Men (and Women) and Their Razors

Cave paintings from prehistoric times show some men without beards. The nearby presence of sharpened flints provides theoretical evidence they used these flints as primitive razors. During the Bronze Age metal-working improved and razors benefited. It wasn't until the Nineteenth Century though, when steel razors came into use, that shaving became less of a chore. This explains the many centuries in which beards were popular.

The development of steel razors allowed close and relatively painless shaves. Tonsorial parlors first located in large hotels and then in separate shops in towns and villages became an informal men's social club, home for card games, haircutting and music center (the barbershop quartet). The word tonsorial came from the Latin term for shaving, tonsorious. The tonsorial artists, sometimes called professor, used the straight or cut-throat type of razor that opened into an extremely sharp steel blade with a handle.

The invention of the safety razor, which protected the skin except for a tiny bit of the edge of the razor blade, eventually moved shaving from a social act to a private routine done at home. A Frenchman named Perret invented the first device, which was a bit cumbersome. This was refined into automatic razors such as the famous Rolls Razor, a razor and handle in a case that included sharpening leather. Many of these razors are still available on the Web. King Camp Gillette brought the final development into the marketplace with his disposable blade razor. His marketing ploy, sell the razor cheaply but charge forever for blades, has been followed successfully by other entrepreneurs, viz. the Polaroid camera and inkjet printers.

These simple double-bladed razors remained the standard for many years until in the past several decades developments in manufacturing made multiple-bladed razors with special coatings possible.

Besides the cut throat and safety razors, the widespread availability of electricity prompted the development of a complete alternative to these mechanical methods of shaving. Jacob Schick, a Canadian, developed the first electric razor and patented it in 1923. It took some years of refinement before the device was ready for mass marketing. However, by the early Nineteen Thirties, sales of the Schick electric razor rose from 3,000 a year to between one and two million a year by the end of the decade. Gillette and the Remington Company followed with their own versions of an electric razor.

The idea of women having to shave their legs came into vogue quite recently. Before the 1920s leg hair wasn't an issue with American women. Their legs were never on public view so it never occurred to women to remove the hair. In the 1920s the emancipation of women, the Jazz Age and changes in the public's attitude towards fashion including shorter skirts, also changed attitudes towards leg hair. Suddenly it became acceptable for women to show their legs in public. Women did not even swim in public until after World War I. Before that, public bathing beaches saw no more than bulky bathing wear with long stockings on women. It took only a short time before a self-conscious attitude towards these hairy legs built up the leg-shaving industry. Manufacturers lost no time in reminding women of the feminine ideal expressed in Greek sculptures, all of which had hairless legs.

Feelings about the safety of shaving are mixed. With safety razors there still remain occasional problems with nicks and skin irritation. With electric razors, concerns over ingrown hairs and brain cancer have been raised. The latter worry arose with speculation about the effects of low frequency non-ionizing radiation on the development of human cancers. However, a major epidemiological review published in 2004 in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, vol. 30, supplement 1, pp. 1 to 30, concluded there was no positive evidence that exposure to these low frequencies (50hz) of electromagnetic fields caused neurological or cardiovascular diseases. Research on this subject continues.