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Grooming
is a word used for dogs and horses, monkeys
and men. The groom is the guy walking the
bride up the aisle, resplendent in a black
tuxedo with polished shoes and slicked
hair--and that's about the only time some guys
are groomed. Post-war grooming was almost the
opposite of what it is now. Guys greased their
hair on a daily basis and got it washed at the
barber's once a week. Modern men scrub their
grapes daily in the shower, and if the mop
gets any grease, it's in the barber chair.
Guys
today
might hit the barber chair to tune up their
do's, but guys in the 'fifties also got an oil
change. A week of slicking up made a good
scrub mandatory. Shampoo came in long-necked
bottles, like hair tonic, with the soap
already mixed with water. It was applied
directly to dry hair, with water worked in,
little by little, to lather it up. The head
was scrubbed with a brush, then rinsed forward
in a standard sink. That's all it took to wash
short hair. You didn't need to have a special
shampoo basin or lay a guy back in the chair.
That was for longer hair, and only came about
for males when beauty salons dropped their
first name and began taking in men.
Barber
shops
usually had a chart on the wall showing the
cost of services. The order generally went
like this, with "Haircut" at the top, followed
by "Shave," "Shampoo," "Massage" and "Tonic."
However, in the early 'sixties, Sandahl's
offered a free chart to barbers showing ten
popular hair cuts. Across the top it read, "A
Hair Style and a Hair Product for Every Need,"
and along the bottom, "We cut your hair one
way...the best way!" The middle of the poster
read, "Sandahl's Shampoos -- Tonics," and
depicted four Sandahl's Hair Care brand
products: "Perfect" Tonic, Shampoo, and a jar
and tube of butch wax. The poster listed six
shop services, with space to write in more,
but the order was reversed, with "Sandahl's
Dandruff Shampoo" at the top, followed by
"Massage," "Plain Shampoo," Haircut," "Shave,"
and Sandahl's Dandruff Tonic" (see below).
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Vaseline Hair Tonic Display Barber Shop Lather Machine |
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In
an episode
of "Leave it to Beaver," Ward caught Wally
using his razor, and chewed him out in
front of the guys. All through the episode
he ponders how to restore his son's
wounded pride. Finally, he stops in at the
barber shop where Wally's getting a
haircut, and tells the barber his son
needs a shave. The other guys' eyes get
wide as they watch Wally being lathered
up, feeling their own chins for any sign
of bristle, and once more, Wally is the
man.
Not every man shaves every
day; not every man needs to. But for those
who do, the first razor marks a rite of
passage and a coming of age to the man's
daily ritual: the shave.
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