Shaving Ethnography: Observation 1

For my first observation I decided to observe a male shaving his face. This was to see if there was any contrast between the processes and experiences of men and women. From my auto-ethnography into shaving I knew that the experience used primarily touch, sight and sound so these were the senses I focused on observing and of asking questions. 

Male

21

My participant said that he knew it was time to shave when he felt his face and he felt it tickle or itch. The hairs felt ticklish on my hand when I touched them in the same way that he did. He also said that the actual action of moving the hairs caused his face to tickle, something which I tried to emulate when I felt the hair on my legs however I did not feel ticklish rather they just felt fluffy with a kind of jaggedness to them. This pointed to being a difference in the way shaving is experienced between men and women. My participant shaved in the sink after a shower. The reason being because he needs a mirror to see what he is doing and because he is already wet it does not matter if soap and water go everywhere or drip on him. He lines up his shaving tools, a can of foaming cream and a four blade razor with moving head on the sink. He bends over the sink and turns the water on and proceeds to put his hands under it and flick water onto his face. The water goes everywhere including on myself and the mirror in drops. This seems to be standard practice as there are lots of old water marks on the mirror. After this, still bent over the sink he picks up the can of foam. He uses a shaving foam from a can because it is easier for him rather than using soap. He shakes up the can and you can hear it frothing as it hits each end. When he squeezes it onto his hand it comes out as a gelatinous green slime. He holds his palm flat to get the soap on it. He then rubs his hands together, and as the foam gets more air contact and more friction of froths up. He then wipes this on his face from the eyes down and a little higher on the sides. He washes his hands to get the soap off. The water does not go everywhere this time. The bathroom now smells like shaving foam which has the added scent of smelling like ‘man’. My participant says that many bathroom related items for men have this scent as it is masculine. He picks up the razor and shaves above his top lip first, he pulls a face as he does this, he says it is so the skin goes tighter and so it is easier to shave. After several strokes he rinses the razor, the razor is full of the same fluffy gunk I observed when shaving however there is a greeny tinge to it instead of a grey. The rinsing of the razor consists of holding the razor head under running water then swiftly moving it up and down. He then starts on his cheeks, making more faces. When it comes time to do his chin my participant informs me that this is the worst part. This is because the hair is longer and it catches in the razor and pulls, he says it is highly uncomfortable and sometimes painful. He explains that the longer the hair is the more uncomfortable it is, he says he should shave when its shorter but he never remembers, he doesn’t shave on a regular basis. He also says that sometimes when the hair is rather long he uses an electric razor to make the hair shorter to shave with more comfort. This is another point of difference for women as I observed that I shave every 2 days as a habit. After he is finished shaving his chin he says he is done shaving. There are small white lines of foam all over his face which he washes off in a process similar to how he wet his face at the start. Then he dries is face softly with a towel. It takes roughly 5-10mins for the entire process.