One of my favorite sites, Lifehacker, posted a video from Art of Manliness about how a real man shaves, with a safety razor, as his grandfather did.
This emphasis reminds me of only one thing, a John Belushi Saturday Night Live sketch rather obsessed with manliness in a very different way. Of course, I can't find it on Hulu, so read the transcript here.
I don't cast aspersions on any man's or any woman's vision of masculinity. That said, what kind of man needs to spend $57.99 (the cheapest pricing for the items mentioned in the article) to shave when a $2 disposable and any mass-market foam or gel seems to serve so admirably?
Joe Jackson makes a good point
Perhaps I'm missing out on something great. And perhaps I shouldn't knock it until I've tried it. I just can't imagine having more shaving stuff in the bathroom than my wife has for her hair. Of course, that's more a statement of how small our bathroom is than my perceptions of masculinity.
My own two grandfathers, so happens, had radically different approaches to shaving.
My maternal grandfather, Ray, liked to treat himself. Recently, my dad gave me one of his old razors, which had some sort of bone or horn handle and took Trac II blades. He certainly would have availed himself of Gillette's or Schick's finest had he lived until today.
According to my father, my paternal grandfather, Sam, immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine at the age of 12 and maintained an immigrant's sensibility all his life. He would collect the little bits of soap left over in the shower and mix them up in a shaving mug. While that seems like a nod towards ye olde double-edge, I like to think he'd smile at my attempt to wring every penny out of a $2 razor.
Of course, there's an old Irish proverb I learned from the back of a sugar packet once, "a man's got to do his own growing, no matter how tall his grandfather was."
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