Shaving Is Science

Two men in white lab coats walk in holding two containers that glow in different colours, and put them into what appears to be a small particle accelerator. The energies from the containers collide, and form the scientific breakthrough of the century: A Razor With FIVE Blades!

In the world of commercials, shaving equipment is right there next to rocket science. This is all part of a general trend in male grooming adverts, desperately trying to rescue their product from metrosexuality -- moisturizer "refuels" your face, deodorant "combats" sweat, and so on. Common imagery includes fighter jets and sports cars. Often an adoring woman will walk on screen to stroke or kiss the smooth chin.

That, or it just features a whole ton of blades.

Gillette are now actually advertising their products as "born from the science of shaving" (at least in the UK).

Compare Here Comes the Science!, Men Buy From Mars, Women Buy From Venus, Mother Nature, Father Science.

Examples of Shaving Is Science include:

Advertising

• Gillette, Braun, you name it.
  • This advert for Gillette Fusion is the opening of this trope.
  • In a Philips Norelco electric shaver commercial, a gynoid (female android) shaves a man with the shaver embedded in its hand.
• Parodied in a commercial for an electric razor, which started off as an ad for a razor with 15 blades, called "the Quintippio".
• There was an ad that began as an ad for a 15-bladed razor, that featured the actor staring at it in disbelief. Then, it went on to be an ad about a three-bladed razor, apparently as a jab at the four-bladed razor that was being released around then.
• It's not just for razor blades anymore: Oral-B toothbrush commercials are quite simply, ludicrously epic. Ominous Latin Chanting is involved. What more can I say?
• Brilliantly parodied in this advert for The Zyliss Multi-Peeler -- The Best A Potato Can Get.
• BiC Canada recently parodied and lampshaded this in their commercial for the "Hands-Free RoboRazor"!

Comic Books

• Superman shaves using his heat vision.
  • It's been surmised that he has to. Although there's that episode of Lois and Clark where Clark shows up at the Daily Planet with multiple cuts on his face after being depowered.
    • This was repeated in the comics when Clark was depowered for a year during 52.
  • Some early Superman comics suggested that he didn't have to shave. In at least one early story some perceptive child is convinced that Clark Kent is Superman after seeing inside his medicine cabinet, which contains only a hairbrush (because Supe doesn't need to shave, doesn't get headaches, never needs a bandaid, maybe never even gets BAD BREATH, etc.)
    • There was an episode of Superman: The Animated Series where he did the whole bouncing his laser vision off of a mirror to shave.
      • Which is, in turn, based on several Silver Age stroies showing him doing so—or having it done for him by Supergirl and Krypto. For Bonus Points, in at least one story the mirror was a piece of the spaceship which brought him to Earth—because of course any normal mirror would be destroyed.
  • During that brief period when Superman had his electrical-based powers, he accidentally shocked himself after forgetting that he no longer had heat vision and he couldn't be Clark Kent and Superman at the same time.
  • It's never explained how other Nigh Invulnerable heroes shave, except for Hancock, who just uses his fingernails.
  • Powergirl uses her heat vision to shave her legs in one issue of her own comic.
• Whatever's going on in that sonic shower Spider Jerusalem steps into, it moves him from "hirstute mountain man" to "permanent hairlessness" in about ten seconds.

Film

• Parodied in this viral ad for the Hunger Games movie, which features Seneca Crane advertising a razor with seventeen blades. An electric razor.

Literature

• For some reason, Golden-Age SF seems to have a special place in its heart for shaving technology.
  • For example, Isaac Asimov's "depilator" in The Stars Like Dust. Apparently, whatever future technology has in store for us, it will keep us thoroughly clean-shaven. Note that the shaving method the hero is shown using is basically a sandblaster for the face, and he's concerned about rumors that this technique leads to skin cancer.
  • Larry Niven did this too, but pictures suggest he wouldn't use it.
  • Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Number of the Beast had someone mention that the future he was visiting had a device that made razors seem like stone age technology.
    • In another Heinlein novel the main character laments the loss of his diamond bladed razor as it had comfortably dulled over the decades.
  • A full-body depilator shows up in Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise.
  • Depilatory cream is the primary method of removing facial hair in Steve Perry's Matador series. Possibly a reference to the above Asimov story.
    • Heinlein introduced this substance in Farmer In the Sky already in the 1950s; the extraterrestial pioneers grow beards because the depilatory cream, imported from Earth, is hideously expensive.
  • One Harry Harrison had a sonic shaver—it delivered a perfectly close shave by shattering stubble.
    • Who has a sonic shaver? Laser is so much better.
• This trope is parodied/referenced in one of the Star Wars Expanded Universe books, where Luke mentions that most models of weapon scanner will interpret a Lightsaber as a shaving implement.
  • Well it does remove unwanted beard hair, mustache hair, etc. It just has a minor side effect of removing the rest of your head along with it.
  • Kyle Katarn does use it as a shaving implement!
• The young adult Science Fiction story, "Junior Achievement", has a child of a biochemist come up with a form of depilatory cream that causes the hair to grow brittle. He calls it "before-shave".

Live Action TV

• The Daily Show featured a razor with 14 blades.
• A favorite of Saturday Night Live.
  • A classic SNL faux-commercial described a razor named the Platinum Mach 14. The patented fifth razor actually removes the follicle!
  • In the first season of SNL, when two-bladed razors were apparently just coming out, they had a faux-commercial mocking the absurdity of a hypothetical three-bladed razor.
    • The Triple-Trac: Because You'll Believe Anything.
• The Late Show in Australia featured a razor with 16 blades: 15 did increasingly ludicrous and specific jobs ("the first blade distracts the hair while the second and third blade sneak up behind it, cutting off any escape routes"), whereas the 16th? It's just along for the ride. see here
• Mad TV had a similar sketch involving the 20-bladed Spishak Mach 20.

The tenth blade removes cavity-causing tartar, and the eleventh blade starts the process all over again!

• Comedian Mark Weiner did a skit on an episode of America's Funniest People where he advertised a razor with six blades. The first five didn't so much cut the hair as rip it out of its follicle, and the sixth was actually a tiny roll of tissue paper for staunching the blood.
• Unlikely TV advertisements: "Introducing the new Gilette Uber-Uber-Ubersharp, the finest disposable razor ever made! In fact, it's so sharp, it's actually dangerous; use the previous generation's Mach 3 instead."
• Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a shaving device that used some suitably scientific-futuristic sounding term (futuristic for the 1980s). "Sonic", perhaps, or "laser". You just passed it over your skin, and the hair was gone. On the other hand, in Star Trek: Insurrection, Troi shaves Riker with shaving cream and an old-fashioned razor.
  • There's all sorts of symbolism in there about how letting a woman near your face with a naked blade is the ultimate sign of trust, intimacy and an intense desire to nail her.
    • They were in a bath together and were both naked. Draw your own conclusions.
      • How's this? She murdered the Growing the Beard Trope Namer!

Radio

• A Bob and Tom radio skit featured a razor with 27 blades, yet it's the safest razor on the market! Its name? The Decapitator!
• That Mitchell and Webb Sound did a 14-blade version, including blades which got your shopping and scraped all the skin off your face. Notable for the speed with which it got extremely silly (the third blade files your tax return), and the fact that every few blades there was one that SHAVED YOU CLOSER STILL.

Video Games

• Advertisements in Grand Theft Auto IV feature a razor called the Excelsior Extreme 9, with "9 blades of glory." The DJ of the Tuff Going radio station (reggae) warns his listeners not to buy it. "You might cut off ya' nose."

Webcomics

• Irregular Webcomic took it to its logical progression with this strip. The razor utilises fractal technology to create a razor with an infinite number of blades. Then adds a conventional one for infinity plus one blades.
• Parodied in this Loserz strip.

Web Original

• In 2004, The Onion ran a parody editorial attributed to the CEO of Gillette, entitled "Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades." The following year, Gillette actually introduced such a product.
  • The weekly feature "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" mocked Gillette Stadium by referring to it as "Next One Will Have 4 Blades Stadium." He's since had to update this joke twice.
• Parodied in a Touhou fan video, where Suika worries about the suction of her black holes.

Other

• Dara O'Briain had a brilliant bit in his last stand-up show where he suggested that Blade Five had to be "unlocked", by defeating a boss on Blade Four.
  • Not to mention his "Does the 4th blade actually REMOVE a layer of epidermis while the 5th blade instantly cauterizes the wound ensuring that no hair will ever grow there again!?"
• A Russian joke came out before there were three blades. It ended with "the 24th polishes the jawbone."
• It's estimated that at the rate razor blade technology has expanded in the past century, we will soon have razors with infinite blades.
  • The Other Wiki's article on technological singularities used to predict this would happen in 2015, illustrated by a picture of the Schick Infini-T. Then some humourless bastard got hold of the article, obviously.
• Then someone went and actually made a documentary about all this. (Modern Marvels, maybe?)
• This fellow goes low-tech and probably gets the cleanest shave EVER.
  • That's it, that man is going in the Mantheon as the god of shaving.
• Apropos of not much, there was for a while an unofficial measure of laser power based on how many Gillette razor blades the beam could cut through. Between the fact that it was difficult to measure the power of the first ruby pulsed lasers, and the wonderful uniformity of Gillette razors, it was a natural measurement unit. Thus, proud scientists could brag about their 4 Gillette laser as compared to their colleagues' wimpy little 2 Gillette unit.