The Anger of Compassion

The Nancy Boy Shave

Part of their internet catalog copy reads as follows:

Who knew this would be the product that would put us on the map and introduce so many of our (now) long-term customers, to our entire product line? Not us. We were just tired of going in to work so often with those little pieces of Kleenex adhering to creepy blotches of dried chin blood. Then this crazy subculture of guys who shave, it seems, for a living, and used nothing but pedigreed preparations from England, brands with Royal Warrants peddled at $40+ per jar, somehow found about us. (They tend to be a little, um, traditional, so something called Nancy Boy from fruits-and-nuts San Francisco wasn't something they were just going to stumble across.) Turns out these guys didn't just go ape over our shave stuff--they've turned into our very best customers, across almost every product category (except, for some reason, the t-shirts and baseball caps).

Well.

I am of that subculture, and I too, have gone to work many morning with blood on my chin. And on my cheeks and jawline. And on my neck.

So this morning I made a radical move. I used Nancy Boy shaving cream. Now that wasn't the move, though: I've used Nancy Boy before, both the shaving cream and the pre-shave oil. But today I followed the directions on the package.

See, I do not get my lather from a can of goo. Oh my no. I do it the manly way: by swirling a badger brush around some good soap or cream, and whipping up the lather my own damn self.

Except that Nancy Boy is designed for...well, for not doing that. Even after they've cottoned to the high praise and exposure they've gotten from the internet shaving boards, their catalog copy for what they now call their Signature Shave Cream still contains offensive language like "even if you shave with a brush" and, even worse, "if you don't shave with a brush (neither do we)."

Ahem.

See, the problem is that only savages shave without a brush, and that's a fact. And when I first used Nancy Boy, I whipped up a nice lather with my brush -- and I liked it, liked the lather, liked the product. My lathering technique wasn't that great back then, nor was my razor technique. But it's easier to make a lather from a cream than from a soap, so that was no big deal, and I already had my beloved 1948 Gillette Super Speed, a very gentle and forgiving razor, so that was no big deal, either. The results from the Nancy Boy were great.

Now, though, I've been wetshaving for over a year, and I could probably get a decent shave from laundry detergent, a paintbrush, and the top of a tin can. But it did occur to me that I'd never used the Nancy Boy in the brushless manner for which it was designed. Hence this morning's radical move.

I have some concerns with using their pre-shave oil, because it's, well, oily, and I don't wish to gum up my brush. But with today's plan to go brushless, that was no concern. On it went.

I applied the cream with my fingers and smeared it around until I was satisfied with the coverage. Then I went to work with my Weishi DE and an almost-week-old Swedish Gillette blade.

The results were excellent: the shave was smooth and close, and the cream offered a lot of protection. I never did relather and go for a second pass, which I almost always do, but I did do some touching up with some more hot water and a 1950s-era Schick Injector.

I've now used Nancy Boy with at least three razors, with and without a brush, and with at least three (this is from memory) blades (the Swedish Gillettes, Merkurs, and Personnas). Good results each time.

For my money, I'll stick with using a brush, which means that I'll generally pass on the pre-shave oil. But this stuff is great: lathers easily, smells great (peppermint, mostly), provides excellent lubrication and protection, and costs about half as much as the top-tier British creams. And the motto ("Tested on boyfriends -- not on animals") is cute, too. It cuts through my barbed-wire beard without going postal on my touchy skin. For any guy who shaves, but especially for newbie wetshavers, I recommend it highly.

You can read another review of Nancy Boy here, and >one here, too. There's also an interview with Nancy Boy founder Eric Roos here, and the Nancy Boy blog here.

Posted by Craig Ceely at July 20, 2007 02:49 PM