I used to be one of those people who hated shaving. It just sucked. It never felt even remotely good, pain would actually be a better word describe my shaving experience. When I first started shaving, and I started early, which perhaps shaped my atavistic relationship with the whole process, I was in seventh grade. I needed (wanted) to shave my mustache. In terms of method, I did what any boy does, I learned from my dad, which meant electric. This was fine for my “downy” adolescent hair, and so became my method of choice. By tenth grade I had the full facial hair action going on and so I decided to attempt the razor blade. The first time was a little scary. I mean, basically you are taking a very sharp object and scraping the hair off your face. It was also painful, and on the like 3rd or 4th attempt I opened a huge gash on my jaw (still have a scar), which prompted my immediate retirement from blade razors and back to the electric. At 17 I tried a beard one summer, which was a mistake on several levels. One, the summertime is a terrible time to have lots of facial hair. B) it was much thicker on my neck than on my face, and lastly, what was on my face was uneven. So I bailed.
By the time I was in college, the electric thing was becoming a drag. It actually kind of burned, and it didn’t shave all that close and by this time the facial hair was pretty heavy. Finally someone turned my on to the kind of razor with disposable blades, as opposed to the whole disposable razor, and that had a head that swiveled, allowing for the curvature of my face. Brilliant… and manly. So bye bye to the electric for good. This was all well and good. I mean, I didn’t love it. It was still painful, but a couple of things helped this. One, I only had to shave every 2 or 3 days because I was a slacker. Two, I shaved before I took a shower, so the shower acted as a sort of skin bracer. Three, I discovered aloe vera shaving cream. But in my late 20s I started working at a job where I had to shave daily. All the pain became exaggerated, and my skin didn’t really look that great. It was covered with red dots that didn’t always go away, even after the aloe vera and hot shower. Plus I was beginning to nock myself quite a bit. This spring my shaving experience was changed forever by the discovery of this website: headshaver!!! (thanks to my friendly group blog)!
Tips that I picked up here include:
Wetting your face with water before applying shaving cream
Work shaving cream into your face before shaving
Shave with slow, even strokes
Only pass the blade over any given portion of your face once, or twice (I shave once with the grain and once against)
This has decreased overall shaving time, made my shaves actually closer, improved the condition of my skin radically and shaving no longer really hurts at all. I am a new man… a happy man… a clean shaven man.
