How to Shave (Your Face)

Anthropologist Ralph Linton’s 1936 essay about cultural borrowing describes shaving as “a masochistic rite which seems to have been derived from either Sumer or ancient Egypt.” See, that’s where snooty shaving gear companies missed the turn.

The people who are trying to transform shaving into some kind of upmarket metrosexual deal do not have your best interests at heart. Somewhere down deep, shaving is a rite of purification, where you battle the dark side into submission for another few hours. For this to work, you have to treat your facial scruff like a worthy adversary. No challenge, no victory. Take my advice, you misguided shaving gear marketers. You’ll never get it right as long as you’re trying to make whisker abatement easy, comfortable and certain. Here’s the kind of process real guys are looking for, even if they may not articulate it very well.

1. Wash your face with the toughest soap fit for human use. Grandma’s Lye Soap would be great. You shouldn’t feel “moisturized.” You should feel like a mighty battle is joined, and it’s time to wake the hell up.

2. Second coat: more soapsuds, but applied with a brush. Forget shaving gel that lasts the whole shave. It’s just another copout, and will do your soul no good. Real soapsuds will not stay there very long, so you need more soap and hot water and more every few scrapes. A couple sopping-wet, steaming-hot hand towels aren’t a bad idea, either. Remember, this is a fight between you and your whiskers. It’s a war of attrition. You can never win, you can only hold the line. Your whiskers even keep growing for a few days after you’re dead.

3. Next, choose your weapon for the good fight. If you use a barber’s straight razor that you sharpen yourself, and know how to use a few hones and a strop, full marks. If there’s a big back-story about how you got the straight razor, extra credit. If the story involves New Orleans, you can stop reading right here—you’re in the pantheon already.

4. If you use one of those World War II Rolls Razors that has built-in hones and strops, but maintains the sharpening and stropping angles for you, that’s still pretty good. Anything south of that, you’re caving in to consumer culture. It’s your decision. I’m just here to set the bar.

5. Actual shaving is a test of how well you’ve been paying attention up to now, and how well you’re paying attention right this minute. You think you need a yoga instructor to get you into the moment? Scraping hair off your face is way more Zen than meditating. If you drift off while you’re meditating, so what? If you drift off while you’re shaving—damn! Instant feedback. You should have home court advantage here, so forget any excuses. No place where you’re going to nick yourself changed overnight, you know.

6. When you’ve covered the acreage, check your work thoroughly. Every place that you missed, and don’t notice until later today, is a silent indictment of your basic competency at life in general. No pressure.

7. Done with the razor? Get rid of the rest of the soap with one of those hot towels, if the dog hasn’t stolen it by now.

8. Next, apply some after-shave that came with the NIH Warren Grant Magnuson Clinic Pain Scale in the box. If you wouldn’t shake hands with Chuck Yeager smelling the way you do, you’re using The Wrong Stuff.

9. Finally, a quick pass along the jawline with a kerosene blowtorch, and you’re good to go.



(Dedicated to the memory of my father, who woke us up all the way through high school with the sound of his WWII Rolls Razor strop, and my younger brother, who was the only kid in his freshman dorm to use a straight razor and shaving brush.)

(c)2009 coyoteplaystheblues