religious associations to “clean-shavenness.” In the last 100 years, we have all been successfully convinced that a smooth face is a masculine one. The shaving man uses a man-made tool to reveal his “true face” as he grooms his body and shores up his sense of self for dealing with the outside world. The women in his life are not afforded this enactment (at least not openly or on their faces). The closeness of his shave actually entices the female and becomes part of his competitive edge in the corporate jungle. As rituals go, you don’t get much more universal, powerful, or enduring than that. And product designers and advertisers have been aware of it for a very long time indeed.

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