Heart and Mind

Shaving Habits

I'm quite pleased to announce that this blog entry—though no more special than any of my other useless musings—is historic blog number 100 on Heart and Mind. Pretty cool! Have I slowed down? You betcha! Considering that I finished the first year with 70-something posts and my blog just turned two a couple of days ago, I'm definitely not as prolific as I was. This, as always, is due to a shortage of time. I've got a few blogs queued up in my head, waiting for the proper time to write them. Here's one, though, to read right now.

In recent times, certain individuals in the Coffee Crew and I have been discussing the changing standards of personal decorum, whether it be related to attire, grooming, or mannerisms. It's the whole "we used to get dressed up to go out to dinner and wear a tie to the holidays" comparison that we've also talked about here and there on this blog. All the discussions that I've had have also included terrifically engaging debate as to whether these changes have been a good thing or a bad thing for society as a whole. Well, I certainly don't plan to open up the whole can of worms here and try to answer whether things are better or worse, but I can muse on a topic that will contribute more evidence to the notion that we sure have changed a lot over the years.

I got the idea for this blog entry the other day when I was, as the title suggests, shaving, and I started considering how my shaving habits differ so much from the shaving habits that I saw in the world during my pre-shaving years.

Before I get any further, let me clarify that I am talking about shaving the whiskers on my face. I do not "manscape" at all, and that includes chest, back, legs, or any region that is not my face (or the front of the neck right below it). In that sense, I'm probably more like prior generations.

Regarding facial shaving, though, things are different for me. The image I had growing up was that a man shaved everyday. Or, at least, everyday that he went to work. It was part of a busy morning routine, just as essential as showering or brushing your teeth. Looking unshaven with stubble was akin to looking unclean. Even my father, who wore a beard, used to shave in the mornings to outline and shape it, which is to say, he shaved the portions of his face that were supposed to be clean shaven.

Go up one generation more to my grandfather and you'll see a guy who, as far as I know, never skipped a morning shaving. He used an electric razor (seems sort of ironic to me, since that kind of gadgetry would seem more new-school than the regular "blade" that I prefer) and would meticulously shave off every single whisker on his face habitually day in and day out, even when there wasn't any visible stubble. And he never grew a beard. When I was home from college for a holiday one time, he pulled me and my beard-in-progress-stubble aside and spoke in hushed tones to me and said, "I see you're growing a beard."

"Yes," I said. "I am."

He replied, in his quiet tones so as to be tactful, "It looks...."

And then he paused as though he wanted to find the best word he could to tactfully describe what he saw.

"...bad."

I could have been offended, but I just found it hysterical. It didn't look bad. It just looked like a beard-in-progress, which, perhaps, is not the most flattering look, but that wasn't the point. It's simply that he was from a generation where beards were not where it was at. Especially for young men. He told me several times that it was bad idea to "cover up my face" with hair and made some kind of remark about how beards were only for old men or something like that. Born in the first decade of the 1900s, he missed the era in the previous century where facial hair was in vogue (think Civil War) for years and years, and he was already older in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when "young kids today" (guys like my father) started seeing it ideal to stylistically grow whiskers.

Well, to get back to the subject here, when you fast forward to my personal habits—and I know I'm not the only one—we see some major generational differences. Of course, unlike my grandfather, I as a matter of routine, am always growing different types of facial hair. Wearing facial hair, to me, is like wearing a shirt. It's just something you put on and there's no stigma to it. But let's get beyond that and just talk about the act of shaving itself.

The most obvious difference from what I saw growing up is that I do not under any circumstances shave everyday. I could. While I'm not quite one of those people who has a very definitive "5 o'clock shadow" at 5 o'clock, I do grow enough stubble to be able to warrant shaving every morning if I saw fit. But I don't see fit. I don't have a problem with one, two, or even three day stubble growth. I actually even prefer it. I like having a little sandpaper on my face then to have it completely smooth. It's not until I get to about 4 days that I start thinking it needs to be cleaned up, at which point I will either trim it, shape it, or lop it off with the razor completely, depending on what mood I'm in.

The other difference is that I almost never shave in the mornings anymore. I used to, but over the years that has changed, and now I don't. Why would I waste time shaving before I went to work when I'm in a hurry to get out the door? I'm a graphic designer, not a corporate salesman. (And I'm not even sure that would make a difference.) Rather, I tend to shave in evenings, or any time where I feel like I have the time to do it, which often means the weekends. Some may say that's ironic, considering that weekends—when people didn't have to go to work—used to be the time when men would get a reprieve from shaving.

And the final difference I can point to is that while I grew up understanding that shaving was considered a thankless, tedious, pain-in-the-butt task, I actually like it. I don't mind it at all. But you know why? It's because I don't have to do it and I do it, more or less, on my own schedule. There's no grind to it. Compare it to showering: I shower every day with no exception, sometimes twice or even thrice depending on what I'm doing, but I don't like it. It's a chore. I'd rather I didn't have to. But that's not the case with shaving for me.

I know I'm not like "everyone," and there are plenty of men out there today that may hate beards, hate stubble, and hate shaving. And those who wish to shave daily and religiously probably still do. But they no longer have. It's become something of a choice.

posted by Steve @ 1:26 PM