Infinite Ideas - Everymans Grooming Guide: How to Look Your Best Every Day

Everymans grooming guide

How to look your best every day

Infinite Ideas

7. Close shaving

Youre a grown man so youve mastered shaving. Hmm, that rash and the blood spots on your shirt say otherwise. Admit it, you need help.

It seems we spend an average of about five months of our lives scraping metal blades over our chins in order to look pretty. Sadly theres no figure available for how many months we then spend swearing and trying to cope with the damage but there are a few tips to try and ease the pain.

First of all dont shave first thing. Neither your skin, nor your brain are ready for it yet. Give them both a bit of time to wake up so that your hand is more steady and the fluid that collects in your face during sleep can drain away exposing more of the stubble.

Dont ever shave in a hurry. Short of forgetting your trousers there are few better ways of looking like a complete muppet when you get to work than having razor nicks all over your face.

Exfoliate if you still think thats something they did in Vietnam with Agent Orange then its time to join the twenty first century. These days its ok for men to exfoliate which means using a facial cleanser to scrub off dead skin cells leaving your face fresh and your stubble all the more exposed.

Get yourself one of those magnifying shaving mirrors and make sure the light is bright. If youre relying on the basic bathroom single bulb then at least make sure its a strong enough wattage that you can really see what youre doing.

Wet your face first with warm water before slapping on any shaving cream. The theory is that it helps swell the stubble making it an easier target.

Dont just spray some foam on like whipped cream on jelly, this is your face and what you do next can make or break your whole day. Instead massage a cream with soothing aloe vera thoroughly into your jaw. There are razor blades which come with aloe vera strips built in. If you believe that does the trick then you probably also buy those disposables with eight or nine blades because the man on the telly told you they were eight times better.

Dont be tempted to use an old blade. Dont mistake an old blade for a new one. Yes, weve all reused and got away with it but at least have two separate places to keep the old and new ones completely clear of each other.

If you have delicate skin then make each stroke in line with the direction of growth. Yes that does mean that the upper cut stroke is wrong. Shaving against the grain increases the chance of rashes and irritation.

Rinse the blade after every stroke in hot water.

Finally slap on an oil-free moisturiser to protect the skin. Take it easy on products that have alcohol and menthol in them, they may be all tingly, but theyre strong stuff and you dont want the tingle to turn to forest fire on your face.

The chances of cutting yourself are in direct proportion to the importance of your meeting that day. If youre spending the day in front of the telly you will have a perfect shave. If youre putting your business plan to Donald Trump in an hour you will emerge from the bathroom looking like you washed with a barbed wire face flannel. If you do look like you were shaved by Mack the Knife and serious meetings beckon then its time to reach for a styptic (aluminium sulfate) pencil. Its not nice, and its going to hurt but it will stop those cuts long before the alternative of dabbing frantically at them with loo paper.

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Styptic pencils do the do when it comes to stopping bleeding but they are undoubtedly a harsh way to treat your skin and for the soft and sensitive types that can cancel out the benefits. So for a more gentle approach try using lip balm on your war wounds.

8. Go bald gracefully

Getting away with going bald is an important life skill for men. Youll need a frame of mind in which reality shines through and acceptance is your goal. Tough it out.

If you become a baldy badly, schoolchildren will throw stones at you and relatives will look at photographs of you whenever they want a good laugh. You dont want that.

The only men who dont worry about their hair falling out are the ones who have already lost it which amounts to around three in ten men approaching the end of their thirties. The other seven are loudly making jokes about how their friends are getting a bit thin on top while anxiously checking the mirror and secretly eyeing the shampoo shelf in the supermarket for the bottle that promises extra volume.

It is important to accept that everyone has already noticed. It doesnt matter how carefully you have been combing to hide your bald spot, or how often you have avoided windy days, remember that the only person denied a really good look at the top and back of your head is you. Everyone else caught on to the fact you are losing your thatch long before you did.

Your motto should be: hide nothing. For example, when you start to feel the crown of your head pressing against your fingers, its natural to comb your hair a little more carefully. Soon, youre avoiding going out in the rain. Your barber notices what youre doing, and leaves that area a little longer. You start to experiment with hair products that keep this piece of hair in place. You set your alarm twenty minutes earlier so you can reattach your hair using hairspray. Then one day, a few years later, you realise that you have turned into Bobby Charlton.

During this time you fooled precisely nobody, and all those hours in front of the mirror are hours you will never have back.

Many men believe that women dont like bald men. This is not true. Women dont like flabby, sweaty, ignorant, self-obsessed men who love their cars more than they love their girlfriends. Compared with this, the exact amount of hair you have on your head is a mere detail. This means that if youre worried that no hair means no girlfriend, the first step towards getting away with encroaching baldness should be a visit to the gym and the launderette, where you can fix the more urgent problems that you can do something about.

Step one: get a decent haircut. Less is more. The closer your remaining hair is to your head, the less different it looks to the bits where there isnt hair: think Bruce Willis. Having your hair clipped short actually makes you look like you have more hair, not less or just stops people looking, because theres no furtive bald spot to seek out. It also has time management benefits because youll no longer have to carefully arrange your hair every morning. Haircuts are cheap and take five minutes. Plus you dont have to waste time and money on conditioner, because you dont need to use it.

Step two: groom well. Use the extra time liberated by your new hairstyle to think about the other nine tenths of your body. If you have thick tufts springing from your ears, nose and back, your loved ones will not treat this as compensation for the lack of hair on your head, so clip and wax. Also, you may have noticed that girlfriends have entire wardrobes of clothes with which they attempt to accentuate the bits of themselves that they like, and draw attention away from the bits they dont. Theyre on to something here; after all, they fooled you with it.

Always remember that, men male pattern baldness is the price we pay for getting the better deal on almost everything else in life, so stop whining and hiding your head. Dont even think about hair transplants and weaves and liquids that cost 30 a month. Even if they might do something to begin with, theyll stop working as soon as you stop buying them. If baldness is good enough for Sean Connery, frankly its good enough for you.

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