So, why do men shave!? Interesting facts, history, and insight...

I hate shaving! But, I do it every day (well, once a year a take a few days off and grow a beard, much to Megie's disgust!) I HATE SHAVING! I have to shave twice on a Sunday (once in the morning when I am preaching and once in the evening when I am preaching).

I shave because my wife prefers me clean shaven... It also makes me look neat... Why do some of the other guys out there shave (and ladies, why do you want your significant other to shave)?

Here's the story:

I don’t know about you, but every morning I see my boy friend shave. It’s a ritual — shower, comb hair, shav­e, brush teeth, dress. For some unknown reason I once asked him why does he shave? “Why? I don’t know, Youthfulness, shaving presents a clean face to the onlooker, conversant.”

Showering is easy to understand. If you don’t shower, you start to stink. Combing the hair is easy to understand too, because it would be a mess if you didn’t comb it. If you don’t brush your teeth, they rot and fall out. And dressing, obviously, is a necessity.

Shaving is the removal of body hair, using a sharp blade known as a razor or with any other kind of bladed implement, to slice it down to the level of the skin. Shaving is most commonly used by men to remove their facial hair, and a man is called clean shaven if he has had his removed totally.

Men have been shaving forever. Cavemen probably shaved with stone knives, and there’s some suggestion that they may even have trimmed their hair with fire. Beards can be uncomfortable, and they easily get nasty because they trap food.

But why is it that, for a majority of men, all facial hair must be removed? There certainly isn’t any health reason to shave it off. Why would we spend the time and money to go through this ritual each and every day?

Among the many reasons I found while doing some research men began shaving in Stone Age times were:

- To reduce the breeding grounds for lice, fleas and small rodents.
- To eliminate the beard as a place for an enemy to hang on during combat.
- To make it easier to eat.
- Superstition associated a heavily bearded man with old age and death, in addition to the superstitious belief of spirits which entered the body through hairs on the head.

“The word “barber” comes from the Latin word “barba,” meaning beard. It may surprise you to know that the earliest records of barbers show that they were the foremost men of their tribe. Medicine men and the priests. But primitive man was very superstitious and the early tribes believed that both good and bad spirits, which entered the body through the hairs on the head, inhabited every individual.

Alexander the Great never lost a battle, not to the Persians or to anyone else. But he did order his men shaved so that their beards could not be grabbed in battle. Same for the Romans.

Yet you find many men who support a beard and I am sure there are a variety of reasons for that too, but I am not getting into that right now. I must admit though that a beard or a moustache alone on some men look very graceful.

Now its your turn to talk, why do you shave guys?

Comments

[Steve Hayes]

Have you calculated the amount of time you spend shaving over a life time?

Just think of the other things you could have done with that time, like watching TV ads, playing computer games etc.

[Simon G]

Wasting all that time shaving just for vanities sake.

If I'm honest, I prefer to shave but my wife prefers me not to.

[Herman G]

Hell my wife won't kiss me if I doi not shave. And I like kissing.

[Steven Jones]

I have the same problem with the daily "face-scrape". My wife says that she doesn't mind me growing a beard, as long as I don't mind living a life of celibacy...