Razors, Shaving and Gender Construction: An Inquiry to the Material Culture of Shaving

[Phoenixkh]

I read the article in its entirety. I didn't really disagree with much he had to say... but I never did quite get the point he was trying to make. As has been mentioned, he points out that the products for men and women differ in their shapes... I remember buying my wife one of those 1.5" wide or so... Lady razors... they were cartridge razors but were more "feminine".... Is he saying that's a bad thing? I wasn't sure.

Fast forward to today. I've tried to talk my wife into trying one of the razors I've come across here and other places. She wants to stick with her Gillette Venus razor for her legs..... She had a Gillette razor designed for "Intimate Grooming", but it was a disposable and Gillette no longer makes them. I ended up buying her what Gillette is currently selling for "Intimate Grooming", i.e., The Venus Bikini Trimmer. It doesn't have the rounded edges of the regular Venus.

I know there are several women here on B&B. I would be very interested in learning exactly what razors they have tried.. which ones work best.... for what hair types, etc., etc., etc.... what creams or soaps work best for them. We men discuss this stuff all the time. I'd love to know what to suggest to my wife... Her shaving her legs is completely different than me shaving my face.. or is it? I really don't know. Is it just as difficult to get a close shave around the knee as it is around my chin?

I don't have a problem with companies marketing shaving gear specifically for women.... but I would really like to know, do women find the products designed to shave a face equally good for their needs?

 

[podz]

I have been with enough women to know that some barely get growth on their legs at all, some get light growth, some get medium and some get rough and coarse growth. As in men, I think it largely boils down to genetics, diet and hormone levels. All women have testosterone as well (produced in ovaries and adrenal gland), and some have more than others. Estrogen makes body hair softer, testosterone makes it rougher and coarser. Which also explains why some men have soft body and facial hair - they have higher estrogen levels than the stereotypical male.

What am I getting at? This: even the products specifically marketed for men don't work for all men. I'm guessing from life experiences of knowing lots of men in addition to reading anecdotes from men on this forum, my facial hair is rougher than that of most men and thus the "average" products don't work for me. I'm guessing that the same holds true for women.

But the flavour and intention of this article, to somehow paint male shaving culture as being an institution of good ol' boys and intentionally going against the current grain of gender neutrality and thus being something to shame and eradicate, is the reason I opened with wow, just wow. Maybe others didn't see it that way, but for me the prosecutorial undercurrents and underpinnings were pretty clear.

 

[luvmysuper]

The TOU says:

15. Badger and Blade welcomes all people. We have members from a wide variety of age, race, ethnicity, nation of origin, gender and gender identity and physical ability. What we discuss at B&B has nothing to do with any of those qualifiers. As such, raising those qualifiers as a subject of discussion is discouraged.

Outside of the prohibition of the US Government to retaliate against the speech of citizens, no "right" to Free Speech exists anywhere.
Private citizens, companies and organizations which do not receive federal funding are free to prohibit or retaliate speech any way they choose.
Recognizing that others may retaliate against THEIR actions.

One of those ways is to ignore silly manifestos.

 

[BigJ]

Sheesh, I feel like a piker. I managed to pawn off a couple dorky papers on juggling as, uh, research or term papers while in college, but I feel like this fellow has managed to turn burning hours on B&B or similar sites into a veritable dissertation or at minimum college credit. Well done, sir.

+1! Full credit in my book also!!

 

[borwish]

I know there are several women here on B&B. I would be very interested in learning exactly what razors they have tried.. which ones work best.... for what hair types, etc., etc., etc.... what creams or soaps work best for them.

My wife loves her Henson and prefers to just use a bar of Dove soap.

She said the Henson does better than anything she's ever tried for under her arms and that Cella Bio does a good job of cutting through deodorant residue.

 

[Phoenixkh]

My wife loves her Henson and prefers to just use a bar of Dove soap.

She said the Henson does better than anything she's ever tried for under her arms and that Cella Bio does a good job of cutting through deodorant residue.

thanks... Does she like the mild or medium?

 

[borwish]

thanks... Does she like the mild or medium?

It's the mild that she likes.

 

[Phoenixkh]

It's the mild that she likes.

Thanks.

 

[desrgrl]

But the flavour and intention of this article, to somehow paint male shaving culture as being an institution of good ol' boys and intentionally going against the current grain of gender neutrality and thus being something to shame and eradicate, is the reason I opened with wow, just wow. Maybe others didn't see it that way, but for me the prosecutorial undercurrents and underpinnings were pretty clear.

Based on what you said previously, and here, I feel like maybe you are taking it a bit personal, and somewhat throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes. Most academic language gets bogged down with specialized language and theories, and sociology/feminism/psychology can be quite bad for it (psychology and theology probably should be added too).

It isn't a hit job, and most of its contents have been defended fairly well, despite the author throwing in a lot of assumptions, and to my way of thinking, leaving out some important facts. That said, I do agree that the conclusion is ... problematic, and definitely overstates (or to be fair, maybe I'm missing some of the meaning. Lower level semiotics (all that talk about signifies/sign) makes sense to me, but at higher academic levels it gets a big gobblie-gooked.

It does make its case in many areas. Shaving did become a norm, for a number of reasons, some they state and some (imho) they leave out or don't (imho) give enough weight to (access to clean water, soap, blades etc). It isn't judgemental to notice this and try to look at some of the reasons for it, why it is sustained, and what meanings it might have.

They aren't making this up, clean-shaveness is portrayed in advertising as a white, male, middle class activity. Women shave, black and brown people shave, old people shave, poor people shave...but these aren't the people we think of. They aren't taking over of invading shaving culture, they have always been there, but that isn't what advertising shows.

They do some stuff about identity and our 'face' which is actually really interesting, and would find it interesting to see it applied to women, in another context, make up. Many men look at themselves daily in the mirror to change their natural face, to a face they present to the public. While out of the scope of the article (sort of) I think a case can be made that women do this as well when they put on make up. I say sort of, because while the article makes note of women's shaving, it also somewhat sidelines it, in this case, we who have hair on our chins, will also shave before going out. In fact, from a make-up point of view, the common language uses the terminology, 'face-up', 'putting on my face', 'for a more blended face'. [by the way, as someone that doesn't wear make-up often, and was always a bit self-conscious that I'm not very good at it... I'm not looking at these ideas as persecution of my 'womanhood', but it would be a bit odd to say that make-up doesn't have sociological/psychological/feminist meanings that are worth looking at].

I do think it goes a bit off the rails with that rather horrid sentence in its conclusion about subversiveness in the face of gender neutrality. *sigh*. I might very well be off-base here and missing something, but I don't see how you can make claims about what 'clean-shaveness' means, if you don't spend at least a bit more time talking about what the rise in beards/mustaches, and that culture means.

I do think there is kickback, not just in shaving, but other 'male' and 'female' areas, where there seems to be a screaming need to identify everything as 'male' or 'female' as if we wouldn't be able to buy shampoo if someone didn't tell us which is the one that belongs to our gender. I don't think this means (though I'm not completely sure if the author would feel this way) that ther is some bland, uni-sex, non gendered world is what we should be working towards. I think that it has more to do with what is 'masculine' or 'feminine'. This site is very welcoming from what I've experienced, but I did check out a few sites back in the day where it was openly stated that it was a male space and I wasn't welcome. Because you know, shaving is a guy thing. It is those sorts of things that aren't being looked at. I hate to use this definition, but the 'renaissance' in single blade and DESR shaving, does in some ways push forward with an all male emphasis. It's not like any marketing was put towards women, even though it is a relatively untapped market. Also, without that marketing many women wouldn't take up that kind of shaving because of their own internalized views of what is 'feminine'.

I think it's reasonable that some men shave to feel more manly, or feel that way when they do it. I feel sort of more womanly sometimes doing my legs. One could make the case that many of women's rituals also undermine gender equality. If wearing nail polish only belongs in the realm of women, then it is wrong for anyone else. In fact, not doing 'womanly' things such as wearing slacks not dresses, not wearing heels, not wearing make up, often pegged women as 'manish', 'dyke', '*****', etc, As does doing manly thing, using a man's razor, wearing boxers, overly short/angled hair cuts, being a mechanic or bouncer, or race car driver.

Academic papers often postulate something, knowing other academics will weigh in for and against. The academic level of feminism gets way too bogged down, and if you hear something incredibly offensive its probably from a sub-group called radical feminists these hateful, dysfunctional, TERFs strongly opinionated adherents, in my (and many other people's opinion) have done a great deal to harm feminism, and, in my opinion, are the ones mostly responsible for the 'man-hating' rep some of us get.

Okay, this was way long, and I'm not trying to say you are wrong in the feeling that it can be seen as an attack on men, but I am trying to say the picture is a bit bigger and more nuanced, and that there are many similar topics about women, so its not that this represents all the discussion on gender, etc. It really isn't aimed at one particular man, and in the article itself it acknowledges men shave (its not like 'all men stop shaving', though I think this section could have been expanded a bit). Talking about men and women and social implications is important, but also difficult. I hope at least a bit of this gives some things to think about.

 

[podz]

I do think it goes a bit off the rails with that rather horrid sentence in its conclusion about subversiveness in the face of gender neutrality. *sigh*. I might very well be off-base here and missing something, but I don't see how you can make claims about what 'clean-shaveness' means, if you don't spend at least a bit more time talking about what the rise in beards/mustaches, and that culture means.

...

Okay, this was way long, and I'm not trying to say you are wrong in the feeling that it can be seen as an attack on men, but I am trying to say the picture is a bit bigger and more nuanced, and that there are many similar topics about women, so its not that this represents all the discussion on gender, etc. It really isn't aimed at one particular man, and in the article itself it acknowledges men shave (its not like 'all men stop shaving', though I think this section could have been expanded a bit). Talking about men and women and social implications is important, but also difficult. I hope at least a bit of this gives some things to think about.

Wow! You are a really good writer, thanks for that.

If it were up to me, I'd turn my beard growth off permanently. I'd have it lasered if I could, money is not really the issue, but I have light hair and it won't currently work (or so most of my research into the matter has told me).

Given that I can't turn it off, my preference would be to shave once a week or so. However if I go 5-6 days without shaving, my eczema flares up on my face and huge flakes of skin start to peel off leaving way to large areas of weeping puss and eventually blood. Shaving every single day is enough to completely keep this condition under control and largely unnoticeable. Shaving every 3-4 days is really the bare minimum for me, but that's where I am now due to ongoing bathroom renovations.

I don't know how the hipsters do it, but I could never be one. If I couldn't regularly shave, I would eventually die of widespread skin organ failure on my entire face and likely spread heavily elsewhere. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one, either.

So yeah, I consider anything like this (an attempt to change the course of the prevailing winds) as an attack on my health.

 

[APBinNCA]

thanks... Does she like the mild or medium?

I am going to try not to get myself in any trouble with this thread, but I want to add something helpful here. If you do talk your SO into trying something different, you need to help and be supportive. I like the idea of trying it on your face first, it both shows them that you have confidence in what you are promoting and also allows you to use your experience to provide helpful guidance so the person doesn't have to make painful discoveries. I know some SOs are barely convinced and are looking for any reason to hate the new thing.

All that said, please remember with the Henson that a steeper angle than that which is intended, especially from a stop, is a sure receipt for ouchy. The person needs to have confident and put the flat side just above the skin and make the stroke straight and parallel. This needs to thought out thoroughly, at least initially, with curved surfaces. Even with the mild, a touch down of the blade edge on the apex of the curve is going to produce blood and likely a fair bit of it. Just like mapping our beard, body shavers need to develop a road map for their shave. I think the best direction is dictated more by what is safer than growth direction in this particular case. Especially if shaving daily or nearly so. The Henson mild knocks down light stubble very quickly without irritation when use frequently.

 

[APBinNCA]

While I haven't read the article yet, these kind of ideas make me uncomfortable. If they were purely meant for academia, it would be one thing. But, academia influences students who eventually work in marketing and public relations etc.

I look at society around me very sceptically because I can see the influence on peoples behaviour, thoughts and preferences coming from sources not between their own two ears. On an individual level, I generally can breakdown any preconceived barriers that we are supposed to have, but I am finding it has become more difficult in the last 5 or so years. I don't consume hardly any media so I don't know what the latest thing is or what abstract concept I am supposed to care deeply about and I am starting to question whether I am too disconnected or whether people in general are being too heavily influenced.

I grew up in a very free, supportive, open time. I real magical window of time. Our individualism was encouraged and respected, not above anything in particular. That wasn't a concept I grew up with. I did my thing, you did your thing. We talk to each other as equal individuals. There wasn't serious pre-judgement on full display. If somebody wanted to be nasty, they talked about somebody behind their back and got what they deserved for doing so. Nowadays, it feels like everybody is quietly judging everybody else to some degree. Trying to figure them out or worse, are you on my team. I am saying this as a generalisation because I don't like to judge people individually by my nature and my upbringing even if somebody themselves is being judgemental. I deliberately do things that I know you aren't supposed to do in society because I won't sit by and watch us slip backwards without a fight. I grew up talking to people of all ages as well and I still do and I think it is important to do so. If you can talk to somebody that you know you are going to disagree with on a lot of things and manage to keep things on track, it can be a very beneficial exchange for both parties. If only as a group we could emulate this...

Welp, I have now been on this thread over 2 hours

 

[desrgrl]

Wow! You are a really good writer, thanks for that.

If it were up to me, I'd turn my beard growth off permanently. I'd have it lasered if I could, money is not really the issue, but I have light hair and it won't currently work (or so most of my research into the matter has told me).

Given that I can't turn it off, my preference would be to shave once a week or so. However if I go 5-6 days without shaving, my eczema flares up on my face and huge flakes of skin start to peel off leaving way to large areas of weeping puss and eventually blood. Shaving every single day is enough to completely keep this condition under control and largely unnoticeable. Shaving every 3-4 days is really the bare minimum for me, but that's where I am now due to ongoing bathroom renovations.

I don't know how the hipsters do it, but I could never be one. If I couldn't regularly shave, I would eventually die of widespread skin organ failure on my entire face and likely spread heavily elsewhere. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one, either.

So yeah, I consider anything like this (an attempt to change the course of the prevailing winds) as an attack on my health.

You bring up something absolutely interesting that the article never mentioned, and I didn't think of, even though I know some guys with issues similar to yours...which is, medical reasons, in terms of skin conditions, and also, men that wouldn't mind a beard, but are unable to grow one that would fall into 'neat, acceptable' range.

One of my housemates despises shaving. He'd blowtorch his face if he thought it would work. It scratches and itches and he doesn't like how he looks. Which actually just reminded me of two other things... in not looking at beards in tandem with shaving, one could argue that men in the past that had beards because it was the norm, had to put up with skin problems that is now eradicated by the normalization of shaving, but I also wonder, it seems to me (and I"m not going to take the time to look it up) that there was never a time that it was all beards/all the time. Anyway...the other thought that occurs to me, that ties in with the whole face identity idea they had... my housemate also doesn't like facial hair, because he already looks like his dad, who he ...doesn't like and is estranged from... and he looks a lot like him, with facial hair he looks even more like him. Men/Dads/shaving/identity/face in the mirror. Probably a whole other paper.

Thanks for the compliment, sometimes I write well, sometimes I blather. Sometimes I'm not sure of the difference

 

[desrgrl]

Thanks for linking that! Very interesting.

As I used to tell my graduate students, there are many reasons why we do research, such as finding out if something is still the case; finding out if something has changed due to new understandings; and approaching a topic from a different methodological direction to see what new things come clear from our analysis. That being said, however, it's also important not to assign too much significance to just one presentation.

Although I am in the same tent with the qualitative observers, I found the analysis to be somewhat limited in the respect that what we end up with is that men's and women's shaving gear is constructed, presented and often marketed differently. Which is absolutely correct and proper, as far as it goes and good to have that confirmed anew.

I would argue that particularly in the current day any attempt to parse out gendered cultural labels must consider the role of media in the formation of the label. 'Twas ever thus, of course, as King Camp Gillette wouldn't have gotten anywhere without advertising. However, our media universe has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. We've gone from a "one-to-many" model of the media to a "many-to-many" model that has been a fundamental change. That we now carry our media devices with us at all times is also significant. I think it's important to account for the ways in which people use media forms as both tools and performative spaces to negotiate and enact their personal identities.

Two of my favourite methodological tools are the depth-hermeneutical analysis and the concept of the social imaginary, both as expressed by sociologist John B. Thompson. Depth hermeneutics -- like the earlier biblical hermeneutic process -- attempts to tease meaning out of words and actions: because of and in spite of what the actors may believe they are accomplishing with their interactions. It's a rather detailed multi-part method but I find it quite congenial to unpacking mediated group interactions around particular artifacts. It's also good at showing up power relations, though Foucaultian discourse analysis -- particularly as put forward by Penny A. Powers works better because it's all about power relationships. Who's in, who's out, and how they move from one position to another.

The concept of the social imaginary is both related and separate. In short, by participating in a mediated interaction (through the media, in this case the Internet) those who choose to engage in presenting and performing an identity are able to link their performance of self to similar performances presented to the group by others. Many people doing that creates the social imaginary, a group that calls itself into being through the act of discussing the putative central topic of the group. Could be razors, could be kids, could be soap operas, could be sports, could be religion.

A

I found the paper interesting. If he was one of my graduate students we'd be having a conversation beginning with, "OK; good start." And then he would be off to the library to do some more reading.

O.H.

I tried? As mentioned, my level of academic founding (floundering?) is pretty limited, but I did read your post, and mostly, sort of, kind of got it. Maybe not mostly. Anyway, I really like how you ended it, because it was much more succinct then my wording trying to say there was merit, but it seemed more work needed to be done.

Since you put them out there, I did look a bit at the depth-hermeneutics, and social imaginary. It was a bit beyond my pay grade, and while I have a wee sense of what was going on, it was too much jargon to have a full appreciation. Unfortunately I picked a paper that was on depth-hermeneutics in an educational field, which also brought back the horrors of student teaching. Anyway, interesting stuff in so far as I could get my head around any of it.

 

[desrgrl]

The TOU says:

15. Badger and Blade welcomes all people. We have members from a wide variety of age, race, ethnicity, nation of origin, gender and gender identity and physical ability. What we discuss at B&B has nothing to do with any of those qualifiers. As such, raising those qualifiers as a subject of discussion is discouraged.

Outside of the prohibition of the US Government to retaliate against the speech of citizens, no "right" to Free Speech exists anywhere.
Private citizens, companies and organizations which do not receive federal funding are free to prohibit or retaliate speech any way they choose.
Recognizing that others may retaliate against THEIR actions.

One of those ways is to ignore silly manifestos.

I really don't want to poke a hornet's nest, but I didn't see your post until now (I was skimming back and forth between stuff). I can see how the originally posted article is about shaving, but also about gender, sociology, etc. so, I guess that makes it off topic. But I sort of got lost at the end, in terms of 'silly manifestos'. Is that supposed to mean the article itself (it wasn't silly, it wasn't a manifesto, it violates the #15 rule), or people's responses (which again, as far as I could see, agreeing or dissenting, were not silly, a manifesto, and I guess would be considered to be violations of rule 15 as well). I'm not sure anyone did anything wrong other than post an article that was taking an academic sociological view of shaving, which I'm guessing they didn't know broke a rule, but I think most of us would realize it was a thin ice kind of situation.

Since I blathered a lot, I guess it concerned me, as my intentions weren't ever to be problematic. Anyway, I'll leave it at that.

 

[luvmysuper]

Authors of articles published elsewhere are not subject to our TOU.
Discussing them here and getting so far off what we normally talk about here, into issues regarding gender, social justice, racial inequality, et al, is.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that.

Thanks

 

[podz]

You bring up something absolutely interesting that the article never mentioned, and I didn't think of, even though I know some guys with issues similar to yours...which is, medical reasons, in terms of skin conditions, and also, men that wouldn't mind a beard, but are unable to grow one that would fall into 'neat, acceptable' range.

One of my housemates despises shaving. He'd blowtorch his face if he thought it would work. It scratches and itches and he doesn't like how he looks. Which actually just reminded me of two other things... in not looking at beards in tandem with shaving, one could argue that men in the past that had beards because it was the norm, had to put up with skin problems that is now eradicated by the normalization of shaving, but I also wonder, it seems to me (and I"m not going to take the time to look it up) that there was never a time that it was all beards/all the time.

Perhaps it could be spit into a new thread regarding medical issues and shaving, if deemed necessary, but I don't have a whole lot more to say about it other than this:

In the past, the skin problems (psoriasis / eczema) that were dealt with before the normalisation of shaving were dealt with via the use of tar. Tar shampoo, tar soap, just plain tar. In the current world, tar has been banned from most European countries (except Finland) due to some imaginary cancer-related issue (more likely that big pharma wanted it banned so they could sell expensive medicines that do not work). Just a little history tidbit.

 

[Brutus]

"In the current climate of egalitarian non-disciminatory individualism, this (shaving) may reasonably be viewed as a subversive counter-current to the struggle for equalization of the gender norms."

What can I say? Part of the insanity of modern culture. As for me, I will continue to practice this subversive counter-current practice.

Interesting.

One might equally make the case that if one does not shave and grows a beard "In the current climate of egalitarian non-disciminatory individualism, this (non-shaving) may reasonably be viewed as a subversive counter-current to the struggle for equalization of the gender norms."


I suspect that the number individuals who grow a beard to emphasize their ‘manliness’ “as a subversive counter-current to the struggle for equalization of the gender norms” is larger than the number of men who shave for that reason.


There are a few battles that you just cannot win…
…so why bother to join them?


Besides, I noticed that in philosophy in particular often the most long-winded argument (due to the inability of the author to be concise) was the flawed one.
Occam’s razor rules….



B.

 

[wulfgar1976]

The article is an example of Cultural Marxism. People can't just have nice things; they have to be shamed for it.

 

[thombrogan]

The author declares the act and equipment of shaving to “both reflect and reinforce traditional gender distinctions in modern North American culture.” Why that declaration was made is puzzling since he also wrote “Men have been shaving their faces since prehistoric times at least, as both the archaeological and artistic records attest” and doesn’t notice the huge market of the Asian continent and Northeast Africa. Or the author sees over three billion Asian and several million African adults as insignificant compared to maybe hundred million adults in North America.

In section two, he mentions the phenomenon of adult females and shaving as a relatively new phenomenon and, in compared to prehistory, sure, but he doesn’t decide if shaving is only for North American women or women across the planet. Instead, female wet shaving reminds him “I would suggest that it is precisely because the micro-ecology of our daily lives is so little considered that we find here the most persistent and deeply rooted reflection of cultural norms and symbols.”

In his abstract/preamble, the author is targeting the North American male gender identity as perceived by the author. In section two, he lists cultural norms and symbols with neutral language that I read in same way Brutus iterates “honorable men” in Shakespeare’s telling of “Julius Caesar.”

It is to my regret I cannot properly articulate why I read the author’s writings as postmodern nihilism, but he does use the phrasings of non-academic postmodernists I’ve read on the Facebook and his paper reads like he wishes to invalidate and destroy parts of other people’s identities, specifically if they are the author perceives as a “North American male.”

While I lack that language, Maya Angelou has said “when someone shows you who they are believe them the first time”

I see a man of violence and cleverness who would cackle madly as the bourgeoisie are loaded onto cattle cars heading to gulags and worse while he’s kneeling before the mass grave he’s about to enter with the rest of the intelligentsia who thought their earnest bile would guarantee them a seat with the nomenklatura.

Also, super big props to @wulfgar1976 for saying all of this better and in two sentences.