Romancing Your Face into a Nice Shave

Alex Bill, in his article for Ohio University's The Post, deftly compares Pogonotrophy, the art of beard shaping, with taking your face out on a date. As he very well puts it:

As a man, you will have hair that insists on growing out of your face long after it refuses to grow out of your head. Embrace this; stop treating shaving as a chore and start enjoying it.

If it only were this easy with other things in life, like jury duty or ab crunches...

Why wet-shaving: shaving advice at the Fendrihan Shaving Shop

Shave with the same blade for 22 months?

This story appeared at lifehacker and caught my eye not so much because it claims to extend the life of a razor cartridge for years or because it says to use no other prop but your arm, but more because what it basically proposes is to strop the blades, and that sounds somewhat reasonable.

Leather Strops at the Fendrihan Shaving Shop

Shave, Wax and Sanitize

The manscaping trend is far from new. It's a preoccupation for some, while others dismiss it. Obsessing about it can even reach criminal proportions.

Though there's been a lot of hype in the media about how a huge percentage of the population is tirelessly removing every last bit of body hair, it turns out some of the studies that support this data were funded by grooming companies with a direct interest in inflating the figures.

The San Francisco Sentinel discusses what's true and what's not and sheds some light on this hairy business. Some of the points that caught my attention:

• A man should not be ashamed to order the standard selection of treatments at the waxing front desk: “back, crack and sack.”
• Teenagers as young as 14 or 15 feel that pubic hair is disgusting and unhygienic.
• A recent study concluded: “Unshaven women have fewer sex prospects.”
• Although some studies claimed that 88 percent of women and 67 percent of men depilated their genital areas, in reality just a little more than 20 percent of young people do.
• Because this practice uncovers those former private parts, it is easier to feel self-conscious about them. A plastic surgeon states “people are increasingly asking me about surgery.”
• Having hair in the crotch and in the armpits keeps one’s skin from chaffing.

Over-shaven? Aftershaves at the Fendrihan Shaving Shop