Pi-Consulting

Tech rules. The average American comes up with more commercially exploitable technological innovations and ideas than people from practically any other country. The Finns, for some reason, seem to be the runners-up. Despite this, the typical American faced with a malfunctioning electronic device, notwithstanding his/her membership of the most technologically advanced society in man’s history, still usually resorts to ‘percussive maintenance’, i.e. thumping the crap out of the thing to try to start it working again. (Sources: World Economic Forum, The Dilbert Zone, Pi)

God gave Adam a luxuriant growth of facial hair, but every morning his sons laboriously scrape it off again. A huge global industry is based on this curious fact.

What do men use to keep themselves clean-shaven? A recent survey in Europe showed that 45% of European males have electric shavers, and that nearly two-thirds of them use some kind of wet-shaving system, whether conventional razors or the disposable kind. All together those who shave seem to represent nearly 90% of adult males. (There is some duplication: a significant number of ‘wet shavers’ apparently keep an electric shaver handy as well). That leaves around 10% of adult males who don’t give any direct evidence that they shave at all.

Logic says that we can assume that those guys all wear beards. In the absence of “Do you have a beard?” as a questionnaire item in most surveys, it’s perhaps as close as we’re likely to get. (But wait. Could these people be regular shavers who happen to use someone else’s razor? Their wives’ or girlfriends’, for instance? Ewwwww!!! If yes, Pi would like to hear from the Wronged Women whose shaving equipment is being borrowed by their Unprincipled Menfolk. In keeping with this website’s fearless editorial policy, We Will Name The Guilty Men).

Interestingly enough, a man’s propensity to wear a beard seems to vary according to a North-South divide, at least in Europe. A higher proportion of British men turned up in the “don’t shave” column than Frenchmen. There are considerably more bearded men in the chilly climes of Germany than in sunny Spain, where the clean-shaven predominate by a higher margin. Pi’s Law of Thermobarbanomics (“more heat, less beards”) could be close to becoming proven scientific fact.

Electric shaver owners tend to be older (peak age is 55+), and predominantly married. They seem to be the buttoned-up sort, who like organized routines, and judge a fellow by the car he drives. Wet shavers cluster in the younger age ranges, and are slightly more likely to be divorced or separated.

How do non-shavers differ from their clean-shaven brethren? For a start, they tend to be either way older or way younger, polarized to the under-20 and over-65 age groups. Many of the younger ones are students, and still single. Temperamentally, they can be casual to the point of untidiness, forthright to the point of rudeness, and they tend to do things impulsively, on the spur of the moment. They don’t really see cars as status symbols, don’t put much effort into appearing attractive to women, and are not particularly happy with their jobs. Barbarians, perhaps… ?