I’ve had a love-hate with shaving my face since the peach fuzz days of old. All men have had the experience. It’s a right of passage, the first shave. For the older amongst us, it was certainly a razor with canned foam, or classic shaving soap lather with a brush. Perhaps the youth are initiated with electric razors now. I always hated them. I’ve owned a few, but only for lazy expediency.

I loved the shaving-soap method, even collecting various soap products, mugs and wooden receptacles, and brushes.

Many years have passed and over the last 30 or so, I just got away from the habit, so I typically wore all variants of not shaving very often but not going full-on beard with all the trimming and upkeep required.

…Then I moved to Thailand.

In a curious and delightful way, millions of young and even older Thai women have taken a liking to farangs (pronounced ‘falang’) over the decades. These are western foreigners: white western enlightened men. While there are always the outliers, the vast majority of Thai chicks want you short haired and clean shaven. You see the occasional grizzly bear or hard rocker with a young sweetie, but mostly it’s The Formula:

1. 5’9″ or more
2. Well dressed always. Shorts are short slacks, like khakis. Collared shirt, like linen
3. Tanned, tall, leanish, stand up and walk straight like a CEO
4. If balding, go all in (noooo combovers); otherwise, very short. Clean shaven face

The other night I was talking to a 43-yo and she told me:

“I like old falang”

“Why?”

“They mature.”

…Unlike in the West, Thai women still have to look to the safety and security they desire from MEN, not GOVERNMENT. So they chose falang men and it’s not that there are no Thai men. It’s that it’s more natural here and Thai men have almost no government-mandated responsibilities in terms of fathering children outside of wedlock.

As I always say, all Thai bar girls have the same story.

…Since arriving here 27 months ago I’ve had to pay attention to the shaving far more often than I used to. I could get western shaving-cream products in various markets. Gillette and Barbasol are easy enough to find.

But they’re crap, and it’s probably what leads men to eschew razor shaving in favor of electric or letting it ride.

I still did it with those products, reluctantly—but under pressure from my girl less than half my age—then one day I was at the bare dregs of the Gillette can.

This is the point to mention my recently new shaving gear, Supply.co, also pictured in the title image. No affiliate gig. Too much trouble to sell a handful or even a few dozen for a sales commission. I’m not a men’s shaving blogger, otherwise I would.

It’s not cheap. It shouldn’t be. I even had to pay about 20 bucks import duty to get it here.

It would be fucking boring to write about the pure lying fraud that’s razor companies competing over how many razor blades to put in their products when a single sharp one is enough. Fuck that. Fuck them.

The punch line here is that after having discovered what fucking lying frauds all the main razor blade manufacturers are, for decades, I discover they’re also complete lying frauds with their skin products for shaving too.

…Back to the title photo, my girl had purchased that ‘Dove deeply nourishing body wash’ her last time here. So it sits in the rack in the shower. Then I had that debacle of a previous shave attempt and went to shave again.

I did 2 pumps of the Dove into my right hand, applied it all over my dry 1-week growth, massaged it in, getting a light lather. Then I waited a bit, 30-seconds to a minute.

A FUCKING HOT KNIFE DEALING WITH BUTTER!!!

The most fucking amazing, enjoyable, effortless, and clean damn shave of my life. I’ve done it three times since, and love it more each time.

And from chick products.

Shame on you, “men,” producing your crap for money. You know who you are.