Close Shave

I'm thinking it may be time to change my razor. Usually I'm not too fussy about doing this regularly but eventually it becomes less a tool to cut facial hair and more a means of pulling it out. Painfully. I always preferred wet shaving to those crappy electric shavers but you have to keep remembering to buy blades, and no matter how many you buy they can never be found when it's time to replace one. I think they go to the same place as all those pens I take from hotels, which I can never find when I need to write down a phone message.

So I buy disposable razors now - not the cheap one-blade ones that are basically only good for severing your own carotid artery, but own-label three-bladed ones with a lubricating strip on top and a rubber strip below that I believe is supposed to pull my skin taught. That is to say, I seem to recall that this was the lie propagated by the TV commercial when this particular innovation came out. Three blades and two additional special strips is already a bit much for a simple razor. I used to use a Schick two-bladed razor but this is now obviously considered Jurassic and when it got so worn that it would no longer hold a blade I couldn't find a new one. (Of course, suddenly I find hundreds of fucking replacement blades for the thing all over the house.)

No, even a three-bladed razor is now backward and a clear sign of arrested development. When Schick introduced the Quattro four-bladed razor it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that it was a pure marketing gimmick. After all, if the first two blades don't get the hair, what are the others going to do? Talk to it and persuade it to jump off your face? Then Gillette came out with the Fusion - five blades plus another one on the back. (Reminds me of the French armored car - has six gears: five are reverse, and one is forward, in case they get attacked from behind.) And now we have wet shave razors with batteries in them so they vibrate!!

This is all obviously complete and utter bollocks. No fucking way do any of these products make any meaningful difference to how well you can shave your face. What they do, however, is make it impossible now to buy a basic razor with two-bladed heads. You walk into Walgreens, CVS or wherever, and all they have is high-tech exotic multi-blade bastards. And here's the point - the replacement blades for these things cost the same as a year's supply of my old blades (that worked perfectly well, thank you very much). So I'm buggered if I'm buying a Gillette Fusion and locking myself in to buying their new blades at stupid prices for the rest of my life (or until they introduce the new, improved, seven-blade razor that will make you a cup of tea and wank you off).

In case you hadn't noticed, it's basically Schick and Gillette, and both of them want you to trade up to their expensive and unnecessary crap. There's no margin in selling you simple products that work - they have to make you believe in the myth of the five-bladed closer shave. Here's a newsflash - if you bought one of these things then you either got tired of fighting the system or you're a twat.

Of course for the ladies out there they have all sorts of excitingly contoured pink razors with funny multi-bladed heads, special grips so you can hold them in the shower and batteries for - well - making them vibrate, I suppose. And let me ask you, does your minge stay trimmed longer? Are your legs any less like wire wool after two days? Bollocks are they! It's all crap, marketed to people whose brains are so addled by junk TV that they don't know any better. The reality is that beauty products for women always change shape over the years until eventually they end up resembling a dildo, so it's only a matter of time until Gillette comes out with a battery-powered Venus razor with a six-inch ribbed handle and a bulbous end, so it doesn't slip out of your hand. When that day comes they'll really be laughing all the way to the bank...


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison