When asked to name the most cliché, masculine activity one could undertake, many may be inclined to suggest using your head to hammer nails into the wall for a shelf to place your Top Gear box-sets on or even biting your lip with such vengeance that you struggle to speak for days after, in order to ward off tears when watching Leonardo Di Caprio slump off the door into the frozen Atlantic. However, if we are to go by what the shiny dream-box in our living room threatens us with, it would appear that it’s shaving.
Anyone, by which I mean everyone, who has loitered in front of the television during the advert breaks, rather than reluctantly pulling themselves up to harass the National Grid for a cup of tea, will know exactly what I mean. The regular, platitude advertisements for shaving portray it as ripping pure testosterone off skin with as many blades as humanely possible to fit onto a handle. The topless model, who boasts of a skin so pure that it looks like he has never been troubled by rogue facial hair in his life, seems to take a perverse pleasure in slowly scraping the blade across his epidermis. After enough sickening gazes into the camera to even make Nigella Lawson feel a little queasy, a beautiful woman arrives to carefully caress the shaver’s face and they both frolic in front of their spotless mirror, before she’ll go back to the kitchen to cook him a low fat brunch and he’ll continue to wink at himself. Yes, I said wink. Rather peculiarly, there is no screen time for the wounds that leave the basin looking like an extra from the first scene of Saving Private Ryan or the foam that manages to hide behind your ear until you notice it in the mirror at about 10 o’ clock.

The real reason for the overblown and crude production is that shaving is, in fact, the least macho activity a man can partake in. Think about it. What do Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and David Beckham have in common? They all look better with facial hair. A beard is an ultimate statement of manliness. It’s rugged, messy, stores food and was invented by Attila the Hun’s school bully. Therefore, the removal of this fellow fodder is alongside actually leaving the bathroom in a reasonable state, on the ever-growing list of Male Sins.

Shaving companies have had to formulate this fallacy in order to stay afloat. They abide by the general rule of ‘MORE BLADES= MORE MANLY’. Currently, Wilkinson and Gillette offer a razor with five blades, but it can only be a matter of months before they start selling miniature chainsaws to hack off excess facial hair. Terms like ‘hydration’, ‘irritation’ and ‘resistance’ are thrown around, as if they’re selling fish resuscitation, rather than an instrument for scything off protruding facial hair. And god forbid that the razor doesn’t ‘glide’ or feel ‘smooth’ against the skin, rather than ‘tug’ and ’pull’ it, as if the device has some harmful vengeance against you. Yes, the razor should pet the skin and conjure up a sensation not dissimilar to a swan rubbing a Johnson’s Baby Oil model’s arse across your face.

For some reason, I dislike shaving. It’s not that I can blissfully recall a more innocent age of shaving, in which a barber would employ a cut throat razor, and neither is it wholly the fact that my facial hair looks as if I’ve been slapped on the back whilst eating a honey and toothbrush bristle sandwich. The most vexing aspect is the expectation to really savour it; an experience so divine and pleasurable, that to not enjoy is inhuman. Well, to me, shaving is just another instalment in the necessary bathroom routine, rather than a much-anticipated opportunity for self indulgence.