Change! Must there always be something new made just to make me feel old? My generation has coped   with so many    techonological  changes  from phones to computers to even the way we shop that I am not sure we can take much else. Now they are changing how I deal with my face again.  I usually take a thin blade of steel and hold it to my face.  I still remember a place called a barber shop where they   picked up a sharp knife and dealt with your stubbly face without ever playing   dance music.

King C. Gillette came around and decided to invent the safety razor and that brought on a lot of changes to the barber shop like less customers. Yes, we all thought we would save a buck and slice up our faces all by ourselves; something we would never   tolerate at the barber shop who also comforted our tired faces with warm clean towels. Gillette didn’t reinvent the warm part either. Now a man could shave in the privacy of his own home. The great invention was to make steel that thin and that hard that you could make a blade that you could easily replace yourself.

Now the company has a research and development department that is all about hair and skin. Now that is a good job. Shave me and pay me. There is a blade history already. In the 1960’s there was the Techmatic, the no blade razor. They advertised that instead of a blade there was a stainless steel band that wound around like the film in a camera. Now since we do not have film in cameras around either my definitions are as old as I am.  No wonder we have a hard time communicating with kids. We really don’t speak the same language.

There was the Trac II that was the first double razor that arrived in 1971. Then to shave you even closer they put in another one in 1998 and called it the Trac III. Now I hear that it is sexy to show a little bit of shadow. We all want to be sexy men don’t we?  Yet in 2003 that gave way to 4 blades which spawned 5 blades in 2006 with a wand called the Fusion Proglide. So why don’t I just slide an entire   refill  pack across my face and call it the Dare Devil Mess?  Where is that nice guy in the quiet shop with the hot towel?

Cutting edge technology allows Gillette to study how men shave their 10-15,000 facial hairs every day. They have observed that men use as few as 20 strokes in a shave to as many as 750 strokes per shave. That looks like an easy job just counting how many times some guy goes at his face with a blade. I don’t want that job. I would probably choke the 750 stroke guy and tell him to get a life as I take his life away. Sigh!

Now they are looking at our faces with a device called a Video Microscope that when placed up to your face, not only can you see the various shades of color including grey in your beard, but on the computer monitor it is visible how undisciplined the hair is going in all different directions. They say that is normal and that when you stroke your beard you are both going with the grain as well as against the flow of hairs. Is that why a beard grown out is always so scruffy?

After all the years of research, the findings are that there is not any correct way to shave. Please let me just sit in a barber shop somewhere!!! Now Gillette is back with yet another anti-whisker weapon. It is called the Fusion Pro-Glide with Flexible Technology. The barber shops had a knife called the straight razor and he knew how to use it. This flexible technology is supposed to allow the razor move with the contours of your face in three dimensions by adding a second pivot to the razor. Really? The barber never cuts you and comes at you with a straight sharp knife.

Blades cost a lot of money but some make them last by keeping them clean and dry after every shave. Whatever your facial weapon is, just be careful till full beards are in style again.