Facts about Shaving
For most of human history, men have had beards. And, it is easy to understand why. Cave men had beards because they had no choice. They lacked any kind of blade to shave their beards off.
Many religions also have prohibitions against shaving. For example, in the Book of Leviticus (19:27), the Bible contains a specific prohibition against shaving your beard and the hair on the sides of your head. Some orthodox religions still practice this today.
Once metallurgy had been refined in any civilization, the technology of knives and scissors follows soon after. These cutting tools become more and more refined and these refinements eventually lead to the development of the razor, the sharpest knife possible. So, with the creation of the sharp knife, it became possible to shave hair off the face and other body parts.
However, even with these developments, most men preferred to have beards. This may be because shaving with a blade was dangerous activity better left to a professional. Unless you live in a city and are wealthy, being able to find and afford a shaving professional was difficult. So, up until the 20th century, beards were fashionable and most men wore them.
The exception was the Ancient Egyptians. They did not like hair of almost any type. Most Egyptian men shaved the heads, faces, bodies , legs and pubic hair regularly as an act of cleanliness.
But, during World War I in the United States, that all changed. There were two reasons for that:
1. Gillette created the "safety razor" in 1901, and it was steadily gaining popularity because of a massive advertising campaign. The safety razor made it possible and inexpensive for men to shave daily.
2. Soldiers in the United States Army were required to shave.
One of the reasons for shaving during World War I is the fact that it was the first war to see chemical agents used on the battlefield. Soldiers had to use gas masks for the first time. In order for a gas mask to fit properly, soldiers needed to be clean-shaven. So, the U.S. Army bought millions of Gillette razors and blades to make daily shaving possible.
When all of the soldiers returned from World War I with their clean-shaven faces, they were heroes. They appeared in their home towns and they also appeared in newsreels in the movie theaters. Combined with ad campaigns from companies like Gillette, it became the fashion to be clean shaven.
Between 1920 and 1960, beards were considered a relic of the past and very unfashionable. That taboo has eased somewhat since the 60s, but it is still far more common today for men to shave than not. And as you can see, shaving is in reality a fashion statement and largely the result of advertising by companies like Schick, Norelco and Gillette. Or, to put it another way, no one ever made money pushing the idea of having a beard.
Between 1920 and 1960, beards were considered a relic of the past and very unfashionable. That taboo has eased somewhat since the 60s, but it is still far more common today for men to shave than not. And as you can see, shaving is in reality a fashion statement and largely the result of advertising by companies like Schick, Norelco and Gillette. Or, to put it another way, no one ever made money pushing the idea of having a beard.
The Straight Razor
In order to shave, you need a sharp knife of some sort to do it. Although you can use an ordinary knife to do the job. And, the best knife for the job is a straight razor.
If you have ever watched an old movie or cartoon that features a straight razor, you have probably seen the sharpening stone, and you have certainly seen the leather strop used to hone the blade to razor sharpness. Sharpening a straight razor is actually not easy as you can see if you look through these sharpening instructions.
A blade goes from sharp to dull because the sharp edge wears away. Atoms of metal at the edge of the blade chip off. The sharpening stone recreates the wedge shape at the tip of the blade. You actually abrade the metal with the stone to bring the edge of the blade to an atom-slicing point. By pushing the edge of the blade into the stone, the stone can carve away the metal and create a sharp wedge.
However, the stone will leave a bit of microscopic roughness on the sharp edge of the blade. You take this roughness out by using the strop. On the strop a person runs the blade on the leather in the opposite direction that is used on the stone. The idea is to align the micro-serrations on the edge of the blade and bring the blade to maximum microscopic sharpness.
Doing all this honing and stropping is an art, and it takes a lot of time. Creating a smooth, razor-sharp edge is not easy. Add to this the fact that using this long, exceedingly sharp razor blade on skin is inherently dangerous. If the choice is between using a straight razor or not shaving at all, it is no wonder that throughout the ages men have preferred to let their beards grow.
The development of the safety razor changed all of that.
Gillette's Safety Razor
In order to make shaving safe, comfortable and easy, someone would have to completely re-conceptualize the shaving tool. That someone turned out to be a man named King Gillette (1855-1932).
Gillette's idea was brilliant in its simplicity. His goal was to create a small, inexpensive metal blade that would be sharpened in a factory and then thrown away when it became dull. In Patent number775134, Gillette put it this way: A main object of my invention is to provide a safety-razor in which the necessity of honing and stropping the blade is done away with.
By doing this, Gillette would accomplish three goals:
1. He would completely eliminate the tedium and "art" of manual sharpening, making the act of shaving much simpler.
2. He would replace the inherently dangerous straight razor with the "safety razor"- a device where injury is nearly impossible.
3. He would create one of the greatest business models ever devised. Millions of people would be shaving, and these people would be using one of Gillette's blades every week. If Gillette made a little money off of each blade, he would become fabulously wealthy.
The hardest part of Gillette's plan was sharpening the blade in a factory. Gillette's idea was to take thin, rolled steel, stamp it into small, rectangular shapes and then sharpen the edges. That seems simple enough today, but at the time it had never been done. There were two separate problems that had to be solved:
1. Hardening the steel so that it would hold a sharp edge. Heating steel to about 2,000 degrees F and then cooling it off hardens it. The thin metal in Gillette's blades had a tendency to warp because it would cool quickly and unevenly.
2. The sharpening the edge of such a thin, small piece of metal was very difficult.
Both of these problems turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated. In fact, it took Gillette six years of trying before he and an engineer named William Nickerson got the process worked out.
The heating problem was originally solved by sandwiching the blades between thicker pieces of slower-cooling metal during the heating and cooling process. The second problem was solved by increasing levels of automation. The first razor blades produced by Gillette were sharpened almost completely by hand. Eventually, automation dropped the cost of each blade down to a penny, while they sold for about a dime each.
The heating problem was originally solved by sandwiching the blades between thicker pieces of slower-cooling metal during the heating and cooling process. The second problem was solved by increasing levels of automation. The first razor blades produced by Gillette were sharpened almost completely by hand. Eventually, automation dropped the cost of each blade down to a penny, while they sold for about a dime each.
The rest, as they say, is history. When Proctor and Gamble bought Gillette in 2005, it paid more than $50 billion for the company.
Schick's Electric Razor
In 1928, the act of shaving was re-conceptualized again by a man named Jacob Schick (1877-1937). Schick got his start in the shaving business by inventing a system for loading a razor with a new blade without ever touching the blade (the forerunner of "injector" razors). But, Schick's ultimate goal was to eliminate the shaving cream and water altogether and create a dry shaving system. To do this, Schick invented the electric razor.
Schick's first problem was a creative one. Men had to "see" shaving in a completely different way. Up until the time Schick invented his shaver, shaving had always been done with a blade that slices. The blade has to be sharp enough to slice off the hair in the same way that a knife slices through a stick of butter. Schick's electric razor, on the other hand, would use the same concept behind a pair of scissors. The hair is actually sheered off.
So, how did Schick develop his electric razor design? If you actually try to shave with a pair of scissors, you quickly realize that it can not work. You are not able to get close enough to the skin with scissors. This is Schick's second area of innovation. In an electric razor, an incredibly thin, perforated piece of metal called the foil is what actually touches the skin. The hairs poke through the perforations in the metal and then are sliced off by a blade on the other side of the foil. The blades in an electric razor can either oscillate back and forth (as in Schick's original design) or they can spin (as in the Norelco design).
Having re-conceptualized the idea of shaving, Schick faced another problem. Electric motors in the 1920s had not yet been miniaturized to the point where they could fit in a hand-held device. Schick's first design had the motor about the size of a grapefruit. It then connected to the shaving head with a flexible drive shaft. Looking back on it today, this design seems completely ridiculous. But, there really was no other way to do it given the motors available at the time.
However, motors were shrinking and all Schick had to do was wait. In 1931 he released his first handheld electric shaver complete with a small internal motor.
Shaving Products
Before leaving the topic of shaving, we should say something about lather and shaving products. Wet shaving would be much more difficult if it weren't for some kind of lather to lubricate the whole process.
Originally (and still today for many people) the lubricant was soap. You can use plain old bathroom soap applied to the skin with your hand. But the tradition of the old shaving mug, with a bar of shaving soap at the bottom, is much more common. The soap is applied with a special shaving brush with bristles made of badger hair. Yes, badger hair.
According to some experts, the mug and brush are the only way to go when applying lather for a shave. But, if you watch TV commercials, you are led to believe otherwise. The commercials on these shows bombard men with the message that shaving cream in an aerosol can is the only way to go.
The canned shaving cream is in reality a foam is made by the chemicals in the can. And all shaving creams contain the same basic ingredients. A standard recipe contains approximately 8.2 percent stearic acid, 3.7 percent triethanolamine, 5 percent lanolin, 2 percent glycerin, 6 percent polyoxyethylene sorbitan monostearate, and 79.6 percent water. Two major ingredients in this formula are common in many of today's preparations. Stearic acid is one of the main ingredients in soap making, and triethanolamine is a surfactant, or surface-acting agent, which does the job of soap, albeit much better. While one end of a surfactant molecule attracts dirt and grease, the other end attracts water. Lanolin and polyoxyethylene sorbitan monostearate are both emulsifiers which hold water to the skin, while glycerin, a solvent and an emollient, renders skin softer and more supple.
The combination of the glycerine, lanoline, Stearic acid and triethanolamine gives shaving cream its extra-creamy and dense lather. That combined with the propellant (often butane or propane) expands and instantly evaporates when it leaves the can, filling the foam with its millions of bubbles.
Shaving Body Hair
We seem to have come full circle with both some men and some women. The Ancient Egyptians shave off all of their body hair. Now a considerable number of people do the same thing.
Why do men in increasing numbers shave their body and pubic hair? It turns out there are many reasons. One reason is vanity. Other reasons are to improve their appearance, cleanliness, odor control, and being an athlete. Indeed, 54.9 percent of the respondents to the Men's Fitness magazine survey said they wished they could change their body hair more than any other physical attribute, including muscularity. But, while shaving is not for everyone, those men who shave their bodies say that they generally more comfortable, cleaner and/or more youthful.
However, most men and women who eliminate body hair do not use razors. The use Nair for Men and Nair for Women. The reason is the Nair products eliminate hair below the skin surface thereby reducing the need to eliminate hair as frequently as when it is shaved.
Certain athletes are known for smooth physiques. A hairless body shows a lot more definition, said Cynthia James, a body-shaving expert who works with professional bodybuilders, wrestlers and boxers. Hairs cast shadows, which tend to obscure muscle detail.
Men often shave the hair around and on their penises. This trend was created by the porn industry. Male porn stars often eliminated penis hair to "clean up" the area and make the penis look bigger. This trend continues today.
Strict Muslims remove all body hair below the neck, both men and women. It is seen as an act of religious purity. The practice dates back at least to the 8th Century.
Portuguese explorers noted that the natives of what was to become Brazil were removing pubic hair as early as 1500 CE.
Shaving the underarms and legs did not occur in the US until between 1915 and 1930. Fashions looked better with smoothness and there was also a bit of a public panic over issues of hygiene that were solved via razor and deodorants. These ideas did not really take hold in Europe until much later and not completely.
Portuguese explorers noted that the natives of what was to become Brazil were removing pubic hair as early as 1500 CE.
Shaving the underarms and legs did not occur in the US until between 1915 and 1930. Fashions looked better with smoothness and there was also a bit of a public panic over issues of hygiene that were solved via razor and deodorants. These ideas did not really take hold in Europe until much later and not completely.
Some ethnic groups like the Japanese, the Chinese and the Koreans do not have a lot of body hair. Hair seems to be less of an issue in those cultures, and so too its removal.
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