I just want to say right upfront that I shave with a blade razor and I love my mom and I have never looked in the mirror and fantasized about being Gordon Gekko or Bill Gates and I am an enthusiastic participant in post-coital spooning.
I tell you this not only because I know you care but also because the Kaplan Thaler Group, a firm working for Panasonic, which makes electric shavers, recently surveyed 384 men and determined that "what a man shaves his face with can tell a lot about the type of person he is."
Now, I don't want to imply that the survey was rigged to make men who use electric shavers look cooler than "conventionals," as we call ourselves at the conventions. I want to just come right out and say it was rigged. That's how these things work.
The survey found that electric-shaving men:
Call their mothers three times more often than conventionals; Are four times more likely than conventionals to watch "The Sopranos" (conventionals are busy watching "Sex and the City"); Fantasize as they shave about being Tony Soprano and Bill Clinton, in that order, while conventionals fantasize about being Gekko, the fictional "Wall Street" creep, and Gates; Want three or more kids -- conventionals want one; Are five times more likely than conventionals to spoon after making love; and Last five to 15 minutes at the act that immediately precedes spooning, while conventionals are done in less than five minutes.
There are other subtle, culturally signifying hints that electric shavers are the kind of manly men that fabulous babes with the cleavage and the smooth skin and the long nails and the pretty hair and the leopard-print underwear want to hang around with. "Oddly," the survey says, "11 percent of men who shave with a traditional blade admitted to wearing tennis clothes to a tennis match." (Prissy little upper-class sissies! They'd rather watch golf than hockey, too!) Traditional blade shavers are also four times more likely to leave the toilet seat down. (Whipped!)
The obvious conclusion is that guys who use electric shavers are strong, confident men who idolize other strong, confident men and who love kids and love their mothers. They're physically affectionate, willing to be vulnerable and good in bed. The toilet seat thing just makes them more lovable. Oh, that Paulie. He'll never change! It goes without saying that buying a Panasonic electric shaver will automatically turn you into one of these studs.
That is to say, it will turn you into a mama's boy who wants to keep your woman barefoot and pregnant, who thinks he's some kind of sensitive tough guy and who tells himself that his weekly 480 seconds of ineffectual rutting is enough to keep his woman satisfied when she's actually thinking, "What is he doing?" and "The ceiling needs painting again, not that this schmuck will ever get to it because there's always another hockey game on."
Maybe I'm being defensive. I don't believe a word of this survey anyway. All the shavers were asked what woman they'd like to spend their life with. The electrics answered, in order, Katie Couric, Susan Sarandon, Carly Fiorina (CEO of HP), Hillary Clinton and Maya Angelou. This is clearly -- Katie Couric? -- a pack of lies.
Conventionals' dream women, except for the presence of the baffling Couric, sound a little more honest (Jennifer Lopez, Pamela Anderson, K---- C-----, Anna Kournikova and Marge Simpson), though they aren't necessarily better choices for life mates, Marge excepted. My own conventional blade-using list, ignoring for a moment that I have an actual life partner already, who I'm hoping won't read this far: A cute woman with a sense of humor who likes hockey and is either 1) a mechanic, 2) a masseuse, 3) a chiropractor, 4) a billionaire or 5) Pamela Anderson.
My dating habits also don't quite mesh with either camp. The survey found that conventionals are ready to dump a woman after two dates if there hasn't been sex, while electrics will give their prospective sweetie four dates. In my single days I was ready to say so long after three dates if no boots had been knocked. Of course, this was rarely an issue for me. I usually got dumped before the second date.
Anyway, if the life partner question hadn't assured me that the survey was fishy, I would have been convinced by the question about longevity in the rack. Does the Kaplan Thaler Group expect us to believe that conventionals actually admitted to a stranger that they last less than five minutes during sex? No guy admits that, I don't care what he shaves with.
I'm prepared to tell you that this conventional, this blade razor-shavin' man, this non-golf watching, non-Gordon Gekko fantasizing, non-Katie Couric ogling dude, who talks to his mom a loving once a week, not an Oedipal three times, lasts for 35 minutes before commencing with the spoonage.
Of course, that includes five minutes for shaving and 28 and a half for begging.
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