Men and grooming across history
Male appearance has swung between elaborate and austere every few generations, and each swing has been explained at the time as a return to what is natural.
Male grooming has never been absent; its form and its permitted justifications have changed. Roman elite practice was clean shaven; medieval and early modern Europe swung repeatedly; the mid nineteenth century saw a pronounced beard revival in Britain argued on grounds of health and masculinity; the safety razor and disposable blade from the early twentieth century made daily shaving cheap and private. British Army regulations required an unshaven upper lip until 1916. The modern male grooming market is a marketing category rather than a new behaviour.
Every generation discovers that men have started taking care of their appearance, and every generation is wrong. The historical record shows continuous, elaborate and often expensive male grooming across virtually every society for which we have evidence. What varies is the form it takes, and, more interestingly, the reasons men are permitted to give for it.
Sharp things, early
Razors are among the older metal objects in the archaeological record, appearing in bronze in several regions and in iron thereafter. Egyptian practice involved extensive body and facial hair removal, and grooming implements including razors, tweezers and cosmetic equipment appear in burials. Greek practice varied by period and by city, and the shift towards the clean shaven face among the Greeks in the Hellenistic period is one of the clearer documented swings.
Roman elite practice was clean shaven for long stretches, and the first shave was marked as a rite of passage. Barbers' shops were social institutions, as discussed in the essay on barber surgeons. Then the fashion reversed under the emperor Hadrian, whose portrait sculpture shows a beard and whose reign is conventionally taken as the point at which beards became acceptable in Roman elite portraiture again. That such a reversal is legible in sculpture at all is a reminder that portrait conventions carry more information about grooming than any text.
- The claim
- Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to shave so that enemies could not grab their beards in battle.
- Where it appears to come from
- The anecdote is attributed to classical sources and is repeated in a great many popular histories of shaving, often as a settled fact and frequently in advertising copy for razors.
- What is actually established
- Established: clean shaving became the norm among Greek elites around and after Alexander's period, and the change is visible in portrait sculpture. Established: an account associating Alexander with an order to shave appears in the classical tradition. Not established: the tactical explanation as the actual cause. Ancient anecdote collections are not reliable records of motive, single individuals rarely turn fashions on their own, and the beard grabbing rationale has the shape of a story invented to explain a change after it happened. Treat it as a story that circulated in antiquity, which is itself interesting, rather than as a cause.
The Victorian beard movement
The best documented swing in the modern record is the mid nineteenth century British beard revival, and it is worth dwelling on because it demolishes the idea that male grooming is a passive default.
Through the first decades of the century, clean shaving was the norm among British men of the professional and upper classes. From roughly the 1850s beards became not merely acceptable but fashionable, and within about a decade the change was near universal in those classes. The historian Christopher Oldstone Moore has written the standard modern account of this, and the striking feature of it is how thoroughly the change was argued rather than merely adopted.
The arguments made at the time, in periodicals, pamphlets and medical writing, included several that are recognisably absurd and one or two that are not. Beards were held to filter dust from the air, which for men working in industrial cities was not entirely fanciful. They were held to protect the throat against cold. They were argued to be natural, and therefore to represent a rejection of artifice, which is a rhetorical move that recurs constantly. And they were connected to a particular idea of vigorous masculinity, reinforced by the visibility of bearded soldiers returning from the Crimea.
The reversal, when it came in the early twentieth century, was equally rapid and equally argued.
The blade that changed the room
King Camp Gillette's safety razor, patented in the early twentieth century, and the disposable blade that went with it, changed male grooming more than any fashion did. The device required no skill, no stropping and no barber. The business model, selling an inexpensive handle and profitable consumable blades, has been imitated in a hundred industries since.
Large military contracts during the First World War put the device into the hands of enormous numbers of young men who had never shaved themselves, and returned them to civilian life with the habit. That is a genuine and documented mechanism for the spread of daily self shaving.
What is less secure is the accompanying story. The claim that gas masks required clean shaving, and that this caused the clean shaven twentieth century, is repeated constantly. The underlying point about respirator seal is real and remains a genuine consideration in modern occupational health. But British Army regulations had required the upper lip to remain unshaven until the requirement was abolished in 1916, which means the army's own rule ran the other way for most of the relevant period, and the trend towards shaving was already established. Respirators are part of a picture, not the cause of it.
Every swing in male appearance has been explained at the time as a return to what is natural, in both directions, using the same word.
The permission problem
The most interesting thing about modern male grooming is not what men do but what they are allowed to say about it, and the marketing history here is unusually legible.
Products aimed at men have consistently been sold on functional rather than aesthetic grounds: performance, protection, technology, sport, efficiency. Packaging in dark colours and metallic finishes, names borrowed from engineering and the military, and language about systems and formulations rather than about beauty. The same product sold to women is sold on the outcome; sold to men, it is sold on the mechanism.
This is a marketing solution to a cultural constraint: an admission of caring about appearance was socially costly for men in much of the twentieth century, so the industry supplied a functional cover story. The constraint has loosened substantially in recent decades, and the language has followed, though more slowly than the behaviour.
What has actually changed
Three things, all of them recent and none of them a change in whether men groom.
Visibility. Male grooming is now conducted and discussed openly rather than being either delegated to a barber or performed privately and denied.
Scope. Categories that were rare or absent for most men in the mid twentieth century, including skin care, fragrance beyond a single bottle, hair colour and body hair removal, are now ordinary. Body hair removal in particular has expanded rapidly and, in a long historical view, is a return rather than a novelty: extensive body hair removal was standard in several ancient societies.
Age. Grooming aimed at appearing younger has become a substantial male category, which connects directly to the essay on ageing, and to the pattern described in the revival essay, because a great deal of what is sold to men as new is what was sold to women thirty years earlier under different packaging.
Where to look
Readers who want to go further should start with the holdings themselves rather than with summaries of them. The British Museum, collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum both publish catalogue and research material relevant to this article. Both links are given for reference only. Neither institution has been assessed by us, neither has any connection to this magazine, and nothing here is an endorsement of any organisation.
Questions readers send us
When did men start grooming?
There is no such point. Razors, tweezers and cosmetic equipment appear in ancient burials, extensive body hair removal was standard in several ancient societies, and elaborate male grooming is documented in virtually every period for which evidence survives. What changes is the form and the acceptable justification.
Why did Victorian men grow beards?
A pronounced beard revival occurred in Britain from around the 1850s, argued at the time on grounds of health, protection from dust and cold, naturalness and a particular idea of masculinity, and reinforced by the visibility of bearded soldiers. It was an argued fashion rather than a passive default.
Did gas masks cause clean shaving?
Respirator seal is a genuine consideration and remains one in occupational settings, but it is not the cause of the twentieth century clean shave. British Army regulations required an unshaven upper lip until 1916, and the trend towards self shaving was already established through the safety razor and its wartime distribution.
Who invented the safety razor?
The safety razor with a disposable blade was developed and patented by King Camp Gillette in the early twentieth century. Its significance is that it removed the need for skill, stropping and a barber, moving shaving into the private bathroom and making it a daily habit.
Why is male grooming marketed differently?
Because an admission of caring about appearance was socially costly for men through much of the twentieth century, so products were sold on function, performance and technology rather than on outcome. The constraint has loosened and the language is changing, though more slowly than the behaviour.
- British Museum, collection Ancient razors, tweezers, grooming implements and portrait sculpture.
- Victoria and Albert Museum Dress, portraiture and the material culture of male appearance.
- British Library Nineteenth century periodicals, pamphlets and advertising on shaving and beards.
- Science Museum Group Razors, grooming technology and manufacturing history.
- Imperial War Museums Military regulations, equipment and photographic collections.
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