West Point Cadet shaving with a straight razor in the field.
The first thing I do every weekday, or at least every weekday that I work downtown, is shave.
I don't really like shaving. I don't want to grow a beard however, so shave I must. I've been shaving, but not every day, since I was 13 years old.
As noted, I frankly don't care much for it, and I'd likely skip shaving a lot of days if I had the option. It sort of irritates my skin, and it's just not something that I look forward to doing in any fashion. Still, for the most part it's been part of my daily routine for decades. Having said that, prior to my practicing law, I'd skip days now and then, including week days, and I still skip Saturdays usually. Just because I don't like it.
Shaving is one of those things humans do that go back into vast antiquity. You wouldn't think so, but it does. Shaving certainly goes back to classical antiquity, the Romans for example were normally (but not always) clean shaven. But it goes further back than that. People who have researched this topic claim there's evidence of ancient cultures sometimes shaving with pieces of obsidian, which is that sharp. It's also be darned dangerous.
At some point that practice gave way to shaving with razors, a type of extremely sharp knife with unique angles. Razors were a permanent fixture, i.e., unlike now you didn't toss them out after the edge grew dull, but rather resharpened the edge, or kept it sharp, with a leather strop.
It took some skill to shave with a blade like that, and getting cut was pretty common. People often chose to get shaved in a barber shop, if they happened to be in one, probably simply to avoid having to use the difficult implement themselves. Generally, barbers today still have them on hand, and some use them to finish a haircut where the hair meets the beard line or neckline.
Soldier receiving shave from unit barber with straight razor.
Shaving is much less of a pain now than it was in prior eras. Thanks to the safety razor.
Patent drawing for the Gillette safety razor.
The safety razors was an invention which allowed for a disposable razor blade to be held in a device that thereby allowed the user to dispense with a razor, i.e., the true super sharp knife. The design was perfected in the early 20th Century and provided in large numbers to U.S. troops in World War One. Thereafter it rapidly replaced the old razor. The device was the safety razor, as it was safer to use than the old hand held blade.
Man shaving with "safety razor." Dish was brush for making lather can be seen on sink.
Safety razors themselves are a think of the past now. When I first started shaving, that's what I had, and I used them for what seemed like a long time but it really was not. At some point in the late 1970s Bic introduced the disposable razor, which you started to see around a lot. And about the same time some company introduced a new style of razor with a disposable head. When I went to back training, we were required to have two of that type (one of which we never used, as we stored it in our locker so that it was always clean for inspections.
Soldiers hanging around, one shaving, 1918.
That was the first time I had used one of the new type razors. When I came back from basic training I briefly went back to the old safety razor, but the new razors really were much better and much more difficult to cut yourself with. Even with safety razors cutting yourself accidentally was pretty common. At some point in the 1980s the manufacturers stopped making blades for them entirely.
At some point in the 20th Century, most like in the 1920s or 1930s, and certainly by the 1930s, electric shavers started to make their appearance. Early ones are downright scary to see in photographs, as they actually plugged in. Given that people were using them around sinks and what not, it's amazing that people didn't routinely electrocute themselves. But by the 1950s they started to be battery operated. My father had one that he hardly ever used, and which I think he bought for traveling. I have one as well, for a similar reason. If I go to industrial plants, and need to shave my mustache off due to plant restrictions, I have it with me. Otherwise, I don't use it.
Electric shaver, 1930s.
When men used old fashioned razors, they also made their own lather. This involved using soap chips, which we largely just throw away now, and mixing them up in a bowl with a brush. You can still get all of these things, including the brush, if you want to do any part of this the old way. According to those who have tried it, the soapy lather made in this fashion is superior to the stuff in the can, but a good brush is outrageously expensive, with badger hairs being the favored material for construction of the brush.
While I never experienced, I've heard of the requirement of a brush being retained in some sorts of military kit well into the 20th Century, by which point hardly anyone made their own lather. And probably the first time I saw a shaving brush outside of the barber ship was in a military use, albeit in the hands of a Vietnam veteran who had picked up the habit of continually dusting off his M16 with one. But some people still do indeed use them, and those who do regard the lather they produce as far superior to canned shaving cream.
Canned shaving cream, by the way, is what people used to use around here to dress cattle up for 4H shows, fwiw. It dries pretty stiff.
At some point in the 20th Century, commercially prepared shaving cream became available, with it first being available in tubes, like toothpaste. The canned shaving cream wasn't invented until 1949, in spite of what hte clever series of Barbisol "Shave Like A Man" commercials might suggest (Barbisol did exist prior to that, but in tube packaged form).
It's been occasionally noted here, in spite of the routine departures from it, that the main point of this blog is to explore the period of roughly 1880 to 1920. Here a least is something that routine and strange at the same time, the change in the way men shave. And I have to note that as much as I dislike shaving, and I do, I still shave most days. I don't want to grow a beard. But had I lived a century ago I'm afraid I would have liked shaving much less. I can see why some individuals chose to grow beards even in well shorn eras, such as Henry Cabot Lodge who kept his beard in hairy and clean shaven eras.
Henry Cabot Lodge, not a shaver.
Indeed it amazes me that there were eras that were so clean shaven before the safety razor. You have some eras, like the Civil War era, when everyone gave up on their razors and grew beards, but you have others where everyone is shaved like, for the most part, the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Indeed, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries solders were not restricted from growing beards, like they started to be with the introduction of the gas mask during World War One, but almost none of them did (mustaches were another matter). Likewise, you'll hardly ever see a photograph of a cowboy with a beard.
The added amazing part of that, to me, is that these individuals were shaving in the field, which would have involved packing a straight razor and soap chips. Pretty involved process for people living with a minimal number of things really. I've shaved in the field, while in the National Guard and in basic training, but I never liked doing it and always felt like I was scratching my face up.
In contrast, now we have quite a few men who like to have a couple of days beard growth all the time. That's a look I don't get, but it's become extremely common and accepted. To me, it always looks like these individuals need a shave, or are growing a beard, but they're not. That's the look they're shooting for. I've even seen lawyers adopt it, albeit always young lawyers where that look is more common and in.
Anyhow, this post is another noting a trend, and an observation. Had I lived a century ago, I suspect I would have disliked shaving even more than I do, or been one of those guys who just chucked it and grew a beard.
