Shaving and Masculinity in Eighteenth‐Century Britain

How did new technologies inform conceptions of masculinity in E nlightenment B ritain? This article explores the practice and material culture of shaving as an expression of polite masculinity. The eighteenth‐century masculine ideal was clean‐shaven. New types of steel meant sharper and more durable razors, in turn affecting the practice of shaving. Men at this time increasingly began to shave themselves rather than visit a barber. But razor‐makers advertised their wares using carefully constructed discourses, linking razors – and shaving – to a broader male interest in science. Razors were thus simultaneously a product of, and a vector for, E nlightenment ideas.