To shave… or not to shave… That is the question.

[originally posted on December 1, 2012… re-posted in honor of Movember 2014]

When I was fourteen, I started sprouting facial hair. Not a ton, but enough that I would have looked like a haggard vagabond or garage band scrub if I hadn’t started shaving.

In the absence of someone else to provide instruction, my mother took me aside one day and attempted to provide instruction based on what she’d watched my grandfather do. {And what I experienced.}

1)      Splash some water on your face… {splash!}

2)      Lather up some shaving cream…

3)      Apply generously {I look like Santa!}

4)      Press the razor gently to your face

5)      Glide it down the side {Nick!}

6)      Puff out your cheek; press out your lip {I look like a squirrel}

7)      Glide the razor against the grain {oh, that’s much better}

8)      Repeat until you look good again

I have used these basic and quick rules for the past 18 years, most of which I have been clean shaven. When I started shaving my head 8 years ago to counteract my increased testosterone, I applied these rules again. That is also when I should have started buying stock in Gillette.

Despite the necessity to shave my head for vanity (and genetics) and shaving my face for posterity, there have been numerous times in the past 18 years when I’ve grown a beard, goatee, fu man chu, or other facial hair styles.

This month has been a first for me though, as I’ve been keeping my tightly cropped beard and allowed my mustache to grow, unchecked, for the first time. The results have been comical.

 

I’d be lying if I said this was the first facial hair disaster of my life. Usually, when I let it grow unchecked, it’s been as a inner psychological ploy. My thinking goes that if I let it grow, and start looking terrible, I can shave it off and get a nice ego boost when I look in the mirror and see my handsome self again.

Or I’ll let it grow when I’m preparing for a big exam and immediately afterwards, come home, lather up and glide that Gillette down my face in a hot shower. When I step out of the shower I look and feel like a new man.

 

A recent experience came 15 months ago when I didn’t shave for six weeks straight. {I did trim my neck, so I didn’t become one of those weird neck-beard guys, but I let the core of my beard grow unchecked.} That was, and still is, the longest I’ve gone without trimming or shaving.

I was in the midst of finishing the last semester of my second year of medical school and preparing for our comprehensive exam. My desire to keep the beard growing was three-fold:

1)      The inner psychological ploy I already mentioned

2)      The lack of time I wanted to put forth to anything other than crushing my exams

3)      The desire to scare the living bejesus out of anyone who dared cross my path

After four weeks, I had finished the semester and was now preparing for the comprehensive exam. I decided to study in the classroom at the hospital I would be training at for the final two weeks. By this point, the picture on my student ID bore no resemblance to the vagabond I’d become. In it, I was clean shaven and without glasses. Now I was four weeks into a “get away from me” beard and wearing thick rimmed glasses.

Within five minutes of me showing up that first day, the security guard strolled over to me and said, “Excuse me sir, but this classroom is a restricted area. Only medical students are allowed to be here.”

She was holding a photocopied sheet and I could see that it had the students’ names and pictures on it. I pulled out my student ID and pointed at the sheet,

“That’s me. I’m on there. I’m Ean.”

She looked down at the sheet and then intently at the ID I held in my hand. A perplexed look came across her face.

“Sir, wait here for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

I watched her walk across the room and then saw my friend Clarie, who was sitting on the other side of the room, stop the security guard.

The guard motioned at me and then pointed at the sheet. Claire laughed and then appeared to plead my case for non-mistaken identity.

Over the next week, several more classmates would come to study in the classroom and echo the security guard’s exasperations. The beard was now spiraling out of control. But if they were concerned about my grooming habits or were worried that studying was stretching the limits of my sanity, they didn’t say.

I definitely splashed some water on my face, applied a copious amount of shaving cream, busted out a brand new razor, and made gentle, but vigorous strokes after that exam.

In college, I dabbled in some less mainstream facial styles, including a two week old handle-bar mustache. When I showed up to a research meeting with my Primary Investigator, she gasped.

“Oh my. What are you doing?”

“Um, what?” I replied.

“You don’t have a girlfriend do you?” Her insinuation was obvious.

“Have you been going to see the 3^rd graders (our research participants) looking like that?”

I winced.

“You have to shave for Monday. Stop scaring the kids, please.”

 

In the past few years, I have also used my facial hair as a barometer for a woman’s openness/tolerance of my eccentricities. If she can deal with one week’s worth of neatly cropped facial hair, then she is likely to enjoy a freshly shaven face too. The opposite is not necessarily true.

One evening this summer, I happened to be in the company of a lovely woman whom I had met with my now usual one week’s worth of growth.

In the moment, she pulled back for an instant and said, “Would you mind shaving?”

“No,” I instinctively replied.

“Good. Cause your beard is a little rough. I’m sure someone has told you that before, right?”

The next time I saw this woman I had shaved my one week’s worth down to two days growth. It was hardly noticeable.

“That’s what you consider shaving?” She intoned when I stepped off the train.

The next girl I dated after her didn’t bring it up once.

For the past year, my typical facial hair growth is closely cropped and shaved down to three or four day’s worth. The addition of the mustache, growing unchecked for three weeks, is definitely one of the worst styles I’ve had. It is quickly entering the upper echelon of awkwardness combined with panic-inducing fear when I talk to strangers.

No one at the hospital has dared comment on it.

I sent a picture of my mustache to some friends a week ago. Juice immediately made it the photo ID for me on his phone, replacing a picture of me wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, while adorning a top hat and dancing with a cane. Yeah, it’s that awkward.

I haven’t tried the clean-shaven approach on a daily basis for over a year. Perhaps when I get rid of this ghastly ‘stache, I’ll start that up again. Maybe that will prevent mid-make-out shaving requests?

To shave… or not to shave.