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How come a woman shaving her legs wears out a man's razor so fast?
Dear Cecil:
Last night I inserted a new blade cartridge in my modern
safety razor. This AM my true love used said instrument
(unbeknownst to me) to remove unwanted hair from her lower
extremities. Now, a half hour later, I am trying to figure out how
to apply a tourniquet to my upper lip after using the same blade
for my morning ablutions. My question is, how can delicate female
down so completely ravage a blade that regularly stands up to my
hard-bitten stubble? --Bill S., San Antonio
Dear Bill:
It's simple,
compadre. While the little lady's leg hair tends to be finer than
your face hair, she's got a whole lot more shaving acreage than you
do, particularly if she decides to shave her underarms too. So she
wears the blade out a lot faster. (Remember, it's not just hair
that clogs up a razor but dead skin cells as well.) If she's not
wetting her legs sufficiently it'll make things even worse.
The
blade companies wimpishly decline to speculate on what the
female-to-male wear-per-shave ratio might be, saying individual
variation makes averages meaningless (which certainly ought to come
as news to people in the statistics business), but let's say it's
4:1. You put in a new blade and experience the silky smoothness of
shave #1. Your inamorata comes along and thoughtlessly scrapes her
gams with the selfsame razor, using up the equivalent of shaves #2,
#3, #4, and #5. The next morning you pick up the razor expecting
shave #3 and instead what you get is the equivalent of shave #6.
Being psychologically unprepared, you gouge divots out of your
face, straining the bonds of affection and causing you to wonder
whether this relationship is really worth it. The obvious solution
is separate-but-equal shaving equipment. Sounds reactionary, but
there are times when the liberal impulse has to give way to the
instinct for survival.
--CECIL ADAMS
The Straight Dope / Questions or
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How come a woman shaving her legs wears out a man's razor so fast?