Have you ever considered the harm that men’s daily shaving regime does to the world? I know, if you considered the harm of everything you do on a daily basis then none of us would get up in the morning, but…
Think of it: assuming there are three billion men in the world who each day squirt a dollop shaving foam onto their faces and each, therefore, working their way through something like four or five aerosols of shaving foam a year. All told, that means that in the region of 15 billion cans of foam are used (just for men, as the commercials, say), a proportion of which may be recycled or failing that sent to fill huge holes in Canvey Island or Turkmenistan.
Fortunately, instead of Taliban-style enforced beard-growing, there is another greener solution. It’s called the shaving brush. I know it sounds radical. In fact, it’s so radical that it’s been around in its modern form since the 1750s when the French, inventors of all cruelty to animals, decided to introduce badger hair into the gentleman’s daily morning ritual. It was a stroke of genius.
And yet, like many things in the course of the long, throw-away years of the 20th century, we’ve forgotten them. Not all of us, but most of us. Most men under 50 or 60, I would wager, have never felt the luscious sweep of a badger brush across their faces.
Well, I have now, and I can tell you that I have seen the light. I now know why God created badgers: they were not put on the earth to keep down the populations of earthworms and birds, frogs and lizards; nor were they invented to stimulate the fecund minds of children’s authors – or employ the sublime talents of actors like Michael Hordern. Nor were they put here to give motorists guilt-free target practice on A-roads.
First, consider the sterile joylessness of expelling cold, greasy gel from an aerosol into your hand – and then the fumbled smearing as you attempt to attach it to your face before it falls off in lumps to the floor. Your razor then slides through this cold film on your face, leaving your skin feeling like a piece of baked chicken you’d find under the foil of an inflight meal.
Where brushes stimulate the follicles on your face and gives you what amounts to a massage at the same time. The feeling of proper soapy cream lathered on your face, warmed by a brush loaded with hot water, is a joy. The indecently simple combination of a brush with shaving cream, dabbed from a pot, is positively luxurious, a luxury that doesn’t cost a fortune – nor indeed the earth. Do it and it makes the prospect of the early morning hiss of the foam from a can about as appealing as microwaved scrambled eggs.
Yes, it’s a bit of a throwback, but it’s a throwback to something better. I started with a bamboo brush with synthetic bristles from Bull Dog which cost £8, and their shaving soap in a wooden pot, for £12, bought at a local Boots. That was good, so good I upgraded, buying some shaving cream – which gives a better lather and feels more moisturising than soap – from Taylor of Old Bond Street. And after that, I soon realised that I had to reach for the badger and go full Phileas Fogg, so I bought one of their ‘super badger brushes’ (top quality in other words) and that has ever so slightly changed my life for the better.
So do it today, I say. Don’t be an aerosol. Go the full badger and I promise, you won’t look back. Think of the massive hole in the ground that you’ll be helping to save, not to mention all those joyless shaves that you’ll be avoiding, too.
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