Be Nice and Clean

Recently, my girlfriend and I decided to go to NYC with no plan, thinking we'd figure out what to do when we got there. (We live in Connecticut so this isn't too radical.) Among other things, we ended up roaming around the upper east side, where we stumbled upon a couple gems.

The first one was Tender Buttons, a very vintagey closet of a place that sells fasteners of all sorts, from classical and custom to novel. I was drooling. My girlfriend was drooling for me. It was closed.

Then, just two doors down on 62nd street, we bumped into an equally manly operation: The Art of Shaving. Now, I've since learned that this is a multi-city chain with locations all over NYC that I never even noticed and that they have ads in GQ, Esquire, and so on. At the time, however, all I had to go on was the experience I was having and it was fantastic.

The 62nd Street store is small, about the size of an efficiency apartment. It has an affable manager, Angelo Ramirez, whose inexhaustible knowledge and obvious shaving prowess makes you want to take out a straight razor and shave like your grandfather.

After several weeks of mulling it over, I finally decided to pony up for a starter kit and I'm happy to report that I'm really into it. I love the ritual, the different steps in the process, the pre-shave oil and the after-shave balm. I love the way shaving like this slows down and elongates the part of my day devoted to taking care of myself.

This got me thinking. Women spend all kinds of time on their hair, their make-up, their clothes, their everything. Why do we men cheat ourselves out of the few things we used to take this seriously? It's not as if we give up virility by lathering up with a shaving brush or making our beards look regal. If anything, men were manlier in the days when they did these things as a matter of course. And we can't blame being "too busy" because most women are just as busy as we are and they don't stop doing their hair. So what gives? Why don't we do this very cool, multiple-step shaving ritual thing anymore?