Original Shave Company

Shaving is a skill every man possesses. It’s the key to liking what you see in the mirror, especially when sculpting an image you want to show the world. Learning how to maintain your facial hair is an excellent confidence booster, which will only ring truer as you grow older.

Why Some Men Lose Confidence

Most people develop self-assurance at a young age since love and acceptance come easy during childhood. It’s common to begin doubting yourself as life goes on, though. Society has a way of crushing our belief in ourselves. Getting an occasional reality check and eating humble pie is healthy to learn humility and keep our egos from over-inflating.

However, a truthful assessment of yourself shouldn’t lead to a crisis of confidence. It’s merely a setback necessary to appreciate your strengths and work on your flaws to be a better man. Eventually, you must rekindle self-love to face the world, holding your head high. Wet shaving — a grooming method involving water — is instrumental in regaining your faith in yourself.

The Psychology of Shaving

Shaving is a therapeutic process. This ritual aids mindfulness since it requires focus and attention to detail. It compels you to be in the present moment — a much-needed respite to forget your worries. This act of self-care calms the mind and gives you a sense of perspective about your life, guiding your hand to change your image and foster positive self-perception.

Trimming your facial hair also engages your senses. The sounds of washing your face, building the lather in a bowl and cutting the hair are stimulating. Lathering your mustache and beard and gliding a razor blade on your skin in rhythmic strokes are soothing tactile activities. The burning sensation of applying an antiseptic aftershave wakes you up from the trance. The reflection of an adequately groomed man in front of you is a sight to behold — a visual transformation symbolizing renewal.

Maintaining your facial hair also shows you care about your appearance. Whether you do it for yourself or others is irrelevant. What matters is you subliminally communicate to the world that you respect yourself enough to dedicate time to personal grooming. Therefore, they must respect you, too. Unkempt facial hair sends the opposite signal — an untidy look is a picture of nonchalance.

Shave regularly to exude confidence, attractiveness, and dominance in social settings, even if you secretly feel unsure or unappealing. Proper grooming can help you reframe the way you think of yourself, ultimately overcome impostor syndrome and psychologically train others to have a high opinion of you.

Shaving Is a Lost Art

Grooming oneself with a manual razor is a dying skill. Manscaping is what’s fashionable these days. Running an electric clipper, trimmer or shaver over hairy parts is convenient and gets the job done.

However, straight, shavette and safety razors persist for a reason. These traditional tools offer levels of control and closeness their electric counterparts can’t.

If you shave correctly, your manual razor blade will bevel on your skin and cut facial hair more acutely. This technique prevents stubble from appearing quickly and lets your newly groomed mustache and beard appear fresh longer.

What You Need When Shaving

Your shaving kit must include a manual razor, a facial cleanser, a shaving lather, a shaving brush and bowl, and an aftershave. Each item has variety, so explore your options and pick ones based on your preferences.

Cleansers can be scrubs or washes. Shaving soaps, creams, and gels produce lathers of varying consistency and texture. Regarding brushes, decide between going natural — boar or badger — and synthetic. Aftershave splashes have disinfecting properties and a perceptible fragrant smell, whereas balms hydrate dry skin and have no overpowering scent.

Putting lather on your face by hand is optional. It’s messy and can result in uneven application, but it’s faster. Speed is a nonfactor when practicing the art of shaving, so consider using a brush and bowl to enjoy the entire experience.

How to Shave Your Face Correctly

Shaving can be time-consuming, but there’s a method to the madness. Follow these eight steps.

1.   Soak Your Brush in a Bowl of Hot Water

Your shaving brush must be slightly wet to whip up a thick lather. Place it in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes to soften its bristles as part of the prep.

2.   Rinse Your Face With Warm Water

Ready your skin while your brush is submerged. Wash with warm water and your preferred cleanser to open up your pores and rid your face of dead skin, oil, and dirt.

3.   Slightly Dry the Brush

After your skincare ritual, remove your brush from the bowl. Unlike synthetic brushes, natural ones have high moisture retention. You want your brush damp but not dripping wet to ensure robust lather generation, so tap out excess water if necessary.

4.   Add the Shaving Product to the Bowl

Empty your bowl, put some shaving product in it and mix it with about a teaspoon of water. Whirl it with your brush in a circular motion for about 30 seconds until it resembles whipped cream. You’ll know you’ve achieved the ideal thickness when holding the brush upside down without the lather falling off quickly.

5.   Lather Your Face

Apply the lather to your face using your brush. Apply it against the direction your hair grows — the grain — to cover all hair. Do it in front of a mirror to avoid missing a spot.

6.   Shave With the Grain

Wet the razor with warm water to increase the cold metal’s temperature slightly for your comfort. A moist blade glides more smoothly, too. Lightly stroke the razor with the grain to avoid irritating your skin and causing painful rashes.

7.   Wash the Lather Off Your Face

Rinse your face with warm water to remove the lather and see how close your shave is. Repeat steps five and six until you’re satisfied with the results.

8.   Apply the Aftershave

Once you’re happy with your shave, wash your face with cold water to cause your blood vessels to contract and minimize bleeding from nicks. Use home remedies like ice, potassium alum or ground coffee to alleviate deep cuts.

Pat your wet face with a clean, dry towel and put on aftershave. The product — along with the cold water — will seal your pores and close the pathways bacteria may use to enter your body.

Build Your Self-Confidence One Shave at a Time

Mastering shaving is vital to boost your self-assurance. Increasing your confidence takes more than personal grooming but it’s an essential first step to feeling suave, and carrying yourself with pride and dignity.

Few characteristics are more emblematic of military men than clean-shaven faces. Only some can sport a look without stubble, so should you do the military shave?

What Is the Military Shave?

The military shave is a quick way to remove facial hair to look clean, presentable and sharp, particularly when you can’t grow a proper beard and mustache. Do this grooming method every morning to go out without a five o’clock shadow.

Clean-shaven mugs are synonymous with modern military men for various reasons. After the introduction of gas-based weaponry in WWI, enlisted male personnel have not worn beards and mustaches to wear gas masks properly and better protect themselves. Having no facial hair is also advantageous in close-quarters combat, giving the enemy one less thing to grab.

Clean face shaving is a way to remove the sense of individuality, promote uniformity and instill the group mentality needed in the military. These tenets are so enduring that the male members of the U.S. Army must still maintain a clean-shaven look after the branch changed its grooming standards in 2021.

However, service members can grow neatly tapered and trimmed and tidy mustaches while on duty and may receive the green light to wear a beard for medical or religious reasons.

Adopting the military shave can be practical even if you don’t have to. No facial hair makes you look professional. It also helps reduce painful bumps and prevent skin irritation when the air is dry.

How to Do the Military Shave

The military shave can be done in about five minutes and a few steps. Your grooming kit must include a safety or straight razor — with a permanent or replaceable blade — a shaving soap, cream or gel, and an aftershave splash or balm.

If you have long, thick facial hair, you may need to use an electric razor first to cut it to a shorter length. Using a hair clipper, trimmer or shaver requires dry shaving, so avoid dampening your face.

Once your beard or mustache is short enough for a traditional razor, follow these steps to do the military shave correctly, cleanly and safely.

Clean Your Face

Regular skincare and moisturization should already be a part of your daily hygiene routine. Wash your face with warm water to clear your pores and remove dirt, oil, and dead skin cells from your mustache or beard. These substances can build up on your razor and increase irritation if you nick yourself.

Use a cleanser of your choice. Facial scrubs exfoliate the skin better because of their gritty texture, but washes may suit you more if you’re prone to breakouts.

After rinsing your face, consider applying a moisturizer. Washing your face removes natural oils your skin needs to stay nourished. Moisturizing helps keep it looking healthy after shaving. Moist skin particularly matters if you have a clean-shaven face, so it’s worth considering.

Build a Lather

Generating the perfect consistency of lather is an art. You can do it in multiple ways but may find only some suitable. Building a lather in a bowl with a brush is optional, but many prefer it to applying a product by hand or directly to the face.

Whipping up a lather in a bowl with a brush can help you achieve your desired consistency without getting messy. Working it with your hand is faster because you skip parts where you warm up the bowl with hot water and drain it. However, this method’s tactile nature can make it difficult to determine whether you have enough lather on your face.

Whichever route you take, applying a creamy lather on the areas you want to shave in a circular motion will exfoliate your skin and prime your face for shaving. Massaging the lather against the grain — the direction your hair grows — is a solid technique to cover as much area as possible.

The lather’s generation speed and consistency depend on the brush, shaving product and water hardness.

Natural hair brushes are either badger or boar and absorb a ton of water, so soaking them before shaving is necessary. Badger hair brushes are the most popular because they’re full and soft. They can create a thick lather easily. On the other hand, boar hair can generate lather quickly but cause skin discomfort.

Synthetic hair brushes absorb no water and are gaining steam because high-quality ones can perform as well as badger hair brushes.

Regarding shaving products, soaps produce a thick, creamy lather but are less moisturizing. Creams promise the richest texture, while gels are less foamy and more lubricating.

Hard water minimizes lather generation because of how magnesium and calcium react with shaving products.

Shave Until You Are Clean

Lather your face and shave with the grain — not against it — using your straight or safety razor. Shaving against the grain causes the razor to tug on your hair and irritate the skin. The shaved skin may develop a temporary rash or razor burn because of this technique, making your face look less pleasant and painful to the touch.

Rinse your face to see how clean of a shave you have. Go back over your neck, cheeks, nose and mouth multiple times to achieve a closer shave. Apply high-quality shaving cream lather on these areas again and shave with the grain with light strokes.

Rinse Your Face

Once satisfied with your shave, wash your face with warm water to completely clean any product off your face.

Then, use cold water to close your pores and calm your skin post-shaving. It also causes your blood vessels to contract, lessening swelling and reducing bleeding from cuts.

Dry yourself with a clean towel. Pat your shaved areas instead of rubbing them to avoid irritation.

Lastly, apply aftershave to your skin. An aftershave splash is an antiseptic that kills germs — like the bacterium Staph aureus — that may infect any nicks and a toner that tightens the skin. It also has a noticeable fragrance.

In contrast, an aftershave balm doesn’t burn because it contains no alcohol. It hydrates, which can be relieving if you have razor bumps or dry skin. Its fragrance is too subtle to overpower your cologne’s scent.

Is the Military Look for You?

Having a clean-shaven face has merits and drawbacks. Sporting a beard or mustache can improve your appearance and offer protection from the sun’s ultraviolet light. Do the military shave only if you look better without stubble.