SMF

I've been wet shaving with cartridge razors since I was 16 years old and then found you lot in 2005. This obviously upped my game while simultaneously downing my wallet!

I've never, ever had a beard in my life. Ever.

However, last year around this time I decided I was going to grow one. Eight months later, I had what the kids call a full hipster beard, complete with handlebar moustache and Charleton Hestonesque Moses-worthy curls! The beard came in all grey, whilst my hair is still mostly black - very dramatic indeed.

I loved it. I quickly developed a beard ritual which would rival my shaving processes - shampoos, oils, balms, combs, brushes, trim scissors, etc. etc, etc... hard to imagine but yes

Every man loved it but every woman in my life hated it - my wife, my mother, all my wife's friends, all my mother's friends, my aunts and their friends...

So, I shaved it off on my birthday with a real sadness I must say. Over those eight months I had tended and nurtured it and didn't realize how attached I got to it.

...and now I miss it. But I'm torn - during those eight months, my shaving gear lay idle and I felt bad for not engaging it. Now I use it almost everyday and I miss that damn beard... Is it just one of those grass is greener type things?

...Might be time for v. 2.0

Hi Ravi -

I've worn a beard for forty-four years! I shave my neck, however, and I shape it into a straight line on the cheeks. I comb it and I trim it daily, but I haven't taken it any further than that. After all, I grew it during my hippie-influenced years, and the idea was to keep it simple.

Needless to say, my identity with a beard is well established. I can empathize with your loss.

- Murray

Ravi, listen to the girls

clive

I don't know about beard v 2.0; I'd think that one trip to the dark side is enough. I've never had a beard, nor have I ever been inclined to grow one and after 50 years of shaving I'm not about to change. My day wouldn't start off right without a shower and a shave first thing.

I had a full beard for one winter. I grew it because I was NOT going to buy anymore expensive cartridges and I was on strike. I was ambivalent toward the beard itself, but when warm weather arrived with biting insects right around the corner the strike ended and I bought more cartridges. I didn't want black flies crawling in, slicing me up and me helpless to do anything about it. But suppose I was able to kill them as the sliced into me in the hair jungle they'd die in there and be a PITA to get out. So it came off. I've been clean shaven ever since.

Yup, listen to the women in your life.

I have had a goatee since before I got married 14 years ago. Now my wife won't let me cut it off because she was used to my face with it when she met me and without it she says I have a weak chin. I have tried fancy adaptations: extending my sideburns around my jaw to meet it, etc. But I don't have the discipline to shave the line properly and little by little, day by day I keep narrowing the trim until I have cut it all off. Talk about making shaving a nuisance! I just keep my chin covered and do not let it get long enough to stroke.

fallingwickets wrote:Ravi, listen to the girls

clive

Always the girls clive... always the girls

In my own experience with a full beard many years ago, it was fun having and just as much fun shaving it off with the Krona and a new Super Stainless blade. My wife likes me without or with whiskers. I just don't like facial hair on me. My brother had a full mustache for many years, and then shaved it off and he just didn't look like the same person. It was a psychological effect that was other folks' problem, not his, but I think his wife couldn't wrap her mind around the "new" guy, so he quickly grew it back.

In my Army days, when I knew I was going to war I grew a nice full mustache. My buddy, my father-in-law with USN service (gunnery mate) aboard several warships in WWII was kidding me when he said about the mustache "I'll bet you a case of beer that you won't have that mustache when you come home". I immediately took him up on the bet because I knew he was just telling me he had confidence I'd be coming back. Even though I shaved it off for a while, I made sure to have a full mustache the first time I saw him when I got back home.

I did grow a beard once. It was by necessity when I got the chicken pox at age 16.
I had it for a few weeks and it was pretty full as I have very coarse facial hair. I couldn't wait to shave it off because of the itching.
I enjoy wet shaving too much to grow one anyway, plus I'd be scared to see how little black is left in it.