I’ve mentioned before that we seem to be producing a nation of pussies – and it’s getting worse.
There’s a current TV ad featuring a young guy who hasn’t shaved for the entire weekend, so he has stubble (and let’s ignore the fact that the weekend is when most young people socialise, and the lazy bugger should have shaved!).
The ad points out that shaving 3 days worth of stubble, before returning to work is, ooh, so painful, and he should use this wonderful new, and hideously expensive, electric shaver, which won’t hurt a bit.
Shaving is what guys do, except for a minority with full beards. Hell, I’ve been shaving since I was 13, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, that shaving does not hurt. It doesn’t matter whether you wet-shave, and lather-up with a shaving-brush, use poncy new gels (pre-shave, shave, post-shave – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg – WTF?), or use an electric shaver – it simply doesn’t hurt. At all. Ever. (And, Alan, you’re doing it wrong!)
Aftershave hurts, but it’s manly, innit! 
Actually, aftershave doesn’t really hurt, either – it only stings for a second, and the only person likely to be bothered by it is the sort of wimp who has just suffered agonies shaving!
I’ve not been too well lately, and I hadn’t, until Monday, been out for a week, so I hadn’t bothered shaving and, guess what? Shaving a week’s stubble doesn’t hurt, either. In fact, you get a closer shave with a couple of day’s growth than you do when you shave every day – at least, you do if you wet shave. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t shave Saturday morning – I shaved just before I went out in the evening, because I got a closer shave that I would have by shaving twice.
So who was it, I wonder, in the bizarre, divorced-from-reality, coke-fuelled, wonderland that’s the average advertising agency, who got the idea of telling people shaving is painful, when every guy in the land knows it’s not? Or maybe it’s just ad-land tossers, who are such colossal jessies they don’t actually need to shave, and really believe it would hurt if they did?
As I said – pussies.
